Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Britain’s terror alert raised to critical

Chris Marsden | 02.07.2007 16:44 | Repression

The thwarted car bombings in London and the attack on Glasgow Airport have appalled people the world over. The political perspective underlying these attacks is utterly reactionary. Directed against innocent people, the terrorist campaign plays directly into the hands of the British government and the police.

Though potentially terrible losses of life and serious injuries have been averted, the bombings will be used to sow political confusion in the working class, justify Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s continuation of the Labour government’s neo-colonialist foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, impose further attacks on democratic rights and civil liberties in Britain, and fuel anti-Muslim agitation.

While only the barest factual outline of the incidents has emerged, the events in Glasgow and London appear to have been staged in response to the formation of a government under Brown just two days earlier, following the departure of Tony Blair.

The arrests of two south Asian men involved in crashing a flaming Jeep Cherokee into Scotland’s Glasgow Airport, located in Paisley, have been followed by house searches and three further arrests—two overnight on the M6 motorway in Cheshire and one in Liverpool. The police have confirmed that a number of houses in the Renfrewshire area have been searched, with eye witnesses reporting raids in the town of Houston, about six miles from Glasgow. Two houses have been searched in Liverpool and searches have been carried out in Staffordshire.

Britain was placed on the highest, “critical,” level of terror alert after a series of meetings of Cobra, the government emergencies committee. The rating signifies a danger of imminent terrorist attacks. It is, according to police officials, based on concern that those involved have the capability and intent to carry out further bombings.

Security has been stepped up at airports across Britain, and John Lennon Airport in Liverpool was closed briefly due to suspicions regarding a vehicle there.

Both Saturday’s attack on Glasgow and the two failed car bombs discovered in London early Friday morning were intended to inflict major loss of life. The Jeep hit airport security barriers at full speed shortly after 3 pm and managed to shatter the glass entrance doors. It came to a halt within meters of queues of holidaymakers at check-in counters.

The vehicle was set on fire, but gas canisters it contained failed to ignite. Witnesses say the driver poured a can of petrol over himself. A member of the public and police officers wrestled the driver and a passenger to the ground.

The driver was engulfed in flames and was doused with a fire extinguisher. He was taken in critical condition to Glasgow’s Royal Alexandra Hospital, where a controlled explosion was carried out on a parked car on Sunday.

The two Mercedes cars rigged to explode in London contained petrol, gas cylinders and nails. They were parked in Central London, with the first discovered outside the Tiger Tiger club in London’s Haymarket.

The Haymarket thoroughfare links to Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square, the location of numerous theatres, bars, nightclubs and other places of entertainment. The Tiger Tiger is a 1,770-capacity three-story venue that stays open until 3am. The car bomb was discovered in the early hours of Friday morning just as Ladies Night was turning out.

The car bomb’s accidental discovery by an ambulance crew called to the venue occurred when there were still 500 people inside. The second car was illegally parked only a few metres away in Cockspur street. It was ticketed and towed away an hour later to a car park on Park Lane. It was not disarmed until the next morning. Those arriving for work were told that the car had been left outside the office because there was a strange smell coming from it.

Security has been stepped up throughout the capital, after already been raised due to the forthcoming anniversary of the July 7, 2005 bombings. Police are presently examining the extensive closed circuit television footage of the area, which has 160 police cameras and numerous privately-owned cameras in shops and other commercial premises.

There are a number of related hypotheses circulating as to who is involved and the extent to which these are “home-grown” plots or linked in some way to Al Qaeda. The Security Services, MI5, says it is presently monitoring 30 suspected plots involving more than 1,700 possible terrorists, an increase of 100 since November.

Gas cylinder bombs are used by insurgents in Iraq. Closer to home, the car bombs in London’s West End are similar to two planned attacks that failed three years ago. In particular, there have been repeated suggestions of a connection to those involved in the “Fertiliser bomb” plot. The so-called Crevice gang was arrested in 2004 after they were bugged discussing the possibility of attacking the Ministry of Sound nightclub, which is located less than two miles from the Tiger Tiger. Five men were jailed for life in April last year.

Given the nature of terrorism and the numerous examples of infiltration by the security services, it is impossible to rule out state involvement in or foreknowledge of the bomb plots. The July 7 bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer had both been under surveillance by the security services and had even been photographed at meetings with Omar Khyam, the leader of the Crevice gang.

However, the actions of those involved in the latest attacks are politically criminal, regardless of whether or not there was state involvement. They will be employed first and foremost to legitimise authoritarian measures that undermine fundamental civil liberties.

It has been suggested that the absence of suicide bombers and the primitive nature of the devices point to a domestic source of the terror plot. In any event, the amateurish methods employed argue against the official depiction of terrorism as a highly organised network of Al Qaeda affiliates.

This did not prevent Brown appearing on television Sunday to claim that the attacks in London and Glasgow were perpetrated by people associated with Al Qaeda and aimed at “our British way of life.” Lord Stevens, Brown’s terrorism adviser, called the attacks proof that a “deadly network of interlinked operational cells has developed.” The new home secretary, Jacqui Smith, stated earlier that Britain was “currently facing the most severe and sustained threat to our security from international terrorism.”

That day’s Observer wrote, “Some believe that the solution to terrorism is to resolve the myriad grievances the terrorists broadcast so violently. This is a mistake. Many such grievances are imagined—the West does not want to ‘dominate the lands of Islam’, for example. Many more are simply not Britain’s fault; we are not to blame for the parlous economic state of many Islamic countries.”

On this basis it praises the strength of British democratic values, insisting they can “easily cope with the unpleasant but necessary measures, such as the controversial and currently flawed control orders, that are essential to fight terrorism.”

The same edition of the Observer draws attention to what it describes as Blair’s “powerful attack on ‘absurd’ British Islamists who have nurtured a false ‘sense of grievance’ that they are being oppressed by Britain and the United States.”

Blair’s statement is made in a forthcoming Channel Four documentary in which he tells Observer columnist Will Hutton, “The reason we are finding it hard to win this battle is that we’re not actually fighting it properly. We’re not actually standing up to these people and saying, ‘It’s not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of grievance isn’t justified.’”

Denouncing those opposed to his attacks on democratic rights, Blair continues, “When I’m trying to change the law in order to make it easier to deport people who engage in terrorism—the idea that that’s an assault on hundreds of years of British civil liberties is completely absurd. Some of what is written on this is loopy-loo in its extremism.”

The same message—that further repressive legislation is needed—comes from Murdoch’s Sun newspaper, which declared, “Labour and the Tories must unite to back moderate Muslims against the extremists and the brainwashing imams who sully their mosques. And new terrorism laws, such as 90-day detention for suspects, must be brought back to Parliament for further debate.”

Conservative MP Patrick Mercer told the press that the possible involvement of people on control orders or otherwise known to the police “calls into question the strategy about leaving these people in play and not arresting them.”

Brown has already let it be known that he wants to allow evidence from telephone taps to be used in court. Last month, the government announced a new counterterrorism bill giving police the power to stop and ask suspects for their identity and movements. Other proposals Brown wants to implement are said to include allowing police to continue to interrogate terror suspects even after they have been charged with a criminal offence and increasing the number of days a terror suspect can be held without charge from 28 days to 90 days—a measure previously thrown out by Parliament.

The assertion that Muslim peoples have no legitimate cause for grievance against Britain, or that Britain has no intention of dominating Muslim countries, is a grotesque lie. Historically, the role of British imperialism in subjugating vast areas of the world—in India, Africa, Asia and the Middle East—has earned it the enmity of millions.

Moreover, this is no past episode for which the British ruling elite are no longer responsible. Britain is a major power, whose corporations and banks play a significant role in maintaining the impoverished economic state of vast layers of the world’s population. And during Blair’s decade in office, it has played second-fiddle to the Bush administration in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in backing Israel in its brutal suppression of the Palestinians and last year’s offensive against Lebanon.

The ability of Islamic fundamentalists to channel legitimate outrage at a nominally “Labour” government’s neo-colonial foreign policy and its promotion of social divisions and anti-immigrant sentiment at home is fuelled by the role played by the trade union bureaucracy in supporting this imperialist and anti-social agenda.

Chris Marsden

Comments

Display the following comment

  1. Is there a conspiracy that is taking us to war? & eroding our civil liberties? — indymedia cinema at inn on the green
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech