Are we really ‘Spoilt Brits’?

Chris Fox, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), recently used the pages of a national newspaper to offer his views on the terrorist threat facing the UK. “People have become too comfortable,” said Fox when talking about members of the general public. “They have common sense, but they’ve gradually been weaned away from risk.” Apparently, we’ve become ‘Spoilt Brits’.

The ACPO president was speaking at the launch of a Government booklet entitled ‘Preparing For Emergencies: What You Need To Know’ that’s designed to explain to the populus at large how they might deal with a terror strike or some other type of national emergency on home shores.

At an estimated cost of £8.3 million, Prime Minister Blair has since circulated the booklet to some 25 million homes in the expectation that Joe Public will become well-informed on matters such as First Aid, how to deal with fires, bomb blasts, chemical and biological attacks. Helping us to ‘realise the risks’, if you like.

While I’m happy to digest the content of the booklet and its slogan ‘Go In, Stay In, Tune In’, at the very same time alternative media report that the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force have been hit by Government cuts that will result in – by way of an example – 12 warships and two submarines being taken out of service in the next few years.

Similarly, in July it was reported that the Home Office sunk the recommendation from Essex Police for three new patrol vessels to cover the Thames Estuary and the Essex coastline. Those vessels would have been used to fight the trafficking in drugs and humans that continues to plague this country, while in turn helping in some small way to halt the influx of illegal immigrants and (possibly) terrorists who most likely preferred a boat ride across the English Channel to being cooped up in the back of a cargo container or lorry for hours on end.

Smuggling is fuelling terror

On Sunday 25 July, the BBC2 programme ‘The Underworld Rich List’ investigated how Britain’s most powerful criminals use a variety of tricks to smuggle drugs, cigarettes (in their millions) and fuel oils (between Ireland and Northern Ireland) with impunity, subsequently spending some of the proceeds buying arms and munitions to keep the paramilitaries and criminal Godfathers in the ascendancy.

Much of this contraband is smuggled into a variety of countries in ISO containers, heavy goods vehicles and other transportables including ‘human mules’, yet many of our ports and airports are woefully short of Customs and Excise staff. Some even resort to using “day release prisoners” to make up the numbers (if our national tabloids can be believed, that is).

Al-Qaeda fanatics and Muslim fundamentalists – or whatever politically correct term can be used today for terrorist extremists hell bent on committing atrocities on the scale of 9/11, or worse – dominate the headlines, with warnings of a ‘spectacular’ event being planned, or in some cases frustrated in the final stages by our intelligence service. Details of the planned attacks on the QEII and American conglomerates operating in London are good cases in point. As Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein and IRA infamy once famously quipped: “We have to be lucky once. You must be lucky all of the time.”

The terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington planned with military precision how they would defeat those airports’ security devices, learnt how to fly the aircraft needed and demonstrated their intent without a care for who – and how many – would die on that fateful day. Including themselves as ‘martyrs for the cause’.

Using ships as weapons

In south east Asian waters pirates and/or militant groups are reportedly practising to hijack ships that can then be used as weapons to target major oil storage areas and the like. In particular, the types of vessels singled out are petroleum and gas cargo ships.

At the tail end of May, International Maritime Organisation supremo Efthimos Mitropolous stated that the record rise in the numbers of crew abductions – particularly in the Malacca Strait – could be evidence of terrorists attempting to learn how they might navigate ships and then use them for a maritime attack.

People have become too comfortable. They have common sense, but they’ve gradually been weaned away from risk

CHRIS FOX, PRESIDENT, ASSOCIATION OF CHIEF POLICE OFFICERS

No problem for us, though. It’s quite a few miles away from the UK... unless you’re intent on booking that world cruise in the near future.

So, using the “common sense” that Chris Fox believes I possess, I read with much interest an article that appeared in ‘Vision’, a new business and lifestyle newspaper printed by the Liverpool Daily Post.

From page 19 of the latest edition screams the headline: “Security crackdown”. Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather when it emerged that the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company has just hosted a delegation from Iraq who assessed the Port of Liverpool’s anti-terrorist measures in line with the International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code (‘ICC warns port facilities to comply with ISPS Code’, News Update, Security Management Today, July 2004, p9).

As you might imagine, I was hugely pleased to read that the five-strong delegation from the Iraq Ports Authority “only came to the UK to gain a broad overview of our expertise in port operations and speciality cargo handling”. Also reported was the fact that, while at the Port of Liverpool (‘Vintage Port’, SMT, July 2003, pp22-27), the visitors toured the container terminals and fully inspected the security systems in place before carrying out further meetings. And all of that was sponsored by UK Trade and Investment. Beautiful.

Now, I have no doubt that these delegates were well vetted beforehand by the police or by other agencies upon their arrival (hopefully it wasn’t the same protagonists who vetted Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr). Surely they’ll not reveal any faults or weaknesses at the Port that became apparent to them during the visit as, in perhaps a few months’ time, they await beheading by a masked militant for the benefit of Al-Jazeera Television viewers when the occupying forces eventually depart?

To be honest, I’m also fairly sure that the present Government’s Spin Doctors will see this as a positive act to integrate the people of the future democratic republic in Iraq into the world community – just like Libya, and in future possibly Iran and North Korea – rather than demonise them for the heinous crimes committed by their former leader/dictator.

Port and airport management

While being an abstainer on the political front – all politicians promise much but so few of them deliver, whatever their party leanings – I wonder how, as someone who’s supposedly “weaned away from risk”, I can readily identify that out of the reported 500,000 pen pushers recruited under this Labour Government only 45% are involved in vital front line jobs?

Of that 45%, how many have been deployed to man the UK’s ports and airports, for example, to prevent the terrorists from entering the country, reconnoitring, planning and implementing an attack?

Not to worry, though. The Defence and Intelligence Services Budget will be bigger, and rely more heavily on technology. It will help carry the fight to the terrorist havens (the Human Rights Act permitting, naturally).

Here I sit, then, one of Chris Fox’s mollycoddled adults being milked for Council tax, road tax, income tax, congestion charging... the list goes on.

Meantime, I’m told that police recruitment is on the up (or are the numbers merely being artificially swollen by Community Wardens and Police Community Support Officers?). Crime is either on the wane or rising depending upon who’s speaking at the next session of Parliament. For its part, the security service – in the form of MI5 chief Eliza Manningham-Buller – is appealing for extra vigilance in the fight against terrorism, claiming that it’s not a question of ‘if’ there’ll be a major attack on UK shores but ‘when’.

While this country's leaders allow unwanted outsiders to enter through its porous borders with little or no checks, but at the same time hire hundreds of outreach workers to mollycoddle the population, what can we seriously expect?

Armed with Government research and statistics, managers of the ports and airports recruit individuals who (in many cases) are paid just above the national Minimum Wage. For the most part hugely committed to what they do, these people are constantly frustrated by a lack of resources, under-funding and poor working conditions. Almost on a daily basis they’ll witness the poor response to security at these locations, but are met with indifference and a claim that money is too tight to do anything.

Reports fall on deaf ears

In response to ACPO president Chris Fox, I can obviously see the risks – probably not as clearly as him, however – and can keep my eyes open and report on activity of a suspicious nature.

If a substantial attack on the UK involves either chemical, biological or – God forbid – nuclear weapons, my stock of food, water, candles and a radio with batteries (which Chris believes to be so important, given his comments at the booklet launch) will likely be as much use as dialling 999 when there’s a burglar entering my house. Ask Tony Martin!

There’s probably no doubt that a major terrorist strike will be made on the UK. While this country’s leaders allow unwanted outsiders to enter through its porous borders with little or no checks, but at the same time hire hundreds of outreach workers to mollycoddle the population, what can we seriously expect?

In my readiness to deal with a terrorist attack I “remain alert but not alarmed” (just as Chris would wish). After all, I’m sure there’ll be a plethora of counsellors, litigation experts and others hired by the Emergency Planning Society to deal with the aftermath of any such attack.

That said, the Society’s own John Asquith has claimed in the national media that Britain “scores nine out of ten, or even ten out of ten” for its readiness to deal with an attack. If this is indeed the case, why is it that on a typical Saturday night the police and our hospitals can’t even cope with the aftermath of certain peoples’ average evening out without reaching crisis proportions, and yet they’re apparently quite capable of dealing with a nuclear ‘dirty’ bomb delivered to a dockside in the heart of London or elsewhere?

Even if I do survive, having waited four hours to be treated for chemical burns (as was the case for many volunteers in a recent mock attack staged in Birmingham) by operatives – probably Street Wardens in disguise – in CBRN suits, I’ll then have to wait in the hospital corridor for a few days while they try and find me a bed somewhere.

Couple that with the likelihood of my battered and bruised body being ravaged by the potentially fatal MRSA ‘super bug’ because the pen pushers in Westminster had no money left to pay for cleaning staff and their essential equipment, and it’s plain to see that the true worth of this new Government booklet is placed in proper perspective.

As a favourite newspaper columnist of mine frequently reminds me: “We’re all going to Hell in a handbasket”.

Steve Goodwin MBE is general manager of Widnes-based security contractor Noble Security services (www.noblesecurity.co.uk)