“It is time to say, enough is enough,” Theresa May announced on Sunday morning, as forensic teams were examining the sites of the Islamist attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market and armed police were raiding homes in east London. “We cannot, and must not, pretend that things can continue as they are. Things need to change.”
The trio of recent attacks in Britain, May said, were linked by “the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division, and promotes sectarianism.” There has been, she admitted, “far too much tolerance of extremism” in Britain.
Speaking outside 10 Downing Street, May proposed a four-point plan:
- Identifying and “stamping out” extremist ideology “across the public sector and across society.”
- Ensuring that “British values” are held in common, including in “separated, segregated communities.”
- Increased prison terms for terrorism-related offences, including “apparently less serious” cases.
- Controls on the Internet, whose platforms offer “safe spaces” for propaganda and conspiracy to murder.
This program, combined with a review of counter-terrorism strategy that would grant police and security services “all the powers they need,” amounts to a radical change of approach. May linked the cause of Islamist violence—an “evil ideology”—to its ultimate effect—the kinds of carnage seen in Manchester and London. She also targeted the “sectarianism” that creates a pool of potential terrorists, through the growth of self-segregating Muslim enclaves and through recruitment in the prison system.
This ideological and legal struggle, May said, requires “some difficult, often embarrassing conversations.” So does the timing of her speech. And her record in office.
May insisted on Sunday that “violence can never be allowed to disrupt the democratic process.” But Britain’s parties had already agreed to suspend “party political campaigning” until Sunday night or Monday morning. Rightly, the shadow foreign secretary, Labour’s Emily Thornberry, objected that May’s statement ran counter to this agreement.
Brexit and a spate of ISIS-related attacks in European cities have already turned national identity, Islam, security, and border controls into divisive electoral issues. Nothing could be more political than announcing a new anti-terrorism policy when two atrocious terrorist attacks have interrupted campaigning. May’s job on Sunday was to make a statement, not an improvised electoral pitch.
Politicizing the London Bridge attacks was bad for the “democratic process.” It also distorted the historical record and the responsibility of Conservative ministers, May among them, for the weaknesses that May now criticizes.
It is true that Labour set the framework of Britain’s modern security policies during the prime ministerships of Tony Blair (1997-2007) and Gordon Brown (2007-2011). Yet it is May’s party, the Conservatives, who have governed Britain since 2010—albeit in coalition with the Liberal Democrats from 2010 to 2015—and who have continued to operate within that framework. May is passing the buck. To herself.
As David Cameron’s Home secretary from 2010 to 2015, Theresa May was at the center of domestic security policy. May’s Home Office did not scrap and replace Labour’s anti-indoctrination program—called Prevent—which has failed to prevent three Islamist attacks in the last three months. Nor did the Cameron government propose to restrict the dissemination of Islamist propaganda through the Internet.
In 2011, Cameron’s government accommodated its Liberal Democrat coalition partners by replacing “control orders,” which permitted wide-ranging restriction of a suspect’s liberty, with Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIM). By July 2016, when Theresa May moved from the Home Office to 10 Downing Street, only one TPIM was in effect. On Sunday, Ian Duncan Smith said that Cameron’s government had “watered down” its anti-terrorism capability.
May was responsible for Britain’s borders when the Syrian and Libyan civil wars broke out. Between 2011 and 2015, hundreds of British Muslims–the Manchester bomber Salman Abedi among them–were permitted to leave Britain and travel to these war zones. All those who survived these boot camps for global jihad were, with the exception of a handful targeted in drone strikes, permitted to return to Britain.
To her credit, May’s Home Office did obtain the deportation of Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada, two preachers so obnoxious that they should never have been allowed into Britain in the first place. She also expressed frustration at another Blair-era legacy, the Human Rights’ Act of 1998, a pro-EU move which had harmonized British law with European Convention on Human Rights.
Yet when it came to Islamist influence in civil society, May’s Home Office had an alarmingly mixed record.
A 2015 initiative to address Islamist radicalization in prisons came not from May and the Home Office, but from a rival, Liz Truss at the Ministry of Justice.
And in the “Trojan Horse” scandal of 2014, May opposed broadening the definition of extremism to include Islamist ideology. When it emerged that Islamists had hijacked the curriculum in several Birmingham state schools, Education secretary Michael Gove blamed the Home Office. At a meeting of the Extremism Task Force, an interdepartmental Cabinet committee, Gove is said to have accused the Home Office of being institutionally unwilling to confront Islamist ideology. When May pushed back, the resulting argument ended up on the front pages.
Gove speaking as an anonymous “source,” told the London Times that May’s Home Office was failing to “drain the swamp” of extremism, and identified May’s counter-terrorism advisor, Charles Farr, as the chief culprit. May’s office retaliated by posting a private letter on its website, in which May blamed the Trojan Horse episode on Gove and the Department of Education.
Theresa May should be commended for the content of Sunday’s announcement, if not for the timing. In a strange way, she might be the ideal figure to deliver this program because she knows how hard it is to overcome the Home Office’s resistance to sudden changes of policy towards Islamism. Indeed, she seems at times to have embodied that resistance.
May was against Brexit, but now she is for it. She was against targeting Islamist ideology along with Islamist terrorists, too, but now she is for Gove-style measures against Islamism.
May will win the general election. Given that the alternative is Jeremy Corbyn, the terrorist’s friend, it is in Britain’s national interest that May does win. But, as she admitted on Sunday, it is no longer enough to tell the public to keep calm while the government carries on.
