Our power to tackle terrorism must continue to evolve
I was on the telephone to a senior official at the Home Office as the news emerged of the Woolwich attack. ‘I expect you can remember days like this’, the official said to me. I can. When an incident is serious enough to be reported straight to the home secretary’s office, the first reaction is to feel desperately sorry for those involved. For the family and friends of Drummer Lee Rigby it will be a continuing sadness, and our thoughts and condolences can barely scratch the surface of their pain.
Unfortunately, the second reaction for many people is to search for those to blame beyond the people who were actually responsible – the murderers themselves.
Rumours are swirling about what MI5 knew about those involved in the Woolwich attack. Before we leap to condemn, we should allow the parliamentary intelligence and security committee to review what intelligence existed and whether the right decisions were made about it. There is, however, an enormous difference between having information about someone’s attendance at a demonstration or links to other suspects and taking the decision to make them a priority over the many others in a similar situation. This involves devoting scarce resources to the round-the-clock surveillance and disruption necessary to foil an attack.
Let us also remember that surveillance and interception are far more difficult in a world of internet communication. When I was home secretary, the police and security agencies needed my explicit permission to intercept phonecalls. Technology and the law currently allow them, in very restricted circumstances, to find out who is using a particular phone in order to ask for permission to listen to what they were saying.
If someone uses social media, games, some messaging services or Skype to plot a terror attack or serious crime – and they increasingly do – the police are not able to find out who is involved in the discussion, let alone ask the home secretary for permission to intercept. To maintain even a proportion of their current capacity to tackle serious crime and terrorism, the law needs to change. That is the reason for a communications data bill.
But it is not just the law and technology which help us to prevent terrorist attacks, it is tackling the ideology which justifies and promotes terrorism. I was encouraged that Londoners of all faiths and none refused to let the terrorists disrupt strong community relations. Many Muslims issued strong condemnations; Mosque representatives laid flowers at Woolwich barracks.
Only a few (although they included the front page of the Guardian) focused on the ‘grievances’ used to justify the attack. Terror attacks planned or inspired by al-Qaida or other Islamist extremism are driven by an ideology which predated any of the specific foreign policy, military or domestic events that the terrorists may cite. It is aimed at destroying our way of life and the supposed grievances, for example, military action in Afghanistan, are a vehicle for the terrorists’ ideology, not a cause of it.
That is why the government is right to review how to tackle this extremism, but was wrong to slash the funding for the Prevent programme. A key element of our counter-terror strategy, Prevent was aimed at ensuring that extremism cannot take hold in our schools, universities, prisons and neighbourhoods and that we work to counter the use of distorted interpretations of Islam to ‘groom’ young Muslims into violence and hatred.
While kneejerk reactions to terror attacks are obviously wrong, the tragic death of Lee Rigby does highlight the threat that terrorism remains. A serious consideration of the legal, technological and preventative measures available to tackle this threat is what we should expect of a serious government – and a serious opposition.
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Jacqui Smith is a former home secretary and is a contributing editor to Progress
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