It is important however that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world. Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations throughout the world.
Tony Blair, 7th July 2005
I think we all know what comes next.
Tommorrow’s tabloid editorials pretty much write themselves. After the condolences, after the near obligatory reference to indomitable spirit of Londoners, the same spirit which “saw them through the Blitz”, all will demand that ‘something must be done’, even the girl with her tits out on page three of the Sun – she’ll probably demand the restoration of capital punishment for terrorists.
That’s tabloid journalism for you – never miss an opportunity to trot out a well-worn cliché, especially one that might allow you to namecheck Winston Churchill or Vera Lynn…
…and never, ever, miss an opportunity to demand that ‘something must be done’.
—- Pause —-
I started to write this yesterday evening, then took a time out to think through what I really want to say about what happened yesterday.
Since then, the tabloids have hit the news stands and the editorialising by numbers exercise has started.
The Scum, as is ever it wont, throws Hitler, the Blitz and Winston Churchill into its usual desperate rabble-rousing style and demands vengeance and justice. I guess that all we can expect from a newspaper owned by an Australian American, a complete lack of understanding of the British people and their character – justice will do us just nicely, we’re too civilised a nation to go in for simple bloodthirsty revenge.
As for the ‘something that must be done’ well The Scum has its own take on that as well…
“Britain is crawling with suspected terrorists and those who give them succour. The Government must act without delay, round up this enemy in our midst and lock them in internment camps.
Our safety must not play second fiddle to their supposed ‘rights’?
…to which all I can say is that if you genuinely believe that then you are a bigger bunch of fucking idiots than even your already abysmal reputation suggests.
The Scum doesn’t get it. It doesn’t get the basic fact that ‘their supposed rights are also OUR rights. That you can’t take those rights away from them, whoever they might be, without taking those same rights away from us all.
That’s the price we pay for living in a free and open society; one in which we tolerate and even cherish dissent, in which we allow freedom of movement, of thought, religion and conscience, one in which we try as hard as we might to preserve the rights of citizens to live their lives in privacy and without the constant and overbearing scrutiny of the state.
Yesterday we paid that price in the blood of our own citizens. It’s a price we’ve paid many times before and its a price we’ll no doubt pay again. It’s what our parents and grandparents fought for and it would be the deepest possible betrayal of their memory and their sacrifice were we to allow that freedom to be taken away from us because there are those in this world who would take advantage of and abuse that freedom to visit mayhem and destruction on the ordinary citizens of Britain.
Yes, something must be done, but that that something must be to do simply what we always do when faced with atrocity. We pick ourselves up. We get on with our lives and we show the world, and especially the terrorists who visited this attack on our capital city that no matter what they do, no matter where they attack and no matter how many lives the take, they will neither take away our freedom nor will we allow those who govern to take it away in the name of protecting us from them.
And because we live in a free society, because we cherish that freedom, we give even the terrorists who attacked London yesterday certain rights and privileges, not least of which is the right, if captured, to due process.
To be arrested and charged only the basis of the evidence and not on vague and unsubstantiated suspicions.
The right to legal counsel and representation acting under a duty to defend them to the best of their ability.
The right to a trial before a jury of their peers.
And, if convicted, the right to life, albeit a life incarcerated in a British prison.
Why? Because it is from those rights, which are common to us all, that we derive the moral authority as a society to sit in judgement of these people. Because without those rights, given freely to all, we become no better than them.
What bitter irony there is when, in the same editorial, The Scum manage to invoke the memory of Britain’s greatest fight against tyranny while demanding the return of internment and the concentration camp.
“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
William Faulkner
Surprised that the Bum uses a word like ‘succour’ Their readership is known to have the lowest reading age of any newspaper – about 8 years. They will probably think it is a misprint – and they meant to say ‘sucker’