They haven’t gone away, you know
When it happened, it wasn’t unexpected. Four bombs detonated in London on the morning of the seventh of the seventh. They went off as the G8 leaders convened after their breakfast in Gleneagles, with a deal on global aid in the pipeline and London still cheering being chosen to host the 2012 Olympics.
But in truth it could have happened any time since 9/11. It’s fair to say that terrorists have been probing the UK’s defences since then and, as the saying goes, they only have to be lucky once whereas the security services have to be lucky every time.
The catalogue of dead and wounded is familiar from other previous outrages. So too the deaths, crippling injuries, burns and traumas. These are the same the world over.
They are, of course, not confined to terrorist outrages. The carnage in London was not markedly different from that seen in Baghdad last year when an American missile went astray into an Arab marketplace.
But the nature is indeed different. The London attacks are of a piece with the bombings of the La Mon restaurant in Belfast, the Enniskillen cenotaph or the centre of Omagh. They are of a piece with blowing up a train in Madrid or flying two planes into the World Trade Centre.
It’s in the nature of our civilisation that western cities are wide open to this kind of attack. We pride ourselves on the free movement of capital and labour and information. But now and then this mobility can be our downfall.
This freedom is now under question. If there were doubts in the UK about identity cards, there will be fewer now. After all, Blair admitted recently that the Government had no idea how many illegal immigrants there were in the UK. Other civil liberties will also be at risk. Look at America’s draconian homeland security policy.
But it is also the case that fundamentalist Islamic ideologists come from monocultures and know little of the diversity of the world. It is said that Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban, has not met more than five westerners in his life. And so, it may pass them by, that they are attacking Muslims as well as others.
In addition, this attack has successfully diverted attention away from the achievement s of the G8 and Live 8 events towards tackling world poverty.
And what of here? Well, Bertie Ahern spoke on television of “known Al Qa’ida sympathisers” in Ireland. The Gardaí have them under surveillance, he said. One suspected it might be the case. Whatever about airport security scares, at the very least we have all feared that Ireland might be a back door to terrorism. But this is to assume that the London bombers were foreigners. They might have been, but again, they might not. One of the most depressing aspects of the last three years has been the emergence of home-grown British Al-Qa’ida activists, people willing even to be suicide bombers. In which case, the Gardaí may be shadowing decoys.
No matter what way you look at it, it’s very bad news. France, Spain and Holland have also had their troubles with home grown fundamentalists. This doesn’t mean that countries such as Ireland need to close their doors. But it does mean that we need to think and debate long and hard about how we deal with the future that is revealing itself.
We’re not good at that. Our preference is to shy away from that kind of reality, to repeat the pieties rather than the unpalatable and to hope that all will turn out for the best. Well, hope isn’t really enough.
One is struck by the unanimity in Britain on the subject of Islam. With one voice the police and politicians have stressed, rightly, that the word Islamic is not automatically associated with the words fundamentalist or terrorist.
The attackers may be Islamic, but the vast majority of Muslims are not bombers and do not support terror. If one takes a long historical view, Islam is no more likely to generate terror than Christianity.
Truth to tell, this kind of terrorism derives from religion, nationalism, racism and hysteria. It’s certainly true that unreason, superstition and bigotry are strong in fundamentalist Islam, but nobody living on this island would argue that these are exclusive to that religion – would they?
And ironically, given the coincidence with the G8 summit, in their hatred of western culture they also have much in common with anti-globalisation radicals.
Meanwhile, for the second time in a generation, America seems to have a president who has been convinced that a great final battle will take place after which the righteous will advance into heaven.
Which is, give or take, what Islamic fundamentalists believe as well. And they need the oxygen of publicity just like mainstream politicians. They also need to show they have teeth, however busted and crooked. In this, they need Bush as Bush’n’ Blair need them.
All of which returns us to Fermanagh’s dreary steeples and the equally dreary peace process.
It doesn’t seem to have dawned on Sinn Fein and/or the IRA that the old model is a busted flush. Heroes don’t do bombs anymore, even Irish ‘freedom fighters’. And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?
But as the G8 leaders met in Gleneagles and as Londoners kept smiling through another blitz, republicans demonstrated, demanding the release of Shankill Road bomber Sean Kelly. Their protest coincided with a meeting of EU ministers.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Kelly’s rearrest, you’d have thought that on the day after the London carnage, Sinn Féin would have had the sense to postpone their demonstration. After all, Kelly’s bomb killed ten people including his accomplice Thomas Begley. But no.
Dreary steeples indeed.b