Editorial

Homegrown Terrorists

THE FACT that all those arrested in Britain on suspicion of planning to blow up airliners bound for America using liquid explosives were British born themselves has led to much comment.

It is horrifying to contemplate that the best such young British people could make out of their lives was the ambition to blow themselves up on a plane along with hundreds of their fellow citizens.

What level of hopelessness would have to be present to take such steps? Indeed, what incredible sense of alienation from society as a whole has to be present to even contemplate such an atrocity?

It is not surprising though. While the United States and Britain share many features in common, the class ridden society in Britain ensures that many of its citizens will always lack the dream of reaching the very highest levels of achievement.

Put simply they are put in a box from an early age and rarely allowed to rise above their station. If they happen to be sons of immigrants from countries such as Pakistan, there is even less hope of them breaking out of the Where every American is brought up to believe in the American dream, the British dream is simply unattainable for millions of their citizens The rigid class structure and old boy network too often sees to that.

The class structures, where for instance, almost every Prime Minister essentially has either attended Oxford or Cambridge(John Major was an exception) , or has family lineage that ensures a successful career in the law, politics or business has no counterpart in America.

In addition, the pride in being British, once such a feature of the old empire has begun to dissipate. Ironically, it is only in Northern Ireland you will find an intense need to identify with the British state among the unionists there. For most living in Britain it has become an empty shell.

Perhaps that is inevitable in the modern world, where a sense of nationalism is often frowned on. But unfortunately, there are those in Britain and indeed in many other European countries who capitalize on that lack of national identity and seek to replace it with fervor of an entirely different kind

One never hears of Pakistani British or Irish British as you would naturally hear about Irish Americans or Italian Americans. Those concepts simply do not exist in Britain, where any attempt at retaining ethnic identity is regarded with grave suspicion by the powers that be -with good reason as any such alternate centers of identity would threaten the whole structure of power.

Britain has never had a successful democratic revolution of course, and it is historically a very short time since an absolute monarch ruled their empire so the sense of entitlement among the ruling class still runs very deep. Royalty lords, Ladies, knights and dames still populate the upper echelon of almost every commercial and social activity, there is a far greater gulf in class terms between them and the lowest strata in society.

America has it lucky in that respect. The sense of the American dream being for everyone who wants to take a shot is very real, the notion that you have to climb over some titled folks on your way to the top is non existent. Yes, America has its class strictures and old boy networks, but the country is so huge, the economy so vast that there is more than ample opportunity for those who strive to get to the top.

The disaffected youth who made up the terror gang in Britain were symptomatic of many of the problems of the British state. Thankfully they were caught before they had the opportunity to carry out their dreadful deeds. What is unresolved though, is the nature of the world that created them and the need for more democratic change.