Gary's views

Gary's weekly views

Each week an article by Gary has appeared in the Plympton Plymstock and Ivybridge News in South West Devon. The articles are published here

TERROR

We live in tumultuous times. I had just finished watching some late night back editions of Spooks, one of my favourite programmes when it all started to kick off for real. As I write this earlier in the week, I recognise that we have all been very lucky. A friend of mine at Westminster’s daughter was in the Tiger club celebrating her 18th birthday. It could all have ended so differently.

This is not going to go away. Throughout history there have always been seen lunatics prepared to pervert religion and other ideologies for violent means. Given modern technology and communications, the ease of travel and access to cheap explosives this is unlikely to diminish. There seems to be a never-ending supply of radicals prepared to sacrifice themselves to destroy our way of life. We have no choice but to face them head on and defend our values to the hilt. It is not about foreign policy. We should not apologise, there is no justification for this at all.
For most of us this simply means getting on with our lives but being vigilant and reporting suspicious circumstances to the police.

But there are policy changes we need to consider in government, both to buttress our defences and also to create a society where tensions are as low as possible. I was not previously persuaded that our security forces need to have longer than the 28 days to detain people before charging them, but we should be willing to look again at the evidence on this. If they can make a case for longer we will have to give it, with all appropriate safeguards. We have to increase the level of dialogue and integration with the Muslim community, recognising that the vast majority do not support or condone terrorism. But they must say so more loudly and clearly.

I have travelled to several Muslim countries in recent times and their biggest fear is the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. There really are training camps in Pakistan/Afghanistan where young men are taken to be radicalised and trained, to come back to create havoc. We have to be more robust with the countries who tacitly allow this to happen. We have to get these training camps closed down.

Please don’t think that this is just a big city problem. Anywhere people gather could be a target. Keep vigilant and keep safe, but let them not intimidate us.

posted by Nigel on Friday, July 20, 2007