The Centre For Social Cohesion

I base this claim on the following set of considerations.

First, as was reported at the week-end, the government’s new security supremo, Admiral Sir Alan West, has warned Britain is facing a 15 year battle to end the threat posed by Islamic terrorists, both home-grown and of the foreign variety.

Given how long term and grave the terror threat is being claimed to be, and given also how much importance we know al Qaeda attaches to attacks staged at times of symbolic significance, it follows the chances of it staging an attack in London during the Games or in the run up to them must be substantially higher than they would otherwise be were the Games not to be held there. For by staging them there, London would have been made a focus of world attention, and al Qaeda likes nothing more.

Consider what a propaganda coup by its own perverse reckoning al Qaeda would bring off by timing an attack in such a way as either led to the cancellation of the Games, or at least to them taking place under the shadow of some major atrocity it had just engineered in the capital.

Again, consider what humiliation al Qaeda would gleefully be able to anticipate inflicting upon Britain by carrying out an attack there at this time. It would expose the country's vulnerability and inability to protect the thousands of non-nationals from all parts of the globe who could be expected to be visiting London at that time.

In such circumstances as the country currently faces, therefore, it is surely sheer hubris on the Government’s part to continue to be pressing on with the Games. This is quite apart from how much better spent the money currently being expended on their preparation could be were it instead to be used to enhance the country’s security systems.

And, there is certainly much room for improvement here to put it mildly, given other stories in today’s press. First, it turns out Britain does not check ‘would-be immigrants against a global database of suspected terrorists’. The secretary general of Interpol has reportedly accused the government of ‘putting UK citizens at risk’ through this lapse. As he is reported in today's Daily Telegraph as having explained in connection with the various men arrested last week in connection with the attempted car-bombings in London and Glasgow, of whom all were recent entrants to Britain:

‘The guys detained last week could be wanted, arrested or convicted anywhere in the world and the UK would not know. The government really needs to catch up and realise that unless it consults databases for passports names and photographs then it risks letting dangerous people roam free.’

Second, there is also the matter of the need for the authorities to improve their vigilance in considering whom to allow to leave the country. As reported in today’s Independent in connection with the guilty verdicts delivered yesterday against four of the six accused of staging the failed attempted London tube bombings of July 21st 2005, their so-called ‘emir’, Muktar Ibrahim, was allowed in 2004 to board from Heathrow a flight to Pakistan, despite several facts about him being known by those who checked his details out at the departure desk that should have given them more than enough just cause to prevent him from boarding. These facts included, first, that he was on bail at the time for a public order offence that he had allegedly committed in London’s Oxford Street while handing out Islamic literature; second that he had a criminal record for violence; and, third, that he was carrying with him at the time a medical manual for treating bullet injuries that he could not explain why he was taking with him as his aeroplane reading.

I’m sorry. There are so many ways in which the British security systems need urgent improvement, plus so much unnecessary heightened risk of sustaining a terror strike were the Games to be staged in London, that the money ear-marked for their preparation could be far better spent elsewhere.

Given what the government has been told about the medium and long-term risks the country is facing of an attack, plus what it has been told of the need there is for the country’s security systems to be enhanced, for it to press on with the Games in these circumstances is nothing short of criminal recklessness. It is certainly manifests a form of hubris for which it deserves nothing less than contempt.

It is still not too late for Britain to cancel the Games or for it to invite the World Olympic Committee to consider staging them elsewhere in light of how much of an Al Qaeda target London has become and is likely to remain even by 2012.

Londoners have suffered quite enough at the hands of the present government. They should not be expected to have to bear this extra quite unnecessary risk.