Yesterday I wrote responding to Nigel Farage’s claim that there had been a coverup concerning the Southport killer. In his haste to make political capital, Farage seems to have forgotten that the cause of tension at the time related to the false rumour that the attacker was an asylum seeker.
The issue was not as to whether or not the attack was linked to terrorism, nor has there been a history of covering up terrorist incidents, the police have no reason to do so. However, we do not expect the government to offer a running commentary on a live case nor for MPs to in effect run their own trial in Parliament by asking questions about the suspect.
So, Keir Starmer was right, this morning to insist that it would have been wrong for him to have given out details about the case as that might have prejudiced the trial. However, I have a concern with what the Prime Minister has said.
“ “My concern in this case is we have clearly got an example of extreme violence, individualised violence, that we have to protect our children from and our citizens from. It is a new threat, it’s not what we would have usually thought of as terrorism when definitions were drawn up, when guidelines were put in place, when the framework was put in place and we have to recognise that here today.”
I’m not quite sure how he can say that this is a new threat. First, there have been a number of incidents where individuals have carried out atrocities sometimes overtly in the name of a particular terrorist ideology without being linked organisationally to a terrorist outfit. Indeed, it was understood post 911 that Al Queda relied as much on motibating and inspiring people into action as on organising attacks. This was one of the reasons why it was seen as a particularly challenging form of terrorism.
We have also seen people carry out violent attacks for a mixture of motives. Those attacks are of a terrorist nature in that they cause terror and indeed, that may be the intent of the perpetrators with or without a purpose.
So, whether or not, we are seeing with this example a young man who has been radicalised for a particular cause or motivated towards violence for its own sake, I’m not convinced that there is anything new here.
What I think matters though is whether or not the Prevent programme is intended to and capable of properly dealing with the second kind of person. It is possible that the assumption was/is that the danger was from people with an ideology that drives them to violent acts. In fact, over the years there have been concerns raised about this kind of approach that that it might lead to people being targeted by a programme simply for believing things that don’t align with the dominant culture even though they are no danger to others.
The question now is whether Prevent might also fail to prevent those who have no ideology or organisation from acting out their violent, murderous desires. To answer this, we would have to consider the following
- Is that what happened at Southport?
- Are there other examples of where and when this has happened?
- Conversely are there examples of Prevent succeeding in stopping this kind of atrocity from happening.
These questions are important because the reality is that our traditional counter-terrorism measures are not 100% effective. We should not assume that we can live in a world where there will never be a terrorist atrocity or violent crime. We hope that events like Southport are rare. IT is possible that they are rarer than they would be without measures in place.
At the same time it is also reasonable to argue that Prevent was not designed to deal with such situations and shouldn’t be expected to. If so, the question is whether there are other approaches available to anticipate, respond to and deter such criminal atrocities. If not, should there be?
Faithroots 