Benjamin Coleman finds the British government’s reports on the bombings of 7 July 2005 look suspiciously like whitewash.
Why won’t the Government tell the truth about home-grown terrorism?
Benjamin Coleman finds the British government’s reports on the bombings of 7 July 2005 look suspiciously like whitewash.
On Thursday 11 May 2006 the British government belatedly put out not one, but two reports on the 7 July bombings in London. Unfortunately, these are just one more coat of whitewash on the whole affair, and one more reason to demand a full public enquiry.
What everyone wants to know is why the bombings happened, and how to stop them happening again. After a wait of almost a year, what these reports have provided are a description of the events, a biography of each of the bombers, and a repeat of the clichés the government has been spouting ever since last July.
But these reports are not just inadequate, as is widely acknowledged; they are misleading and dangerous. They evade the causes of this home-grown terrorism, and in doing so they invert the truth. They create a reality where a promised ‘inevitable’ increase in surveillance, harassment and attacks on civil liberties becomes part of the answer – rather than part of the problem – and where there is no US-UK occupation of Iraq.
Worryingly, according to Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee’s report, ‘if more resources had been in place sooner, the chances of preventing the July attacks could have increased’. Perhaps, but this wishful thinking begs the question of how British ‘security’ agencies and police forces have used the vast resources already in hand. They have carried out harassment of Muslims and migrant communities, especially since 11 September 2001, and even more so since the 7 July attacks. This harassment has destroyed any trust that such communities may have had in the authorities. Traumatising families and communities destroys the very trust and goodwill necessary for improving intelligence, and catching terrorists. If terrorism-prevention really was the genuine aim of meting out such treatment, then it has been a notable failure.
According to Home Secretary John Reid, the security services are expanding ‘as fast as is organizationally possible’. Their increased resources presumably will be a green light for more of the same: sweeping raids made in order to intimidate these communities from even voicing their legitimate political concerns, whilst stigmatizing them in the eyes of others, without any real anticipation of arresting actual terrorists. Banner headlines announcing ‘terrorist arrests’ are not mirrored by banner headlines later on, when such people are quietly released without charge.
The British government seems determined that those who don’t fit their political agenda are to be demonized and silenced. The sheer number of people pulled in is testament to this aim. Of the 895 people arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 in the 4 years after 11 September 2001, only 23 were convicted of a Terrorism Act offence. And only in a few cases did the court hear any evidence of plans for violent acts; convictions were based on a broad, vaguely defined ‘terrorism’ or loose associations.
This witchunt should come as no surprise. The Prime Minister has consistently insisted that there is absolutely no connection between the 7 July bombings and the invasion and countless (and indeed un-counted) deaths in Iraq. Rather, responsibility lies with ‘preachers of hate’, an ‘evil ideology’ a ‘perversion of Islam’, and other clichés touted by the British media to the point of inanity over the last year. These are, of course, exacerbated by ‘inadequate police powers’. Anything really – other than a response to murderous British foreign policy.
Of course, the British Government doesn’t believe this any more than anyone else does. Even while Tony Blair insisted that anyone who connected the 7 July bombs and the invasion of Iraq was ‘pandering to extremism’, and the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke accused them of ‘serious intellectual flabbiness’, both were fully aware that this was the stated view of all the UK’s intelligence agencies. The heads of all these agencies sit collectively on the Joint Intelligence Committee, whose recently leaked memo, ‘International Terrorism – Impact of Iraq’, states clearly that the invasion of Iraq has ‘reinforced the determination of terrorists who were already committed to attacking the West, and motivated others who were not’, and will do so ‘for many years to come’. This piece of ‘serious intellectual flabbiness’ was not only approved by the heads of all British intelligence agencies, but was delivered to Blair and other senior ministers last April, two months before the London bombings.
These two latest reports however have not moved much beyond Blair’s facile assertion that terrorists are the cause of terrorism. The Home Office report places responsibility on al-Qaeda, extremist preachers, Islamic youth clubs, a desire for martyrdom, and finally ‘perceived injustices by the West against Muslims’. This final cause merits only one page and is wholly unexamined. Tucked away in an Annex at the end is this acknowledgement: that al-Qaeda has targeted Britain ‘in the aftermath of… the UK’s robust line against international terrorism and involvement in coalition action in Muslim countries since (11 September 2001)’. And that’s it.
The Intelligence and Security Committee’s report is concerned predominantly with the operational procedures of the various agencies – of little relevance to those who want to know why the attacks happened.
For all those reasons, and others, we need a public enquiry. It should investigate not just the London bombings, but also the entire use of ‘counter-terrorism’ powers before and since. As Holly Finch, a survivor of the bombings has written: ‘It is the public whose lives were sacrificed in the name of politics and foreign policy.’ The public have a right to the truth.
Benjamin Coleman
15 May 2006
Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC)
www.campacc.org.uk
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