A look at the UK’s current list of Proscribed terrorist groups or organisations (updated November 26th 2021) shows 78 entities that the Home Secretary believes are “concerned in terrorism”.
For the purposes of the Act, this means that the organisation:
- commits or participates in acts of terrorism
- prepares for terrorism
- promotes or encourages terrorism (including the unlawful glorification of terrorism)
- is otherwise concerned in terrorism
The current UK Home Secretary is Priti Patel. Key to the fight against terrorism is Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Neil Basu, National Police Chiefs Council lead for Counter Terrorism Policing, and the man currently being touted as the next Commissioner of the Met.
The make up of the current list bears close scrutiny. It comprises:
- Sixty-seven Islamic groups.
- Four white supremacist groups (I UK-based, 3 US-based.)
- Three Marxist-Leninist groups (2 Turkish and 1 Greek.)
- One Basque separatist group.
- One Kurdish nationalist group.
- One Sikh separatist group.
- One Tamil nationalist group.
Neil Basu, extraordinarily given the make up of the above list, has announced far-right terrorism to be the major threat to the UK, despite the fact the Islamic groups on the government’s own proscribed list outnumber the white supremacist groups (3 of which are U.S. based) by almost 17-1.
He has said extreme right-wing terrorism was rising, with an increase in nationalism since the Brexit vote potentially fuelling violence. “There has definitely been a growth in nationalistic material online, white supremacist literature, things that are extremely disturbing,” he said in November 2020.
For MI5 and Counter Terror Command at Scotland Yard however, the vast majority of their work is still centred on the threat from Islamist extremism.
Basu appears to be an ambitious man, and blaming Brexit for the rise in terrorism, indeed linking Brexit with the far-right, will appeal to his own far-left and politically correct constituency (he works for the Metropolitan Police, remember.)
Giving his take on how to reduce terrorism, Basu said: “Policies that go towards more social inclusion, more social mobility and more education are much more likely to drive down violence … than all the policing and state security apparatus put together. It is much more likely to have a positive effect on society.”
Basu is of Indian heritage, born in the UK, and has spoken of having to deal with abusive racism for much of his life. He has told of how he was often assumed to be Muslim, a fact that many non-Muslim Asians will attest to.
Islamophobia is, unfortunately, increasingly a fact of life in Great Britain today, that it is on the rise is, in all probability, more due to the terror-activities of radical Islamists than it is to Brexit.
However, whilst Basu may feel that “more social inclusion” is the answer, how does one socially “include” somebody who seeks the establishment of a Caliphate that excludes (or enslaves) non-Muslims?
Basu’s chief at the Met is the beleaguered Dame Cressida Dick, who faces regular calls for her own resignation.
Dick first came to public attention after having presided over the brutal slaying by police officers of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles da Silva e de Menezes at Stockwell underground station, in south London on July 22nd 2005 in a botched attempt at preventing what they erroneously believed to be a terrorist attack.
After this debacle she was quietly moved to a new role, and subsequently promoted.
Brian Paddick, a former commander of the London borough of Lambeth who became a deputy assistant commissioner in the Met, and who, like Dick herself, is openly gay, was also suggested as being implicated in what has been described as the police cover-up of the de Menezes shooting to keep his own homosexuality a secret at the time.
- London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick accused by Andrew Bridgen MP of ‘discrimination against white people
- The day Britain’s police knelt in submission to the mob
- Broken Britain: Police Lose Control Of London
Subsequently, as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Dick was at the helm on the day in June 2020 when her officers knelt in submission to far-left radicalist Black Lives Matter activists in central London, in an event that turned violent.
After the 2021 rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Metropolitan Police officer, and whose body was found on Clapham Common in October, Dick came under fire after her officers clashed with and handcuffed women holding a peaceful vigil on the common. Dick blamed social media for the incident.
Meanwhile, Dick, who was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal in 2010, is currently presiding over the highest murder rate London has seen since Victorian Times.
And these are the people responsible for keeping Londoners safe……
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