WILL WE EVER LEARN ABOUT TERRORISM? UK TEL
Will we ever learn from the Brighton bomb?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/6303778/Will-we-ever-learn-from-the-Brighton-bomb.html
By Norman Tebbit
Published: 6:39AM BST 12 Oct 2009
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Norman Tebbit: ‘Our contemporary political class has fallen victim to its own flabby thinking’ Photo: Getty Images
The Grand Hotel, 1984: all too often, terrorists have been rebranded as freedom fighters and patriots Photo: Getty Images
October and party conference time brings back each year many memories of good times and ill, but for the past 25 years it has been for me the season of remembrance of the victims of terrorism. As with charity, which begins at home, so the first in my thoughts will always be my wife, Margaret, and the others murdered, maimed and bereaved in the Grand Hotel, Brighton.
My colleagues, Anthony Berry, the member for Enfield Southgate; Roberta Wakeham, wife of John Wakeham, the member for Colchester, who was himself severely injured; Muriel McLean, Jeanne Shattock and Eric Taylor, who also died. Then my mind turns to my other House of Commons colleagues: Airey Neave, the hero of Colditz prison, brutally murdered on the eve of the 1979 general election, and Ian Gow, both victims of car bombs; and the Reverend Robert Bradford, the member for Belfast North, who survived a machine gun attack as he stood on the steps of his church only to be gunned down in his constituency advice bureau.
From those whom I knew so well my thoughts go to the hundreds of police officers and soldiers – men and women alike – who died to save others. And the many in the emergency services, like Fred Bishop and the other firemen, who risked their lives to save others at Brighton. Then the thousands of innocent victims of the IRA, other republicans and “loyalist” gangsters. The list of such victims is still growing, not just in Northern Ireland but across the world as Islamic fundamentalists vie with the tribal terrorists of Africa in orgies of frenetic and frenzied killings until my very capacity for compassion, grieving and anger becomes exhausted by the sheer scale of inhuman brutality.
Then my mind turns back nearer to home, particularly to the “disappeared” of Northern Ireland and their loved ones. It is a particularly foul act of wanton and triumphant cruelty that the godfathers of the IRA, including those who now live richly in freedom and safety at the taxpayers’ expense, refuse to allow the bereaved to give decent burials to their “disappeared” loved ones. One can but pray that for such unrepentant sinners there is a particularly painful corner of Hell in which they will be tormented throughout eternity.
I often reflect how frequently the Lefty-leaning members of the political classes express their concern over the “disappeared” of South America or the Balkans and how rarely they reflect upon the “disappeared” here in this kingdom. So many of them find it convenient to re-label terrorists freedom-fighters or patriots, when the term should be reserved for calculated violence against the innocent and powerless to persuade those with power to yield to the demands of the terrorist.
The IRA wreaked its violence on behalf of its political masters in Sinn Fein to weaken the will of Westminster to uphold democracy in Northern Ireland. Now, encouraged by the success of violent republicanism, Islamic terrorists have the long term goal of the worldwide caliphate, and they see Britain as a weak point in the defence of the West.
Nor does it help that in the United States successive administrations abetted terrorism by letting a legal conspiracy prevent the extradition of suspected IRA terrorists to face trial in the United Kingdom, and sanctioning the fundraising which certainly nourished the propaganda machine if not the munitions of conflict. President George Bush even received Martin McGuinness, who was convicted of membership of the IRA, so while my heart goes out to the relatives of those who died at Lockerbie, the snivelling of American politicians at the reception accorded to Abdel Baset al-Megrahi could be described as anything from a failure of memory to a lack of balance, or stinking hypocrisy, according to taste. At least the bereaved of Lockerbie do not have to suffer the injustice and indignity poured upon the bereaved of Northern Ireland, who live under a government in which a former IRA man holds ministerial office.
Both Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband were implicated in the granting of powers to the Scottish Executive to repatriate al-Megrahi, even at the cost of damage to our relations with the United States. They may not have applied pressure, or given advice to their Scottish friends. Having released hundreds of terrorist criminals responsible for murders and maimings, the Government could hardly have a principled objection to the release of the biggest mass murderer in British criminal history. It seems certain that al-Megrahi was used as a bargaining chip in the pursuit of the better relations with Libya which stemmed the flow of money and weapons to the IRA and opened the flow of oil.
That is not incompatible with the modern compassionate orthodoxy that an end, even if not quite a complete end to the violence which dragged Northern Ireland to the brink of anarchy, is well worth the exoneration of the guilty and the rich bribes to terrorists to put down their arms. That orthodoxy has indeed brought benefits to Northern Ireland, but at a price. There have been far fewer new victims of terrorism since the ceasefire, but the dead and the maimed, the bereaved and the disappeared, are left without justice and treated with contempt, just like the bereaved of Lockerbie.
Those who brought the near peace to Northern Ireland argue that it is right to grant not just immunity from punishment to criminals, but also to make terrorists into ministers in government within the United Kingdom. The shaking of their bloodstained hands, the blind eye turned to the IRA’s continued drug dealing, smuggling and extortion, the new orthodoxy claims, scarcely matter in the great scheme of things. But they forget – or choose to ignore – that in hoisting a flag emblazoned with the slogan “Peace at Any Price”, they have created a market for terrorism.
I find it more difficult to follow the thinking of those who swallow all the love-ins and compromises with unrepentant and unpunished killers, and acclaim them as part of a brave, new inclusive wave of politics, but are unwilling to use intelligence from tainted sources to prevent carnage on our streets. Why is it right to make deals with murderers and torturers to stop the violence in Northern Ireland, but wrong to use intelligence from agencies less scrupulous than ours to stop foreign-inspired violence on the mainland? How else to explain the willingness of our political classes to expose serving agents of MI5 and MI6 to the possibility of police prosecution on torture charges levelled by those who seek to destroy us?
Anyone with a knowledge of history (which excludes most of today’s political class) knows that the defeat of Hitler’s national socialist Germany was one of the two great 20th-century victories for human rights. No one in their right mind would fail to see Churchill, Attlee and Roosevelt as brave and determined defenders of human rights. But they did not reject intelligence gathered by tainted techniques, not even from that foul tyrant Stalin, during the war to save us from national socialism. The allied war leaders were all too well aware of the terrible death and destruction visited upon civilians in occupied Europe, Germany and Japan, by Bomber Command and the United States Air Force. Had they resiled from total warfare the very concept of human rights would have been aborted in Hitler’s victory over the democratic allies. Indeed, had Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher been as fastidious as today’s political classes now demand, I have little doubt that the Soviet Union would have triumphed in the Cold War.
Our contemporary political class has fallen victim to its own flabby thinking. It fails to distinguish between the collateral damage which may be inflicted upon the innocent, and the deliberate, intended, wicked use of violence against the innocent to blackmail governments into surrender to terrorist demands.
Our not notably ethical politicians and many commentators claim purity of thought to conceal their cowardice, but as surely as an aggressive dog can smell fear in a potential victim, so the godfathers of terrorism can smell weakness in governments. They coldly assess which have a track record of weakness and surrender to the blackmail of terrorism. The first priority of any government is neither education nor the NHS. It is the security and liberty of our people. That is not to endorse the wanton waste of blood and treasure in ill-planned, foolhardly and counter-productive wars. The defence of Britain requires both intelligence and courage. Those lacking either should move over to give way to those who have both before they are rolled over by our enemies.
Lord Tebbit was a member of Mrs Thatcher’s government from 1979-87
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