Do more to protect our way of life - Manchester bombings

ANYONE on this island who reacted with outrage, frustration, incomprehension, or something pretty close to a numbing sadness to the murder of 22 young people at a concert in Manchester must temper that reaction.

It is not yet 21 years since IRA terrorists, as deluded as Monday’s suicide bomber but in the name of this country, set off the biggest bomb seen in Britain since World War II. That outrage was used to achieve maximum publicity for the IRA’s anti-democratic cause as Germany was to play Russia in the Euro ’96 football championship in the city the following day.

In the interim, the people of these islands, irrespective of political heritage or ambition, embraced convenient fictions to build and to try to sustain a peace process that, hopefully, will consign outrages like the detonation of a 3,300lb truck bomb on Manchester’s Corporation Street to history. Though that process is on ice, today’s relative stability underlines the most chilling aspect, more chilling than Monday’s 22 deaths if that is possible, of the Ariana Grande concert outrage.

Unlike the IRA terrorists who wanted to reshape society by reunifying this island, the evil force behind Monday’s carnage has far more profound and troubling ambitions. They have, time and time again, declared their intention to do all they can to destroy our “crusader” society, to replace our infidel culture and way of life with a fascist theocracy. They do not want to change our way of life, they want to end it.

Despite that barbarous objective, America’s President Trump last Saturday, just as the Manchester bomb was being primed, signed an arms deal worth €300 billion over a decade with the autocratic, deeply misogynistic kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the wellspring of Islamic extremism and much of the funding that supports it. It is an uncomfortable reality that Britain, reeling from the latest murder spree by an Islamist, is also culpable. Since Saudi Arabia began bombing Yemen just over two years ago — the UN estimates the Saudi air force has killed 4,000 Yemeni civilians — the UK has in that short time, licensed almost €4 billion in arms sales to the oil-rich dictatorship. That the Tory politicians who endorsed those arms’ deals have expressed outrage and offered condolences to the bomb victims’ families, darkens the tragedy.

That the security forces they supervise work 24/7 and risk life and limb to prevent Islamic extremist attacks darkens it yet further. That attacks have been averted suggests that current policies are working but in the greater scheme of things they seem but a thumb in a dyke. We will, it seems, have to do much more to defend the beliefs that inform our way of life.

Maybe it’s time we were less sentimental about repatriating those who seek refuge here but dedicate their new life to destroying our society? The alternatives seem limited. Britain spent a decade in the courts trying to rid itself of Abu Qatada, the man once seen as bin Laden’s deputy in Europe. In the face of outrage after outrage that seems at best feeble. Let’s celebrate human rights and the protections they bestow by first supporting the rights of those who support our values and our way of life. We should not be apologetic, reluctant or afraid to do this. We should be proud to accept this obigation.