Cameron's response to Woolwich was right

By Paul Goodman
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Tony Blair responded to 7/7 by rushing out a twelve-point plan which his Home Secretary hadn't had proper sight of, and which the Labour Chairman of the Home Affairs Select committee called "half-baked".  Much of it was never implemented, which was just as well, and its most startling feature was immediately dropped - new powers to close mosques (as if that would have helped).  One of its main proposals was to hold suspects without charge for up to 90 days.  This was red top government: the then Prime Minister was running the country as if he were a tabloid editor.

David Cameron responded to the murder of Lee Rigby by saying that he is "not in favour of knee-jerk responses.  The police have responded with heightened security and activity - and that is right.  But one of the best ways of defeating terrorism is to go about our normal lives."  He also confirmed that the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Intelligence and Security Committee will examine why the suspects weren't fully investigated - despite being known to the police and security services.  (The independent coroner's inquiry into 7/7 didn't open until 2010.) This style of government was presumably what Cameron meant - though he cannot have foreseen the terrible circumstances - when he said in opposition that politics shouldn't be a branch of the entertainment industry.

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One of the terrorists said: "We want to start a war". They mustn't succeed. Attacks on mosques play their game.

By Paul Goodman
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When the first Islamist terror attack in Britain took place - the horror of 7/7 - suicide bombs were the means and training abroad the method, or part of it: mobiles were cruder and Twitter didn't exist.  Much has changed since the day when I sat in David Davis's office (he was Shadow Home Secretary at the time, and I was a Conservative MP) scribbling lines for his response to Charles Clarke's Commons statement.  Osama Bin Laden is dead, his Al Qaeda network is smashed, and rookie terrorists aren't necessarily put through their paces in Afghanistan or Pakistan: one of the last domestic British victim of an attack was an MP, Stephen Timms.

His attacker, Roshonara Choudhry, was self-radicalised towards extremism and violence: that's to say, she'd been swayed by videos of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American Al Qaeda terror cleric.  Choudhry embodied the danger which the security services had warned about - the "lone wolf" who would strike without a supporting network: the Islamist equivalent of Anders Breivik, the Norwegian fascist terrorist.  It is too early to tell if the two terrorists who so foully murdered a soldier yesterday in Woolwich were also isolated and home-grown, or part of a wider network - and recent arrivals in Britain.

It's also unclear whether they were converts to the Salafist-Wahabi strand of Islam - of which Al Qaeda is the one of the most violent manifestations - from a traditional Islamic background or from outside the religion altogether.  But what is certain is that beheading British soldiers has been an aim among Al Qaeda-inspired fanatics for some time.  For example, Parvix Khan from Birmingham received a life sentence in 2007 for plotting to behead a soldier "like a pig".  Today's terrorists were taking a well-trodden path - albeit one with a peculiarly and sickeningly modern or even post-modern end: one was videoed by passers-by mouthing propaganda.

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It isn't too early to draw conclusions about the terror in Boston

By Paul Goodman
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There is a mass of commentary about the Boston atrocity which agrees that it's too early to say very much about the dispositions, motives and connections of those who carried it out - because we know so little.

However, what we do know is extremely suggestive, and to claim that because we don't know everything we must say nothing looks suspiciously, in some cases at least, like an attempt to prevent views being voiced at all, for fear of them being politically incorrrect.

I think we can draw two clear conclusions from what's happened, as nurses in hospital try to save the life of a terrorist who took lives: a reminder, were one needed, of why the country whose virtues they show is better than the ideology whose evil he has spread.

• Terrorism and belonging - or the lack of it - are inextricably connected.  Here is a list of British terrorists who were converts not usually to Islam itself, but in every case to Islamism - that pernicious distortion of it.  Richard Reid (the "shoe bomber", and a covert to Islam), Dhiren Barot (a convert to Islam from Hinduism), Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (privately educated at Forest School, Walthamstow), Omar Khan Sharif (a maths student at King's College, London), Mohammed Sidique Khan, (the leader of the 7/7 atrocity gang, and a teacher radicalised to extremism), Brian Young (a convert to Islam, and one of the 2005 liquid explosives airplane plotters) and Nicky Reilly (a convert to Islam who tried to blow up a restaurant in Exeter).  None of these terrorists identified with Britain.  But they were all a product of it - and at home nowhere, emotionally or culturally.  It is striking that on a social networking site Dzhokhar Tsarnaev listed his "World View" as Islam and his "Personal Priority" as "career and money".

• Anger about foreign affairs shouldn't be confused with anger about foreign policy.  A conventional view of Islamist terror is that it is simply a response to the invasion of "Muslim countries" by the country in question - a take that was endlessly repeated in the aftermath of 7/7.  Tsarnaev's social network postings help to demonstrate why this view is wrong.  He "posted a video expressing sympathy with rebels fighting in Syria" and "also has links to pages calling for independence for Chechnya".  But America has not invaded Syria.  Nor did it invade Chechnya.  One of Britain's earliest suicide bombers died in Kashmir 13 years ago.  But Britain has had no involvement in Kashmir since the late 1940s. (I have written at length about Kashmir here.)   Unless one is to argue that western countries are responsible for all the evils of the world, it makes no sense to blame (say) American foreign policy for foreign affairs - for example, the civil war in Syria, or what Russia has done in Chechnya.

It is certainly too early to claim, by way of a third point, that the terror in Boston proves the danger of the "lone wolf" - or, in this case, a lone wolf and his brother.

The British Security Services, in the wake of the decline of Al Qaeda as an organised force, are preoccupied by this threat - the self-radicalised extremists indoctrinated via the internet who strikes alone, as Roshonara Choudhry struck at the Labour MP Stephen Timms.

As I say, these are early days, and it may be that the Boston terrorists had help and training which we don't know about yet, but the possibility is worth keeping an eye on.

The Government's counter-terror strategy: Quite a bit done, a lot more to do

By Paul Goodman
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Almost eight years ago, 52 innocents were murdered and hundreds injured by Islamist terrorists on 7/7.  Two years ago, David Cameron made a speech about the causes of that terror in Berlin - his so-called "Munich Speech".  In the years between the two events, debate raged both about policy responses to Al Qaeda terror - dividing politicians, civil servants, the security services, the police and academics into two main camps.

The last Government's CONTEST counter-terror strategy was divided into four strands (and remains so under this one) - Prepare, Protect, Pursue and Prevent.  It was this last that proved the most contentious.

One school of thought held that government could use the bad against the worst - in other words, non-violent extremists against the violent extremists of Al Qaeda.  Individuals and groups aligned with such Islamist movements as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jamaat e-Islami had, it was argued, "credibility" with young British Muslims, and could help turn them against AQ - thus helping to prevent terror attacks.

Others disagreed, arguing that it would be disastrous for the state to fund or patronise movements that were ambiguous, to say the least, about liberal democracy, and held ideas about, for example, the place of women in society that were antithetical to it.  In Munich, David Cameron threw his weight decisively on the side of the second school, and against not only those who committed violent acts, but against those who supported the ideology that helped to underpin them.

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Islamist terror and extremism: "They haven't gone away, you know"

By Paul Goodman
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There has been no mass terror attack in Britain for over five years - since the bombing of Glasgow airport in 2007.  Osama Bin Laden is dead, and the reach of his Afghanistan-and-Pakistan-based Al Qaeda network reduced.  British troops have returned from Iraq and will, before too long, come back from Afghanistan.  It might therefore be assumed that the threat of bombs on the tube - or elsewhere - carried by Islamist fanatics has faded away altogether.

However, yesterday's conviction of three would-be suicide bombers from Birmingham is a reminder that Al Qaeda, as Gerry Adams once said of the IRA, "hasn't gone away, you know".  It never had: for example, innocents in Exeter's Giraffe Cafe were lucky not to die or be maimed in 2008, when Nicky Reilly's exploding bomb injured only himself.  Reilly was a convert to an extremist variant of Islam - a distortion of the classical, traditional form.

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The vision of terrorists stalking MPs is "merely comic"

By Paul Goodman
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The claim that disclosing the addresses of places where MPs live "for a moment...seems merely comic.  It conjures up visions of Al Qaeda terrorists trailing LibDem backbenchers home or crazed women stalking handsome Tory junior Ministers they accuse of having done them wrong. Come off it. No-one could recognise 51 MPs in an identity parade, let alone take the trouble to rough them up for voting the wrong way in the last Commons division." - Max Hastings, Daily Mail, November 21 2012.

"A 21 year old student has been jailed for life at the Old Bailey for trying to murder Labour MP Stephen Timms because he voted for the war in Iraq." BBC, November 3 2010.

Theresa May to target migration loophole and tell judges foreign criminals do not have absolute right to family life

By Matthew Barrett
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Appearing on the Andrew Marr Show this morning, the Home Secretary Theresa May was able to promote her counter-attack Sunday initiatives: immigration and deporting foreign criminals. 

Mrs May began with immigration, saying that "we’ve already looked at non-EU economic migrants, and student visas and settlement and now we’re looking at family". A current loophole in the immigration system is that which allows spouses and children to migrate to Britain without proper safeguards. Mrs May outlined her objection to this:

"This isn't just about the numbers though, in terms of family, because we think it is right that somebody who is looking to bring somebody into the UK to join them as a spouse or a partner should be able to support them financially, and should not be bringing them in on the basis they're going to be reliant on the state"

As a result, the required income level for migrants wishing to bring a spouse should be £18,600, Mrs May said. Those wishing to bring a spouse and one child would be required to be earning £22,400, and for every extra child, the amount to be earned increases. 

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Ken Clarke bids to end unjustified compensation payouts for terrorist suspects

By Matthew Barrett
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Yesterday, Ken Clarke announced the watering down of some elements of the proposed Justice and Security Bill, which has caused some controversy due to the parts of the Bill which would allow courts to hear cases in secret. Gone is the ability for the Government to hold sensitive inquests, such as those concerning troops killed overseas, in secret. 

However, certain controversial elements remain. Citizenship cases (for example, a suspected terrorist applying for a British passport) will be heard by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which can conduct cases in secret. Civil courts will also be allowed to go into private sessions when hearing intelligence material, if a request is made by a Minister. Some of these measures have been tightened up. Approval for a closed hearing would have to come from a judge, and can only be granted on the grounds of national security. The Intelligence and Security Committee will also be able to hold MI5 and MI6 to account, with only Ministers being able to refuse to hand over information.

A common sense change many people would think right to introduce is that now Ministers are exempt from demands for secret intelligence material from foreign courts.

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Five lessons from Prevent - following today's Home Affairs Select Committee report

By Paul Goodman
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I haven't yet had the opportunity to read today's Home Affairs Select Committee report in to Prevent in full, but the Home Office presumably has: it says that the committee "broadly support[s] the outcome of the Prevent review and the revised strategy".

The Committee's alertness to the dangers of neo-nazi terrorism - which the BBC has swooped on - and the need to remove violent extremist material from the net seem sensible.  I look forward to reading the whole report.

Its publication is as good a moment as any to ask what lessons can be learned from the history of Prevent - and recent events in relation to violent extremism and extremism more broadly.  I draw five conclusions.

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David Cameron tells the European Court of Human Rights to return to its founding principles

By Matthew Barrett
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David Cameron's speech to the Council of Europe today sought to make the case for reform of the European Court of Human Rights. The ECHR, Mr Cameron said, has become too active in meddling with the affairs of national governments - behaviour which is now undermining not just the ECHR, but the cause of "human rights" in general. 

Mr Cameron first put "human rights" in the context of British (and English) liberty:

"Human rights is a cause that runs deep in the British heart and long in British history. In the thirteenth century, the Magna Carta set down specific rights for citizens, including the right to freedom from unlawful detention. In the seventeenth century, the Petition of Right gave new authority to Parliament; and the Bill of Rights set limits on the power of the monarchy. ... It was that same spirit... that drove the battle against tyranny in two World Wars and that inspired Winston Churchill to promise that the end of the "world struggle" would see the "enthronement of human rights"."

Mr Cameron also noted that modern British foreign policy (Libya, Iran sanctions, engagement in the UN, empowering women in Afghanistan, etc) has shown "if called to defend [a belief in human rights] with action, we act."

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