Twenty Years After

By Esmerelda Weatherwax

Twenty years after the first English suicide jihad attack where are we?

Thursday 7^th July 2005. I was at home (I worked part time and wasn’t due in the office until Friday), my husband was at work, our daughter was at school. She was still at junior school, now she is a grown woman on her second graduate job.

The radio news was vague at first; electrical faults at six points on London Underground. Smoke had been seen coming from stations either side of the three tube trains affected; news of the bus at Tavistock Square came in a little later. I didn’t like the sound of it.

I went to deliver a magazine to an elderly neighbour. She didn’t like the sound of it either. “Well, dear, my generation lived through the blitz, your generation has already dealt  with the IRA campaigns, now you will deal with this”

And when it became clear it was an Islamic jihad attack ‘we’ decided we would ‘deal with it’

I’d already been aware for a long time of the danger jihad and Islamic expansion is to the world. I’d found Jihadwatch after the Beslan school siege and massacre of the children of North Ossetia the previous year. There I’d met Mary Jackson who became a dear friend. And we engaged Rebecca and Hugh in conversation which resulted in us being invited to contribute here on the New English Review. But that was two years later.

I didn’t think we would see the Olympics (the decision that London would be the home city of the 2012 Olympics had been announced the previous day). I thought that this attack would be the event that made people sit up and take notice, and a sport festival would be an irrelevance in the struggle.

Islam was the threat, not just political “Islamism”

Islam is not a religion of peace.

Mass immigration was not an absolute Good Thing.

Jihadists were not just an aberrant minority, amongst a group of lovely peaceful people who brought curry, and colourful culture. So many people kept trying to convince themselves that Islam is a religion of Peace; look these nice imams keep telling us so.

The Olympics came, and the Olympics went.

The EDL formed in 2009 and other groups with them. I got to know a lot of good people. We thought we have to deal with this now, and it has to be us, before our children grow – we can’t leave it for them.

But 20 years on our children are grown up, and many of the people I worked with in those early days have died, or retired in poor health.

Realisation within the British public grew slowly, but surely. The murder of Lee Rigby in 2013 shook more people.  But I think the events of 2017 was the beginning of the turning point. Westminster Bridge, London Bridge, Parsons Green and worst of all the Manchester Arena when a suicide bomber from a family of Libyan jihadists who plotted together targeted the little girls and their mothers who had just watched a pop concert. This was not an attack on a military target, or a government building, or a commercial institution. This was 22 women and girls out for innocent enjoyment.

The list of attacks and foiled attacks grew. The authorities tried to play some down – random attack, mental health problems, motive not known… but less and less people were fooled.

The Muslim rape gangs could no longer be hidden. Trial after trial in open court, then the authorities put reporting restrictions on the trials so now we only get the bare facts at the sentencing hearing, and even transcripts are under an occultation. But we know.

The billeting of thousands of young men of fighting military age, illegal immigrants arriving by dinghy, on towns and villages in every county can’t be hidden either. And while not every man is Muslim, their behaviour is not such as to reassure that they ‘come in peace’, with goodwill.

Then 19 years from the London bombings was the murders in Southport. A young man of immigrant heritage (who was born into a Christian family but may or may not be a Muslim now, or then) attacked a class of very small girls at a dance workshop summer club. He killed three and injured more, and the adults who tried to protect them.

The youngest little girl murdered at Manchester Arena was aged 8; these girls were aged 9, 7 and 6, stabbed multiple times. The protests which turned in some places into riots terrified the new Labour government. They clamped down viciously, imprisoning even elderly pensioners and respectable housewives for speaking intemperately in anger and grief. Kier Starmur condemned them as ‘right-wing thugs’ led by the EDL (which had been defunct for 7 years at this point). But the treatment of  EDL founder Tommy Robinson shows the desire to clamp down on the indigenous population.

It is a two tier system, we are no longer a country where we have freedom of speech. The American government has challenged our Prime Minister, Two-Tier Kier,  about it and only last week the international advocacy organisation Article 19 downgraded the UK after our rating for core expressive freedoms fell below the threshold that separates the world’s most liberal societies from the rest.

So here we are 20 years later. Nobody believes that Islam is a Religion of Peace. However there are those who see its militant potential. Jew haters have found in pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel hate a wonderful vehicle for their own desire to smash civilised society.  And they have made sure that they are on the beneficiary side of the two-tier justice. This isn’t just a British phenomena; overnight environmental groups switched from saving the planet to killing the Jews (or the IDF as a representative sample)

Greta Thunberg set off for Gaza in a small boat and Youth Demand stopped demanding eco-friendly loft insulation (their previous incarnation was Insulate Britain) and became a side hustle of Palestine Action.

Which led us to the bizarre situation over the weekend of gay Jews being barred from the Pride Parade in London, and some of the floats being attacked by Youth Demand who accused them of supporting Israel in their other activities.

Twenty years of activism, marching, reading, publishing (do not under-estimate the effect Peter McLoughlin’s book Easy Meat has had) writing here, have had the desired cumulative effect of removing scales from peoples’ eyes.

Meanwhile Muslims continue to claim victimhood and oppression. They have greatly increased their political hold in national and local government both in the legacy parties and their own pro-Gaza/Islam factions. They push for draconian definitions of Islamophobia to further stifle free criticism of their ideology.

The de facto political imprisonment of Tommy Robinson, Lucy Connelly, Julie Sweeney and hundreds of others halted protest for the time being. Prison Works was the triumphant cry; however the authorities won’t use it on the vandalism and violence of the Palestine and former environment activists.

But bubbling under…?

Even a writer and broadcaster as reasonable, and decent and upright as Dagenham fireman Paul Embery now says,

It’s important to avoid hyperbole, but I genuinely think Britain is heading for a major flashpoint in the next year or two. The country is broken in so many ways (economy, public services, infrastructure, social fabric). The status quo simply cannot hold.

I just hope it isn’t too late. It isn’t for want of trying on my part, and those of my friends.

Oh – the commemoration is by invitation only from the office of Sadiq Khan the Mayor.