We should have known better

“How do you balance the rights of people convicted of Islamist terrorism with the rights of us all to walk safely on the streets?  

wonders Justin Webb.) Today Programme (at 7:32 am)

“The balance at the moment to most people feels wrong and the government is proposing emergency legislation including extending the sentences of people currently in prison rather than applying those rules only to those convicted in the future. Lady Chakrabarti is on the line.  Baroness Chakrabarti is the shadow attorney general. Good morning.”

I won't transcribe the rest of the interview verbatim because lengthy transcripts can be a bit meh, and anyway Shami is a hesitant, stuttering, stammering nightmare for a verbatim transcriber. Justin suggests that the new legislation will mean indefinite detention for future jihadis convicted of terrorism.

Baroness Chakrabarti says she isn’t quite sure but she doesn’t think that is what they're saying.

“I may of, I may of - misunderstood…..”I might be wrong about that, forgive me  …“my understanding is that  the government is saying that automatic early release should be replaced with discretionary release in the hands of the parole board…..”This seems quite sensible to me”

It’s her hesitancy that I’d like to get across, because to my jaded ears all this hesitancy and stuttering sounds like gratuitous ‘even-handedness’. As if she’s trying to be fair to the Islamists and Jihadis in a weird attempt to look ‘not right-wing’. 

What is this? Don’t tell me Shami “forgive me” Chakrabarti is afraid of appearing Islamophobic to the hard-lefty Momentomistas? She continues with something like this:

“I think, I think that we need to understand, that what we call Terror Offences could be a very wide range of offences, staring with um, um putting a few pounds in a collection box for an organisation that you say you thought was charitable but actually, um, was thought by others to be a, a, a terrorist organisation overseas, it could include, again at a lower end, accessing materials, um, that are literature, for example. Then of course, you get into offences that are preparing for a-a-a substantive acts of violence and terrorism all the way into um being actively involved in a plot -  it’s a broad range of offences; there are also people who may be a danger who’ve been convicted of things that aren’t even terror offences, but are thought of as, as, as a risk, and there are and there are people who are not even convicted of anything…

“So you're saying that…” interjects Justin.

“…..potentially unjust but also difficult, difficult to do,” 

she continues, and she goes on to explain how overcrowded our prisons are and how people get radicalised while they’re inside.

Of course, she’s right about the government’s sabre-rattling, all talk and no ‘do’ approach, and the fact is that our prisons are in a sorry state. (Overcrowded, underfunded and worst of all run by violent Islamist inmates who intimidate prisoners and staff alike - even some of the prison imams are terrified of them.)

However, I’m going to say that at the heart of our current problems is Islamisation in general. It’s like the innate problem with nice stuff. Everyone wants a bit of it, but in the process of acquiring it, it ceases to be nice. It’s like tourism, ruining the very paradise that makes people want to go there. That’s Britain, that is. A country that used to be known for tolerance and prosperity, but its popularity as a destination is the very cause of its downfall. In the true spirit of ‘you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’ we shouldn’t have imported so many Muslims all in one go. We should have known that the choice was to absorb or to be absorbed. We seem to have chosen the latter. Oh woe.

"Terrorists who will soon be freed from jail" (The Telegraph)

This brings me to Melanie Phillips. Recently Melanie Phillips got herself into trouble for writing an article that failed to exonerate ‘moderate Muslims’ enough to avoid falling foul of the knee-jerk McCarthyite witch-hunters who constantly lie in wait to catch out and condemn unwary Islamophobes with their pants down. Woe betides anyone who carelessly commits Islamophobia.

In today's article by Melanie Phillips in The Times:  Britain is losing the fight against extremism The authorities are wrong to think that the power of reason is enough to rehabilitate fanatics she shows signs that ‘lessons have been learned.’ 

The following ‘terms and conditions’ type paragraph from the piece that I’ve reproduced below is a little longer than the one-line qualifier she included in her earlier piece, (Of course, true prejudice against Muslims should be condemned, just like prejudice against Hindus, Sikhs or anyone else.) This morning the aforementioned qualifier goes:

“Within the Muslim world there are different interpretations of Islam, some of which are peaceful and apolitical. And it should never be forgotten that Muslims are the most numerous victims of Islamist extremism. In Britain, many are cultural Muslims with scant interest in religion at all.

Nevertheless, she still bravely risks being dismissed as a ‘phobe with a fairly hard-hitting piece, although in truth it’s little more ‘phobic than other pieces on the same topic in the same newspaper. Of course, Nazir Afzal can hardly be dismissed as an Islamophobe, can he?  Streatham terror attack: extremists can be deradicalised but it takes resources  

Then, why not take another look at Ian Acheson’s article. London Bridge attack: I told ministers we were treating terrorist prisoners with jaw-dropping naivety. Did they listen? Another villain who’s been banging his head against a brick wall for yonks.

I’m afraid we’re all banging our heads against brick walls.  Or maybe it’s just me. I’ve written about this over and over again. It doesn’t make any difference - this is seriously deja vu all over again. (Have you heard the one about John Reid, as Home Secretary, telling a former Christian prison chaplain to “ ‘eff off”?  The chaplain had organised a personal meeting with Reid to complain about having been hounded out of his post by bullying prison Imams. 

“eff off indeed!  Well, I’ve mentioned it on this blog before and you can tell how long ago this happened (around 2006)

So, why do we allow extreme pressure from the left in general (and especially from Baroness Chakrabarti and her ilk, and from all and sundry in the media) to hobble our freedom to say what we think, and to censor us so very egregiously? Perhaps the imaginary (or real) unhinged-and-volatile masses who are always poised, ready and waiting for some tenuous excuse to go-on-the-rampage, is the reason. Or the imminent ‘backlash’ against the Muslim community that somehow never seems to happen. Is that it?

Perhaps these are the obstacles that persuade the most eloquent voices to condemn or to distance themselves from ‘persona non grata’ or ‘non-person’ Tommy Robinson, who knows a thing or two about prisons and radicalisation. After all, they're saying virtually the same things, albeit with different ways of saying them. Melanie Phillips delivers her message with refined and carefully considered language, whereas Tommy Robinson (otherwise known as S Y-L ) drops his ’t’s and gets all het-up and swears a lot. It’s only the swearing that made me think twice about putting his video up rather than linking to it here. 

I don’t mind swearing one little bit, but that might be because I’m not as well brought up as you are.

Hmm. You’re not going to de-radicalise anyone by pulling your punches. I don’t know exactly what I mean by that, but I ain’t bothered. I’m saying it anyway. We should have known better.

What is the answer?

How’s it going?  The election campaign itself?  What about recent potentially game-changing events that are influencing and interfering with it?  These things are almost overwhelming for Craig and I, bogged down with our pesky ‘other’ lives. 

I’ve just had a Labour Party canvasser on the phone. On the bloody phone! She couldn’t be arsed to call round on foot to find out how I intend to vote. She asked the reason why I wouldn’t be voting Labour. I said, “give me a reason why I should”. She answered,  “Foodbanks!” She assumed I'd be dumb enough to vote Labour because ‘foodbanks”.

However, it’s reassuring that several of the comments below articles and analyses I’ve read have covered much of the angles and conclusions that chime with mine. (What I would have blogged earlier if I wasn’t on the phone talking to a Labour activist.)

The most remarkable incident - for want of a better word - that has direct relevance to the BBC was the Andrew Marr interrupterview. 


Even though, to ‘nerdy’ BBC watchers like us  - don’t forget this is our very raison d'etre - it seemed that the only thing Marr’s on-air implosion gave us was a blatant example of bias and the most extreme display of incompetence we’ve seen in a long time.

Whichever side you’re on, I fail to see how anyone could think the outcome was the slightest bit productive, other than as a demonstration of ‘how not to do it”.

Nevertheless, the Boris-bashing, Corbynite public have come down on the side of Andrew Marr.   If you can stomach it, take a peek at Zoe Williams’s piece in the Guardian. "Chuntering and untruths"

The comments underneath indicate that the most robust argument they can muster is that ‘Boris is a liar’. This immovable mindset merely underlines the futility of trying to reason with a Corbynist. 

Elsewhere, people have pointed out that Marr was trying to emulate Andrew Neil. Of course, whether doing so was a conscious decision on his part or was instigated by his production team, it only served to highlight the inferiority of the interviewer and the incompetence of the back-room team. Own goal, in other words. 

There were also numerous ‘below the line’ references to the statistical imbalance between the number of words uttered by interviewer and interviewee (a far superior model is, say, Peter Whittle of New Culture Forum who allows the interviewee plenty of space to develop an argument)  as well as observations about inaccurate research, repetitive questioning and the interviewer’s remarkably cloth-eared inability to listen.  Marr’s irritability, his embarrassing lack of self-awareness and finally, the flailing efforts to land the knockout blow that rebounded and floored him (and shamed the BBC) instead.

The other potentially derailing incident to the course of the election was, of course, the (second, most recent) London Bridge terrorist attack that killed Saskia Jones, 23 and Jack Merritt, 25. We are now permitted to use the term ‘terrorist’, since none of the victims of this Islamist-inspired murdering spree were, so far as I know,  Israeli Jews.

Melanie Phillips has an article in yesterday’s Times (£), which for once, has received plaudits, almost without exception, below the line. I think that must be a first. Islamists are not the same as other prisoners. Doh!

“The terrorist attack by Usman Khan on a prisoner rehabilitation conference in London was made possible by two catastrophic and tragic misjudgments. The first was by the Court of Appeal, which changed Khan’s sentence. This had originally been detention for public protection with a minimum of eight years, after which he would have stayed in jail if the Parole Board considered him still dangerous.”

Melanie Phillips refers to Ian Acheson - here’s his article, also in The Times (£).  I must say that I have indeed heard of Mr Acheson's views and the fact that they had fallen on deaf ears, so I hope you’ll bear with me while I include an extract of a piece (written by me many years ago) possibly for this site - I can’t seem to find out exactly where it ended up.

“Instead of doing its job - ‘educate inform and entertain’ - the BBC seems to be part of a tacit collusion between politicians, adolescents and journalists who are desperately trying to convince themselves that Muslim communities, Muslim leaders and individuals of all degrees of intensity are thoroughly virtuous and completely unrelated and unconnected to Islamic State, which is nothing to do with Islam.  

They put out programmes that portray Muslims as ‘just like us’. Frequently they’re depicted as even better than us, because, while we’re inclined to be heathen, irreligious, self-serving and antisocial, Muslims are religious, selfless, inclusive and devout. The implication is always that Muslims are just like us, only more so, and better. Fictional plots in BBC dramas repeatedly feature Muslims as innocent victims of the white man’s prejudice and are wrongly suspected of a crime, which turns out to have been perpetrated by the bad white guy.

 In fact, it has occurred to me that using immigrants as the perpetual red-herring as they do in Scandi-noir productions can almost be seen as 'racist' in itself.

 “The fact that our prisons are stuffed to the gunwales with Muslims appears to be neither here nor there to the MSM. The fact that Muslim gangs of paedophiles and scammers are being prosecuted at a rate of knots seems to have passed them by. Our prisons are currently ruled by a Muslim mafia.  

I have heard, first-hand, the harrowing testimony of a former prison chaplain who was harassed, bullied and eventually hounded out of his position by prison Imams. When he took his case to the then Home Secretary John Reid, he was sent packing with an unrepeatable two-word phrase that means ‘go away’. Why is this not being exposed as it should be?

Nothing has changed, which probably indicates that I’m banging my head against a brick wall.

Now that the latest terrorist incident (coupled with another case of criminal sexual exploitation) has wedged a metaphorical foot in the door, thus tentatively allowing more open discussion of a formerly taboo topic, I am left wondering why Tommy Robinson is at best unacknowledged, and in some cases demonised, by bona fide, more mainstream journalist critics of Islam - Rod Liddle, Brendan O’Neill, Melanie Phillips and Douglas Murray? Are they all, dare I say it - snobs?

To finish what has turned out to be another longer than intended contribution, I have to mention another delicate matter that has been covered to some extent in the online press - it’s the political intervention of Jack Merritt’s father, whose pleas not to ‘politicise’ his son’s death have acquired a hollow ring. The bereaved, who must be going through agonising pain, should be actively discouraged by the media from making such emotional appeals in haste. In this case, Mr Merritt’s own strong political views have adversely affected any generosity of spirit he might have intended in making those unfortunate statements and tweets. It’s a tough thing to say, but tragedy shouldn’t automatically confer special dispensation upon the bereaved to say the unsayable or make inappropriate demands, as Brendan Cox has done or as the parents of the 19-year-old motorcyclist Harry Dunn who was tragically killed, appear to be doing. 

Contrast these examples, if you will, with the remarkable and unforgettable response of Gordon Wilson after his daughter Marie was killed by IRA terrorists in the Enniskillen Remembrance Day Bombing. 

Gordon Wilson's devout Christian faith inspired his refusal to make demands of others. I don’t know if the media has taken undue advantage of Mr Merritt’s sentiments, but he cannot speak for anyone other than himself. Many people, as well as his beloved son, have been hurt and traumatised by this and numerous other Islam-related incidents. 

Islamists are not like other prisoners, as Melanie Phillips so eloquently points out.  Define “Islamists” though - where does a Muslim become an Islamist? At what point? Is it a matter of degree?

As for locking them up - yes, to keep them away from the public, but not in prisons as they stand. Prisons are already in chaos. Muslim gangs are allegedly in control and are violently intimidating all who come near them. 

In any event, if there were to be a special confinement facility for Islamists - just think of the repercussions. Think of Guantanamo - think of H Block or whatever the dedicated IRA prison was called. 

Think of the ‘re-education’ of Uighurs in China. Think of the Muslims of Myanmar. Whenever anyone tries to ‘suppress’ Islam, it turns it into a bloody great ‘cause’.  People call it a recruiting sergeant. There has to be a more effective way of dealing with the situation.

I certainly don’t know the answer. Does anyone?