From Westminster to Woolwich. A Brief History of British Terror.

Terrorism is not new, but it is a particularly modern development. Before the advent of gunpowder, terror was the preserve of the state. Whilst it might be used on campaign, or in punishment of a local populace, as in the ravaging of the North in the 1070's, or even to brutalise a section of a population like the massacre of Jews in York a century later. Terror in the Medieval Age and before was generally state sponsored. The only notable exception to this was the Assassins in Syria, whose activities can only be described as terrorist in nature. The term assassin comes from a Shi'ite Muslim sect (Nizari Isma'ilis - also known as hashashins "hashish-eaters") whose activities in the 11th and 12th centuries spread terror throughout the middle East. Even so, it was not until the use of gunpowder was much more widespread that individuals had the means to promote terror as a political weapon against governments. The first truly modern act of terror in planning and scope came in 1605, with the aborted gunpowder plot. The plan to kill James I and the leading magnates of the realm by exploding 36 barrels of gunpowder during the State opening of Parliament, perpetrated by a dissident group of Catholics ushered in the modern age of terrorism. Fawkes’ plan failed because the conspirators were amateur in the extreme, and gave the game away when one warned a relative not to attend Parliament. The government reaction when faced with an unprecedented act of terror was incredibly calm. Fawkes was caught guarding the gunpowder in the undercroft of the Houses of Parliament and tortured, initially maintaining his silence. His fellow conspirators fled north hoping for support from local Catholics, which was not forthcoming. They made a last stand at Holbeche House, where discovering their remaining powder was damp they tried to dry it in front of a fire. Predictably, a spark landed on the drying powder engulfing some of the conspirators in flames. Miserable and scorched, they waited for the authorities. Most were killed the next day resisting arrest. The others joined Fawkes on the scaffold where they were hung drawn and quartered. Fawkes, the only professional in the conspiracy, jumped off the scaffold breaking his neck and avoiding the worst of the punishment. Despite the genie being let out of the bottle by the failed Gunpowder Plot, Britain remained calm, and compared to the continent, incredibly peaceful until the outbreak of Civil War in 1642. The following twenty years saw atrocities carried out by both sides. In Ireland in particular the Massacre of innocents at Drogheda and Wexford by Cromwells troops has resonated down the centuries. To many in England, Protestantism seemed to be under attack, at home with catholic fifth columnists and abroad with the ascent Louis XIV in France.

Such was the paranoia generated by the “catholic threat” that in 1678 Titus Oates, a typically disenfranchised young man, conspired with the radical preacher Israel Tonge to fabricate a Jesuit plot against the King. With the help of forged documents, they whipped up a frenzy of anti-catholic sentiment, that engulfed the capital. When Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was found murdered, his death was attributed to Catholics and even the Government had to take the plot seriously. At its height, the public hysteria at non existent catholic threats led to the imprisonment and trial of five catholic peers, riots, and the deaths of at least three innocents. The frenzy generated by such false flag plots is a real contrast to the calm that the public displays when faced with a genuine terrorist threat. In 1605, the response had been calm. In London in 1884, at the height of the fenian bombing campaign, Sir Algernon West observed after one attack, “How calmly people take these outrages as a matter of course." The calm dignity displayed by cub scout leader Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, and other women during the Woolwich attack is in the same vein. KBO a phrase coined during the height of the terror bombing in 1940, seems to be the default response of the British public when faced with real terror. It was in the Victorian age that terror really took off. On the continent, attacks on Napoleon III, and the successful assassination of Alexander II in Russia, demonstrated the real threat of political terror as a weapon. Liberal Britain was the haven for many foreign terrorists, the bombs thrown at Napoleon III were made by a Birmingham gunsmith. Britains liberal laws compared to the rest of Europe, allowed foreign dissidents the freedom to plot. For most Britons, even conservatives, the value of British liberalism was such, that repressive measures to counter terrorism were seen as a greater threat to society. As Bernard Porter states, “Britain's best security then was still supposed to lie in her liberalism, which would require more than a few bombs and assassinations to justify the betrayal of. That, at least, was her public stance; though in private her governments sometimes had their doubts.” http://www.historytoday.com/bernard-porter/terrorism-and-victorians The threat at the end of the nineteenth century came from Anarchists and Fenians agitating for Irish Home Rule. In 1867, twelve people were killed at Clerkenwell Prison in an attempt to break prisoners out. Scotland Yard was targeted, and in 1883, in a forerunner of 2005, the London Underground was attacked with multiple explosions. The Government response was to establish Special Branch in relative secrecy, so as not to outrage public opinion. On Dynamite Saturday in 1885, the Fenians attacked multiple targets in central London, including the Houses of Parliament, in a demonstration of power.

Alongside the Fenians was the rising threat from anarchists and republicans. In 1894, a bomb was planted by a French anarchist at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich causing public shock. As refugees from far more repressive regimes fled to London as a haven, their activities brought violence onto British streets. Latvian anarchists were responsible for outrages in Tottenham in 1909. In 1911, the Sidney Street siege took place which saw the then Home Secretary forced to order troops onto the streets to combat the anarchists firepower. Churchill, ever the glory seeker, directed the operations himself, and a shot passed through his top hat inches away from killing him outright.

Less violent but no less disruptive was the growing militancy of the suffragette movement. Their campaign of arson and bomb attacks, including on Lloyd George's home, did not however win them many friends. Emmeline Pankhurst claimed direct responsibility for the attack stating, "We have blown up the Chancellor of the Exchequer's house… to wake him up". Pankhurst was imprisoned, promptly went on Hunger Strike and released. Perhaps the most public event in the militant suffragette campaign was the death of Emily Davidson at the 1913 derby. Davidson, who had been an architect of the arson campaign, was killed attempting to pin a Suffragette banner to the Kings Horse Angmer. There is still much debate as to her intention. Many people dispute her intention to kill herself pointing to the purchase of a return ticket. The British patriarchal press at the time predictably worried itself with the fate of the Horse rather than face the real questions raised by Davidsons death.

During the interwar years, most Britons experience of terrorism was in the morning papers with increased militancy in Palestine under British control. Atrocities by Arabs in which British Police remained passive were followed by escalating reprisals by Jewish militants. These attacks would continue right up to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. The end of the hostilities saw ever increasing attacks on British targets in 1946 the bombing of the King David Hotel a home to many expats killed 91. The attacks on British targets only ended when troops pulled out of the mandated territories. The end of Empire saw the British military dealing with terrorist threats in the old colonial outposts, Malaya, Kenya, Rhodesia, the list goes on. The end of Empire was not as peaceful as some would have us believe.

In the 1960s, however, with the campaign for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland transforming into the troubles, terror came back to the British Isles. Northern Ireland was itself torn apart by a unending stream of atrocities by both sides. The British states role in sponsoring paramilitary loyalists in terror activities is only now being exposed. Between 1970 and 2001, hardly a year passed without a terrorist attack on the British mainland. Mostly these were attacks by Irish militants. Bombing campaigns in the 1970s saw attacks on barracks, shopping centres, and pubs. Targets were not confined to large scale bombings. High profile killings such as that of Lord Mountbatten and Colditz escapee Airey Neave, and the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984, carried the campaign to the doors of power.

The volume of attacks increased in the 90's, indeed the volume of attacks by Irish militants between 1991-2001 far exceeds the successful terrorist plots carried out by Islamic militants. Even in the Noughties, there were more attacks by Irish militants than Islamic, despite the high profile of the 7/7 bombings. Since 2005 there have been only three successful terrorist attacks on the British mainland by Islamic terrorists, including the attack in Woolwich. The Irish campaign of terror only ended because widespread revulsion at the killing of innocents forced the extremists to the table, not state repression or curtailment of civil liberty. When compared to our history, the attack in Woolwich, tragic and abhorrent as it is, demonstrates the threat posed is small and diminishing. The Government quickly needs to get a grip of public perceptions, rather than repeating the mistakes of Charles II and his advisors. Perhaps it is time to take our ancestors example, and show the calm espoused by Algernon West rather than falling foul of the paranoia of Oates.

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