Only the other day, I was attempting to lampoon the new government Threat Level index. At the time we were on Severe, but at 6.00am this morning we went to CRITICAL. This means “an attack is expected imminently”.
As the world and his mum now knows, anti-terrorist police and security services have foiled a plot that seemingly was designed to blow up multiple planes in the sky. They’ve arrested quite a lot of people in London, High Wycombe and Birmingham.
If that is the case, and security services were aware of the imminent possibility of the attack, then I suppose I should eat a bit of humble pie. Perhaps the Severe level was worthy. However, I’m still not exactly clear what the Threat Level index is really supposed to achieve. Within days of it launching we’re at the highest level. But the plot’s been foiled.
How long do we now await an imminent attack? What form will it come in?
While there’s chaos at airports as hundreds of thousands of August holiday makers have trips delayed, postponed or cancelled, I noticed a distinct lack of additional security personnel on the tube today. Over the last 12 months, there’ve been days when central London stations were crawling with police. Today there wasn’t a sign of anyone. But we know from last summer that last minute changes in terrorist plans – switching to the bus from the tube – aren’t impossibilities.
The fact is that someone who wanted to could probably drive a carload of explosives right into Westminster if they really wanted to. And as a free country, there’s very little we could do about it. Yesterday, John Reid was saying that anti-terror critics “don’t get it.”
What don’t we get?
The home secretary yesterday gave the thinktank Demos his strongest hint yet that a new round of anti-terror legislation is on the way this autumn by warning that traditional civil liberty arguments were not so much wrong as just made for another age.
Anti-terror critics just don’t get it, says Reid
· Politicians, judges and media ‘put security at risk’
· Home secretary hints at more legislation to come
Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Thursday August 10, 2006
The Guardian
John Reid yesterday accused the government’s anti-terror critics of putting national security at risk by their failure to recognise the serious nature of the threat facing Britain. “They just don’t get it,” he said.
The home secretary yesterday gave the thinktank Demos his strongest hint yet that a new round of anti-terror legislation is on the way this autumn by warning that traditional civil liberty arguments were not so much wrong as just made for another age.
“Sometimes we may have to modify some of our own freedoms in the short term in order to prevent their misuse and abuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy all of our freedoms in the modern world,” he said.
I really don’t agree with this at all. We’re not safer in Reid’s world. We’ve lost.
Are we really in a worse place than when the IRA was bombing pubs, department stores and town centres?
They don’t get many criminal bombers in China, or Burma, or Cuba. But do we want their authoritarian regimes? Thought police? 1984?
No doubt, in the coming days and weeks, things will calm down a bit. But in the meantime, John Reid will be talking plenty to us about threat levels. (Incidentally, why isn’t the content of Reid’s speech up on the Home Office website yet? [UPDATE – It’s here on the Labour Party website, via Spyblog)
As I say, it seems as though the police have indeed broken up a pretty nasty cell. In time, we’ll learn more details. How many people were involved? Have all of them been rounded up? How did they come by the information?
Meanwhile, over on Comment is Free, Martin Bell believes this government has brought these attacks on itself and that “our government has endangered us.”