In recent days parliament has been recalled on a Saturday to debate the renationalisation of the British steel industry. Then, after a month-long strike by binmen in Birmingham, army planners have been called in to help address the issue of large amounts of refuse piling up in the city.
Absent a major ideological split on the right, it is hard to see how much more reminiscent of the 1970s Britain could become. I don’t however want to join the legions of people who are carping. Rather, I should like to suggest an answer to some of these things.
The news at the weekend that Hashem Abedi, the brother of the Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi, had allegedly assaulted and stabbed prison officers at HMP Frankland also presents an example of a problem that needs to be addressed rather than simply wailed about. It is alleged that Abedi had thrown hot cooking oil over the officers and then stabbed them with ‘homemade weapons’. This poses many questions. One is how a jihadist in prison could get access to boiling cooking oil; the other is why in a British prison someone can feel so at home that they are able to make knives out of cooking trays.
This is one of those occasions when all political sides assume their natural positions. Many people wondered what had gone wrong with security arrangements in British prisons. Others pondered why Abedi was in a prison with so many other jihadists. A few wondered why this country had to pay to house the brother of the Manchester Arena bomber at all. The union representing prison officers said that inmates should be prevented from cooking in jail. The Lord Chancellor said he was ‘appalled’ by the attack. Robert Jenrick MP said it should be ‘a turning point’.
I would prefer to expand these points by asking why the Abedi family were in the UK in the first place and why we still don’t know – eight years after the Manchester Arena attack – who allowed them to enter and stay in this country. If we could even ask, let alone answer, these questions, it is possible we could reach not just a turning point but a learning point. Just one of the problems with only asking secondary questions is that it prevents us from asking the primary ones.
Hashem Abedi was in prison because he helped his brother in the preparation of the 2017 Ariana Grande concert suicide bombing in which 22 people – mainly young girls – were killed. An elder brother, Ismail, refused to co-operate with the inquiry into the attack and for a time fled the jurisdiction of our courts. He claimed legal privilege against ‘self-incrimination’ and that if he co-operated with inquiries he might put his family at risk. The inquiry found that the Abedi family had ‘significant responsibility’ for the radicalisation of both Hashem and Salman Abedi. The mother, father and Ismail were all described as having held extremist views.
The girls of Manchester should have been prioritised over the families of jihadists
Those extremist views appear to have been the reason why the Abedi family came to Britain from Libya in the first place. It appears that in the 1990s the family fell out with Colonel Gaddafi. I think we can all agree that Gaddafi would have been an easy man to fall out with, but the Abedis did not do so because they were secular, pro-western democrats seeking to bring a Jefferson-ian democracy to Tripoli and Benghazi.
Rather, it turns out that Abedi senior was a member of a jihadist faction that came into conflict with the Colonel. So naturally they relocated to the UK, first to London and then to Manchester, where Salman and Hashem were born.
Their son Salman detonated his suicide bomb at the Manchester Arena aged just 22. In other words, he killed one innocent person for every year of life this country gave him. The Abedi family did not seem especially perturbed by the young man they had created, and since there was silence, complicity or intransigence from them all, this country did what it would obviously do. We had an inquiry into the bombing and we had endless press reports questioning why MI5 had failed to prevent it. Yet what still remains unanswered is why the Abedi family were here in the first place.
Why should Britain be a sanctuary for Islamists who have fallen out with other Islamists in various Islamic countries? Is it the best use of our asylum or immigration laws to allow such people to settle here? And if not – as we can probably agree it is not – why do we still not know who it was who allowed them to come here in the first place and to settle here?
Why have there been no investigations, reports or firings among the Home Office officials – and presumably ministers – who oversaw this insane and literally self-destructive process? Are there any ‘lessons learned’ among the civil servants or the civil-society organisations that lobby our government to allow every Mohammed al-Jihadi to settle here?
I ask these questions because, as I have said for the eight years since the Manchester atrocity, I would like to know the answers. More importantly, I think the victims’ families and the people severely wounded in that attack – as well as the wider country – need to know the answers to these questions.
This is what I mean about national inertia and how to combat it. It is all very well to ask how a jihadist got hold of boiling oil or was able to make knives in prison or why MI5 failed to stop his brother from committing the atrocity. If you import the world’s problem cases, you will also import the world’s problems. And it seems to me that the girls of Manchester should have been prioritised over the families of jihadists.
Finding out who is responsible for insane policies such as these and holding them accountable is the sort of thing this country might start doing if we ever want to turn anything around.
Comments
Comment section temporarily unavailable for maintenance.