View all newsletters
Sign up to our newsletters

Support 110 years of independent journalism.

  1. Long reads
5 July 2007

Learning from errors of the past

The emotive rhetoric and instant clampdowns are gone. Now, under Gordon Brown, there appears to be a

By Martin Bright

Even before the terrorist attacks it was going to be a pivotal first week for Gordon Brown, Prime Minister. He had long been planning a root-and-branch cabinet reshuffle, an overhaul of the constitution and a major announcement on health. Questions had been raised about how he would react in an emergency, but he emerged strengthened from his first crisis. His bold appointment of Jacqui Smith appears to have paid off. She may not have run a large department, but her refusal to indulge in the machismo of the Blair-era Home Office has won plaudits from across the spectrum.

Just as we thought we knew where the terrorist threat was coming from, the rules of the game have changed. Again. The attacks in London and Glasgow may have failed, but they have shifted the ground under the feet of the police and security service once more. Security sources admit they knew little about the backgrounds of the network of jihadi medics working at the heart of the NHS. The rhetoric of the government and its advisers had, over the past couple of years, focused on the danger from foreign imams. It now seems that resources would have been better spent clamping down on foreign doctors. While Britain’s security apparatus was still struggling to understand the scale of the threat from home-grown radicals, the jihad opened another front among sleepers working within the country’s most revered institution.

News of the attacks came just as ministers in the Brown government were already preparing to dump the makeshift approach developed in the aftermath of the 7/7 attacks. Tony Blair’s knee-jerk response of a 12-point anti-terror plan was delivered within weeks of the London bombs, while the then home secretary, Charles Clarke, was on holiday. Both cabinet and parliament were left in the dark. The plan, worked out on the back of an envelope by Blair and one or two Downing Street aides, has been largely discredited. Some ideas, such as closing down places of worship “fomenting extremism”, are now acknowledged to have been downright dangerous.

Under Smith and her deputy Tony McNulty, the Home Office (now a homeland security department in all but name) has shown signs of a more thoughtful approach. Smith has emphasised the criminal nature of terrorist attacks, a welcome change from the apocalyptic language of the Blair years. There has been no suggestion, yet, of another wave of anti-terror legislation.

Instead, as Brown set out to parliament, the new approach to security is designed to bolster not just efficiency, but also public trust, which was so damaged by the misuse of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War. A new national security council should forge a closer working relationship between elected politicians and the intelligence services, while moves to make the Commons intelligence and security committee more accountable to parliament mark a significant reform.

Select and enter your email address Your weekly guide to the best writing on ideas, politics, books and culture every Saturday. The best way to sign up for The Saturday Read is via saturdayread.substack.com The New Statesman's quick and essential guide to the news and politics of the day. The best way to sign up for Morning Call is via morningcall.substack.com Our Thursday ideas newsletter, delving into philosophy, criticism, and intellectual history. The best way to sign up for The Salvo is via thesalvo.substack.com Stay up to date with NS events, subscription offers & updates. Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. The best way to sign up for The Green Transition is via spotlightonpolicy.substack.com
  • Administration / Office
  • Arts and Culture
  • Board Member
  • Business / Corporate Services
  • Client / Customer Services
  • Communications
  • Construction, Works, Engineering
  • Education, Curriculum and Teaching
  • Environment, Conservation and NRM
  • Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance
  • Finance Management
  • Health - Medical and Nursing Management
  • HR, Training and Organisational Development
  • Information and Communications Technology
  • Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives
  • Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities
  • Legal Officers and Practitioners
  • Librarians and Library Management
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • OH&S, Risk Management
  • Operations Management
  • Planning, Policy, Strategy
  • Printing, Design, Publishing, Web
  • Projects, Programs and Advisors
  • Property, Assets and Fleet Management
  • Public Relations and Media
  • Purchasing and Procurement
  • Quality Management
  • Science and Technical Research and Development
  • Security and Law Enforcement
  • Service Delivery
  • Sport and Recreation
  • Travel, Accommodation, Tourism
  • Wellbeing, Community / Social Services
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
THANK YOU

Ministers in the new Brown government working closely on the issue of community co hesion also realise that attempts to reach out to the Muslim communities in the immediate aftermath of the 7/7 attacks were a failure. A task force with a series of working groups was set up to make proposals on improving relations with Britain’s Muslims. More than 60 recommendations were made, but most were unacceptable to the government, such as demands for a full inquiry on the bombings and a recognition of the role of British foreign policy, notably on Iraq, in the radicalisation of Muslim youth. The rest were mostly ignored. Those invited to participate found the group dominated either by civil servants or by the government’s allies in the Muslim Council of Britain. Ministers have been struggling to win back credibility ever since, and those who took part have grown deeply suspicious.

One minister intimately involved with the government’s prevention of terrorism strategy told me: “We got it all wrong after 7/7. We should have held our nerve and not just leapt into doing something for the sake of it. We have had to start from scratch.”

Foreigners and firebrands

There has already been one seismic shift in the understanding of militant Islam in Britain. It happened at the end of April 2003, when two British men, Asif Hanif and Omar Sharif, strapped themselves into explosive suicide belts and walked into a Tel Aviv bar to become martyrs. They too failed, but it sent a chill through Whitehall.

Until that point, “jihad” had been seen as a largely foreign phenomenon. Its British supporters, such as Abu Hamza, the hook-handed imam of Finsbury Park Mosque and the “Tottenham Ayatollah”, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, had been written off by the police and the intelligence service as clowns. Even the media, which demonised these firebrand preachers, couldn’t quite believe they were for real. Journalists printed their claims that British boys were prepared to die for the cause and were undergoing military training abroad, but until Hanif and Sharif appeared in a Hamas martyrs’ video, it didn’t seem possible that British Muslims were really prepared to go that far.

No one now doubts the seriousness of the threat from home-grown radicals. In recent months, former members of the hardcore network have emerged to expose the full scale of the problem. Hassan Butt, formerly of al-Muhajiroun, the radical group, who once called for jihad against British forces in Afghan istan, has now publicly denounced his former comrades. Meanwhile, Ed Husain’s The Islamist, an account of his time as a committed militant, has become required reading for government ministers. But the latest attacks in Glasgow and London would appear to show the existence of a whole new network of jihadis from the Middle East working in Bri tain’s public services.

“The pattern is that there is no pattern,” a senior Whitehall security official told me. “Except that these in dividuals all want to kill people.”

Content from our partners
The promise of prevention
How Labour hopes to make the UK a leader in green energy
Is now the time to rethink health and care for older people? With Age UK

Select and enter your email address Your weekly guide to the best writing on ideas, politics, books and culture every Saturday. The best way to sign up for The Saturday Read is via saturdayread.substack.com The New Statesman's quick and essential guide to the news and politics of the day. The best way to sign up for Morning Call is via morningcall.substack.com Our Thursday ideas newsletter, delving into philosophy, criticism, and intellectual history. The best way to sign up for The Salvo is via thesalvo.substack.com Stay up to date with NS events, subscription offers & updates. Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. The best way to sign up for The Green Transition is via spotlightonpolicy.substack.com
  • Administration / Office
  • Arts and Culture
  • Board Member
  • Business / Corporate Services
  • Client / Customer Services
  • Communications
  • Construction, Works, Engineering
  • Education, Curriculum and Teaching
  • Environment, Conservation and NRM
  • Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance
  • Finance Management
  • Health - Medical and Nursing Management
  • HR, Training and Organisational Development
  • Information and Communications Technology
  • Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives
  • Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities
  • Legal Officers and Practitioners
  • Librarians and Library Management
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • OH&S, Risk Management
  • Operations Management
  • Planning, Policy, Strategy
  • Printing, Design, Publishing, Web
  • Projects, Programs and Advisors
  • Property, Assets and Fleet Management
  • Public Relations and Media
  • Purchasing and Procurement
  • Quality Management
  • Science and Technical Research and Development
  • Security and Law Enforcement
  • Service Delivery
  • Sport and Recreation
  • Travel, Accommodation, Tourism
  • Wellbeing, Community / Social Services
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
THANK YOU