I’ve been around long enough to have lived through some pretty challenging times for the United Kingdom. In my own lifetime I’ve seen carnage in Ulster, economic failure, the very costly and only sometimes successful attempts to repair such failure, deindustrialisation, terror attacks both Irish Republican based and otherwise and much more. Work has also taken me to tense situations filled with extremism, strong passions, division and strife where the wrong word or wrong interpretation of a situation could turn an already simmering pot into a boiling one.
However I don’t think that I can recall when things were as bad as they are today. Even at the height of the IRA’s bombing campaign on the British mainland I don’t recall people being so jumpy and so very expectant of a potential atrocity coming just around the corner as they are today. Yes people were frightened when back in the day, because of IRA terrorists, security activities such as removing litter bins from vulnerable places and vehicle checking at the borders of the City of London happened, of course they were. Some people also became more wary, often unnecessarily, of Irish people and those of Irish descent because of the activities of the IRA because of their fears. But even during the IRA’s bombing campaign there wasn’t this palpable sense among the people at the time that ‘it could be me next’. Most people lived relatively normal lives on the mainland and lived it untouched by Irish Republican terrorism. Often the main impact that terrorism had back then on the mainland was to create inconveniences such as delayed transport or closed streets whilst police checked out suspect packages. That’s not the case today. We don’t know when we get on a train or a bus or are out shopping whether or not we are going to be caught up in some sort of terrorist outrage or one caused by state failure of things like mental hospitals or border control. The Huntingdon Horror when a deranged man attacked passengers on a train has in particular ignited people’s fears.
I looked around social media and I find that a lot of people are very very jumpy at the moment. Every single railway related suicide or crime incident on the railways seems to be being seized upon by those wondering ‘is this another Huntingdon Horror’ could it be happening again?
It is unlikely that the sort of fears that are being expressed on social media about terrorism and random attacks are confined to the virtual world. It is more likely to be the case that what is being seen online about fears of random terrorist or other attacks is more reflective of public attitudes than some might think. This is because the attacks, terrorist or otherwise, are happening in larger numbers than they once were, are affecting more people and occurring in situations such as on public transport, that millions of Britons use everyday. What was once something remote, the prospect of sudden death or injury at the hands of a madman or an ideologue, has become a whole lot less remote that it once was.
Add into these fears of death or maiming at the hands of a terrorist or a madman the growth of sectarian politics and an opposition to said sectarianism along with the seeming unwillingness of those in political authority to tackle such sectarianism and its effects you have a perfect recipe for disaster. Those I encounter both online and offline, both those who I talk directly to and also those I inadvertently overhear on the street or in the pub are telling me that Britain is on edge, really on edge. Nobody knows when the next atrocity might happen and when we look to government for leadership on what are quite bad social, economic and political problems all we get are yet more bad policies that exacerbate both the underlying problems and the public anger at these problems. When we should be seeing government tackle things like the growth of jihadism, or strengthening border control or creating the economic conditions to alleviate worklessness what we get are expensive sticking plaster policies that will have zero long term positive effect. We get ‘free’ breakfast clubs for school children when what we should be getting are economic policies that make such clubs unnecessary, we get the splurging of public money on protecting mosques with zero action taken against some of the extremists that preach in or have influence in some mosques. We get pandering instead of a policy that tells the jihadists clearly this far and no further.
I’ve got to take a journey to a now deeply unpleasant part of the United Kingdom soon and before things like the Huntingdon Horror occurred my primary concern would have been the cost of this journey on public transport or finding an affordable parking space at the end of the journey. Now I’m more worried about personal safety and the safety of my family on public transport or on the street where I’m going. Somehow I very much doubt that I’m alone in my particular fears. Terrorism, random madman attacks, sex attacks, too often carried out by those who should never have been allowed into the UK in the first place and general violence and an undercurrent of violence are all contributing to people becoming hyper-vigilant when they are out and about. As someone who has been in situations where hyper-vigilance has been sensible I know that you cannot live like that forever, a decompression break from such conditions is necessary. But the growing hyper-vigilance that people have regarding what they may see as the symptoms of societal collapse is not being punctuated by any break, any sign that things might get better, any shelter from the need to be hyper-vigilant. That sort of thing is not good for an individual and not good for a society.
Societies that are ‘on edge’ and realistically expecting random atrocities carried out by random madmen or ideologues are not healthy ones. They are the sort of insecure societies where anything might happen and probably might. When societies are this much on edge there’s always the possibility of any spark igniting a conflagration that could spiral out of control. The fuel is there and has been stacked up high and all we await is the spark that sets it ablaze. What will this spark be? I don’t know. It could be another terrorist atrocity or another madman or another child killed by gross savagery? At the start of this year I didn’t expect that something as minor in importance as a football match would lead to streets being filled with screaming jihadis and jihad aligned individuals screaming at Jews, which gives some idea how bad things are getting and getting so very swiftly. Stuff that only a year or so ago I would have thought if not impossible but unlikely are now becoming commonplace occurrances. I don’t know what will finally kick things off or who will kick off first but like a lot of people I expect it even though I truly don’t want it to happen. About the only thing I do expect is that any response to things going even worse than they are at the moment from government will either be mostly ineffective or will make things worse.
Britain has become a sick society and it’s been sickened with fear, uncertainty and doubt to a degree unprecedented in my lifetime. How we get out of this situation I really don’t know. But I can’t see things getting any better any time soon. A country on edge is a disaster just waiting to happen. I’m just waiting to see what form that disaster will take.