The pattern is established. Breaking news; the sinking, familiar feeling. Statements from senior police and politicians. The defiance; “Keep Calm and Carry On” repurposed for the occasion. The candle-lit vigils, the flowers, the faces of the dead.
Increasingly, there is a new part of the pattern: those who rail against the pattern itself — who demand that instead of weeping, mourning, candle-lighting and flower-laying we have Action This Day. They scorn the inadequacy of the words spoken by politicians. They sneer at the poems read. They hate the “we all stand together” stuff. Cue Nigel Farage yesterday: “We want real action from our leaders, not more hand-wringing.”
As to what that action might be, we are often low on specifics. But in recent weeks, since the Manchester attack — and with increasing urgency since Saturday — an old word has been exhumed: internment.
Last week Tarique Ghaffur, assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard at the time of 7/7, called for internment camps where “extremists would be made to go through a deradicalisation programme”. Ukip leader Paul Nuttall has said, regarding internment, that “nothing should be off the table”. Farage said yesterday that “the calls for internment will grow”. Social media is alive with calls to lock people up without trial.
“In Northern Ireland, internment increased violence dramatically
How seductive is this idea, that we can with surgical precision remove the nasty elements from our streets and surround them with barbed wire. Admittedly, my first instinct is to sympathise. Arguments about civil liberties and Magna Carta seem dripping wet when set against the misery these people could cause. I think of Joseph Conrad’s words in The Secret Agent, of the terrorist walking “frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable” and unseen — and wish every frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable jihadi sympathiser locked up, with unapologetic unconcern for their human rights. I am all in favour of the un-PC and unpalatable solution as long as it actually works.
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But ask more questions of the idea of internment and it falls apart. Who would we actually intern? MI5 has revealed that as well as the 3,000 suspected jihadis who are currently on the radar, a further 20,000 individuals have been “subjects of interest” in recent years. Leaving aside the logistics and eye-watering expense, what is the threshold for interning one of these people? A social media post railing against western foreign policy? Mumblings in favour of “freedom fighters” in the Arab world? Other than the evidence necessary to bring someone to trial, what form of words means we can lock someone up?
Once we have determined this threshold and rounded up hundreds or thousands of these men, is it a wise idea to put them together in a confined space, to concentrate and inflame their toxic beliefs, given that we know radical ideas in prison are as infectious as MRSA in hospitals? Would they come out with new networks and grievances — or would we keep them in there indefinitely?
Most importantly, what impact would internment have on recruitment to the cause? Here we would be wise to learn the lessons of history — specifically our history in Northern Ireland. Operation Demetrius began on the morning of August 9, 1971, with dawn raids and doors battered down to round up and intern 342 people with suspected links to the IRA. There followed an eruption of protests and riots. Violence increased dramatically, from 34 conflict-related deaths in the first seven months of the year, to 22 in the three days after. Internment failed to quell the terrorists, instead rallying foot soldiers and donations to the IRA’s cause. One officer in the Royal Marines reflected that Operation Demetrius “increased terrorist activity, perhaps boosted IRA recruitment, polarised further the Catholic and Protestant communities and reduced the ranks of the much-needed Catholic moderates”. Do we need any further grievances to fuel the fire?
Of course, we shouldn’t avoid anything that would be effective merely because our enemies might call it a “provocation”. But the main argument against internment is that there are more effective and less inflammatory tools we could use.
For instance, we could reintroduce control orders, which were foolishly repealed in 2011 and replaced by TPIMs (terrorism prevention and investigation measures). Control orders were far more restrictive than TPIMs in several respects. Suspects could be placed under curfew for 16 hours a day. Their access to mobile phones could be limited and internet access banned. They could be barred from associating with certain people.
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All this provoked outcry from the civil liberties brigade and the Lib Dems, who claimed a great victory in introducing the softer TPIMs. While control orders were open-ended, TPIMs last only two years. While control orders needed only “suspicion” of involvement in terrorism, TPIMs require “reasonable belief”. Beefed-up control orders should be reinstated. Through effective electronic tagging and heavily restrictive conditions, these could have similar outcomes to internment — containing and constraining thousands of suspect individuals — but without the PR coup for Isis of a British Guantanamo Bay.
In the wake of barbarity we can all sympathise with the urge to take tough action, but that action should aim to take the heat out of the situation, not turn it up. It should aim to identify, constrain and where possible deradicalise these people long term, not recruit more people to the cause. We are clearly in for a long, wearying and brutal fight — but internment will never help us win it.