Author: Philip Johnston
Publication: Telegraph
Date: June 19, 2006
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/06/19/do1902.xml
In less than three weeks' time, the families
and friends of 52 people killed on the London transport system will mourn
their loved ones on the first anniversary of their deaths. These were, let
us remember, innocent people going about their daily business, blown to bits
on an Underground train or a bus, many of them on their way to work.
They were killed by four suicide bombers who
were brought up in this country, Muslim believers who carried out the atrocity
in the name of Islam. Misguided they might have been, but Muslim they assuredly
were. So let us not pretend that this outrage did not happen in our capital
city, in the way that it did; or imagine that it was not perpetrated by the
people who we know carried it out.
Let us not forget, either, that if the terrorists
could have killed 200 or 2,000 people, they would have been content to have
done so. Their aim was indiscriminate and their intent murderous.
It was an appalling episode in our national
life, one which had been predicted yet which, when it happened, was still
almost impossible to believe.
It was an act of religious and political terror,
carried out from within our midst by people who despised the values of their
own country.
It is fatuous to say that they represented
only a tiny minority of Muslims. Of course they did. Terrorists usually do.
Nobody suggests that they had widespread support among the decent, law-abiding
Muslims who want to get on with their lives like the rest of us, though no
doubt some imagined that what they did was laudable.
There are people of other faiths, and of none,
who can also find a warped rationale for such carnage. For goodness sake,
even an MP has said a terrorist attack on the Prime Minister by a suicide
bomber could be morally justified, even if he did not exactly advocate one.
The fact remains, this ghastly episode took
place on the morning of July 7, just as London was celebrating winning the
2012 Olympic Games. Not even a year has passed, yet you begin to wonder whether
the country, or some sections of it, has been stricken with amnesia or has
access to privileged information that guarantees it is never going to happen
again.
How else can you explain the systematic and
insidious attempt to undermine the efforts of the police, MI5 and other counter-terrorist
agencies as they seek to thwart another attack? The denunciation from some
quarters of the CBE awarded to Andy Hayman, head of Scotland Yard's specialist
operations, in the Queen's Birthday Honours, was the latest example of this
Fifth Columnism.
Mr Hayman was, presumably, given the honour
in recognition of the work put in by the Met's anti-terrorism team over the
past two or three years. The police have had some serious successes against
an enemy that is difficult to infiltrate and penetrate.
They have also made some dreadful and tragic
errors, such as the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes and the raid on a
house in Forest Gate, east London, which they had thought contained chemical
weapons.
But that is what they were. Mistakes. And
understandable ones at that, given the background. Have we also forgotten
that on the day Mr de Menezes was killed, the police had good reason to fear
that London was the target for a sustained series of suicide attacks?
We will await the outcome of the inquiry into
that incident, although it seems pretty obvious that intelligence and policing
errors were made. However, they were explicable, if not forgivable.
The same can be said of the Forest Gate raid.
It is now routinely claimed that 250 armed police officers stormed their way
into the house. This is rubbish. Most of the police involved were carrying
out cordon duties.
The usual small unit of anti-terror specialists
went into what they imagined was a building containing a dangerous bomb. Would
you want to do that job? Or would you have liked to crawl through the mangled
Tube carriages wrecked by last July's bombers, in the dust and fetid heat
of high summer, looking for clues that might point to the perpetrators?
Mr Hayman might not have done this personally,
but his team did. Honours such as his CBE should recognise the work and dedication
of all those who are trying, in what are rapidly becoming intolerable circumstances,
to protect the country from further horrors.
Neither they nor MI5 should be immune from
criticism. There were judgments made in the years before July 7 that can justifiably
be questioned, even challenged. Militant jihadists were given too much latitude
by the security services for too many years.
It is possible that had other decisions been
taken, the bombers - or two of them - could have been stopped. But they weren't;
and it is understandable why MI5 chose the priority targets it did.
If there is to be any sanity in this, we must
believe the police and the security services are acting in good faith for
the benefit of everyone. In recent days, it was impossible to listen to BBC
news without hearing a procession of spokesmen for what was referred to as
"the community" condemning the police action in east London, without
any apparent attempt to place it in the context of the threat we face. What
is this "community"?
Are we all members of it, or does it just
exist for a particular group? And why, when about 200 people demonstrated
in its name outside Scotland Yard, was this deemed headline news by the BBC?
Can you imagine any other protest on such a small scale that would merit such
coverage?
As a member of the "community",
can I say congratulations to Mr Hayman on his CBE and to Peter Clarke, the
head of the anti-terrorist branch, and the rest of their team. When Tony Blair
said last week that he was 101 per cent behind them, he spoke for the nation.
No doubt there will be those who, for nefarious
reasons, continue to snipe at the police and MI5; but if they have better
ideas for dealing with the terrorist threat, then let's hear them. Otherwise,
let them shut up. We have listened to them for too long.
philip.johnston@telegraph.co.uk
