Jacqui Smith, Home Secretary, April 2008: there are “30 active plots” and “since the beginning of 2007, there have been 57 people convicted on terrorist plots.”
Peter Clarke the head of the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch and national co-ordinator for anti-terrorist investigations, July 2006: Scotland Yard involved in 70 anti-terrorist investigations and over 60 people facing trial on terrorist charges.
It’s true that Clarke and Smith didn’t use exactly the same terms – “plot” vs “investigation” and “facing trial” versus “convicted” (an important difference!).
But, terrorist trials have very high conviction rates (over 90%) and almost by definition what anti-terrorist police investigate are plots. It is certainly hard to see in these figures any backing for Jacqui Smith’s claim that the terrorist threat is growing and that therefore draconian extra powers are needed.
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Far be it from me to promote my own website (ah-hem), but the precise figures she gives today point to a static rather than growing threat.
Plots are two or more people and often pre-arrest. Investigations may be one person post-arrest. So yes it is possible that things are pretty static. Then again it is possible they are not. There is insufficient data to tell. But it is THREAT she’s on abaht. Not history of investigations and exposed plots … future prospects.
As any reasonable person would acknowledge this is not an area of certainty and exact science. She will not get her 42 days. She does not deserve her 42 days. But as sure as eggs are eggs there will continue to be successful terrorist attacks in the future.
Parties of govt or potential govt need to be a little more careful on how they respond to this than spectators.
She’s just rather shamefully attempting to scare and bully the public and MPs into a purely symbolic show of toughness to big up Gordon.
No doubt we can expect to see ‘The Sun’ calling everyone who opposes the extension as “Traitors” again.
We should not get complacent about the threat of terrorism, nor should we use that as a pretext to undermine civil liberties.
Undermining civil liberties can actually be counter-productive in countering terrorism, by alienating the very people we need to work with to find out who the terrorists are.
Most Liberal Democrats agreed with Ken Clarke when he warned during the House of Commons debate on whether to go to war with Iraq, that going ahead with the war would increase in the likelihood of Britain becoming a terrorist target. He was right, and we should not become complacent because of the success of the security services so far.
We need to ensure that our security services continue to be ahead of the terrorists, and we should look carefully at the apparent lack of success by the British government in seeking to influence young muslims not to be radicalised.