The Nation was horrified last month to hear of the story of Richard Reid, an Islamic militant who very nearly blew up an airliner by means of a bomb fitted into his shoe. Reid was tackled and overpowered by passengers on the plane after he had been seen acting suspiciously, trying to apply a light to the shoe. Both his shoes were found when examined afterwards to contain a complex mixture of explosives which almost certainly would have destroyed the aircraft had they gone off.

And who is Richard Reid? A Saudi? An Iraqi? An Afghan? Well, not exactly. Reid was born in Bromley, Kent. His mother is British and his father believed to be of Jamaican origin. He has a criminal record as long as your arm, and was actually recruited to the cause of Islam when in Feltham Young Offenders' Institute in Middlesex, then won over to its militant wing later in a mosque in Brixton. People like him abound in Britain's penal institutions. A front-page report in The Sunday Telegraph on December 30th revealed that the Government had ignored warnings issued more than a year previously that Islamic militants were infiltrating prisons and recruiting inmates, of which there were ample number who were fair game in that regard. This apparently was done by Muslims getting into the prisons posing as religious advisers, whereby they had easy access to prisoners sharing their own faith - just as prison chaplains could speak to Christians inside. One senior Muslim cleric was quoted as saying of the warnings given to the Government: "Sadly, nothing was done."

Thousands in the wings

But this is just the tip of a dangerous iceberg. There are thousands of would-be terrorists where Reid is coming from. While the Government is sounding national and world-wide alarms against terrorism, its policies and those of its predecessors have made Britain a country that is among the worst equipped anywhere to deal with the terrorist threat.

In an article in The Daily Telegraph just two days previous, on December 28, Daniel Johnson addressed the wider problem. Heading his piece 'Bin Laden is winning the battle in Britain', he said:

‘Abdul Hacq Baker, the chairman of the Brixton mosque where Reid is alleged to have been recruited by Muslim extremists, estimates that there are at least 1,000 other young fundamentalists like Reid in Britain; at least 100 may be potential suicide bombers. He told Radio Four listeners that he and others in Brixton had warned the police repeatedly over the past four or five years of the danger, but had merely been told that these groups were being "monitored". Mr. Baker added that the town hall had been used for extremist meetings and that the local authority, though aware of the problem, felt that it had to be fair to all sides. Lambeth Council has some explaining to do.’

Reference to the Council's policy of ‘fairness’ cannot fail to raise a laugh. Can you really imagine that same Council agreeing to hire meeting halls to the British National Party in accordance with the same principles? But we are digressing. Let writer Johnson continue relating the experience of those who tried warning the powers that be concerning the recruitment of the militants:-

‘The Met's spokesman was anything but reassuring. Apparently the police and security services had been too busy "sifting through" reports actually to investigate, let alone clamp down on, al-Qa'eda recruitment in such places as Brixton. He glossed over the risks to the public and quickly moved on to the safer ground of combating "Islamophobia" and the British National Party. One shudders to think of the terrorist schemes that may even now be in train, and which might so easily have been nipped in the bud if the authorities had acted promptly. To use intelligence properly requires well, intelligence. We ought not to have required September 11th to teach us that.’

And even more to the point:-

‘The suffocating atmosphere of multi-cultural political correctness has, at least until very recently, paralysed the police and the legal system. Now it may be too late.’ (JT's emphasis)

The picture we have here is very clear. There is now a huge non-white population pool in Britain from which Islamic militants can be recruited. And these do not just comprise people of Arab or Asian origin; Reid was part white, part West Indian. Many Afro-Caribbeans or mixtures of the same are ripe for conversion to Islam - we have heard, of course, of the Black Muslims. As the multi-racial society breaks down, as nationalists have always warned that it would, this population - particularly its younger elements - is becoming increasingly alienated, as events in the North of England last summer made clear. Into the breach step the recruiting officers for terrorism - with ample prospects lined up and available.

Authorities paralysed

But when it comes to action by the authorities to combat the danger, there is paralysis. The politically correct culture that dominates the police hierarchy (if not always at the lower levels) rules that ethnic minority groups must not be offended. Every officer contemplating firm action where this might involve treading on the toes of the minorities (whether these be defined by race or religion) knows that he is likely to have to answer to some interfering commissar of the race relations industry who can, and very likely will, block his future promotion.

In the days when this was an overwhelmingly white country with non-Europeans, where they were present, sticking out like sore thumbs, there would have been none of these problems. No such recruitment pool would have existed. And as for keeping surveillance on possible Islamic terrorists this would have been a simple matter with the very tiny number of ‘ethnics’ in our midst. A man or woman of Middle eastern, Asian or negro appearance seen in the vicinity of an airport or any other public place would immediately have been an object of suspicion, and treated accordingly. Now there are hundreds of thousands of such people, and amongst them the terrorist is like a needle in a haystack.