One event changes attitude in UK-----how strange

Brits have suddenly stopped bashing Bush because reality has smacked them in the face. It is very sad that it took such violence to force a change in attitude.



London bombs

July 13, 2005

Clarke to rid Britain of 'preachers of hate'
By Simon Freeman, Times Online

Charles Clarke today said that he was prepared to implement any practical measures - including deportation of radical preachers - to protect Britain against a repeat of the July 7 bombings.



The British Home Secretary said it must be assumed there are others prepared to carry out similar suicide attacks.



"I think we have to organise ourselves on a basis that there are other people prepared to act in this way and we have to protect ourselves in the best way we can against that," Mr Clarke said.



"We have to assume there are others ready to do the kind of things these people did last Thursday."



The Home Secretary,
who is in Brussels today seeking agreement among his counterparts in Europe for proposals to store tracts of data from mobile phone and e-mail records, said that the core values of Britain's "democratic, multicultural" society were at stake.



He accepted that failings in intelligence gathering and sharing had to be addressed in the wake of the London attack which claimed at least 52 lives.



But Mr Clarke insisted that it was crucial to "root out" the sources of the ideology which turned four British men into suicide bombers. He accepted that a careful balance had to be struck between maintaining civil liberties and preventing terrorism.



He said: "In contrast to some other societies, the events of last Thursday have seen a very strong response from across the whole of British society. Now we have to defend the values of that kind of society against those who would seek to destroy it.



"That means standing out against - in a very strong way - anybody who preaches the kind of fundamentalism which can lead four young men to blow themselves and others up on the Tube on a Thursday morning.



"We have to address those international links, which is one of the reasons we need the intelligence to deal with it. We have to understand that these foot soldiers who have done this are only one element of an organisation that is bringing about this kind of mayhem in our society.



"And we have to attack the people who are driving it, organising it, manipulating those people."



He said that he was looking "very directly" at fundamentalist preachers who stir up racial hatred among their followers saying that he was surprised and shocked that the bombers were apparently British.



He warned: "We can't just assume that we are all OK in our democratic, multicultural society.



"I'm ready to look at any measures, including deportation, necessary to do that. I certainly think that people in this country who are undermining the very fundamentals of our country ought not to be here.



"There is a very fine line between free speech and promoting terror. Getting that line right is very important," he told Radio 4's Today programme.



"But certain types of argument are not acceptable," the Home Secretary said, adding that there would have to be constraints on free speech.



Mr Clarke said protection would involve sharing of intelligence between European countries, extending powers to seize information obtained from e-mails and phone companies and tracking the disposal of high-grade explosives.



The Home Secretary will today attempt to convince a Brussels summit, called in response to last Thursday's atrocities, to endorse his telecoms data proposals.



The European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE), will consider forcing mobile telephone companies and internet service providers (ISPs) to store details of electronic communications for between a year and three years.



Mr Clarke will suggest the move would make it easier for police and intelligence services to establish when and where a telephone call, text message or e-mail was sent, and to whom.



LIBE threw out the proposal almost unanimously in May "due to sizeable doubts on the choice of the legal basis and the proportionality of the measures".



It also warned that the measures might breach Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to respect for private and family life.



But Mr Clarke will reinforce his arguments - and those for a Europe-wide biometric ID card - in the face of the attacks on London.



He said: "There are organisations and individuals who want to destroy the fundamental structure of our democracy - our free media, our multi-cultural society, our free economy and so on - because they believe in their core that this is wrong - that they should destroy it.



"That is a clarion call to everybody to say we have to fight for the society we have rather than just coasting along assuming its all OK."