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By Root 1030 0

is going to be conditional or probationary. Tougher measures will be taken against employers who cynically rely on illegal immigrant labour. Some would like to go further in restricting access to state benefits—it being notable that so many of those plotting to kill people in Britain do not refuse substantial welfare entitlements. Indeed they regard this not only as an entitlement, but as evidence of the decadence they see at the heart of the western European way of life. There should also be a few deft alterations to local law. People deported for terrorist-related offences should be allowed to mount appeals (at their own expense) only after they have been removed from the country. A local Bill of Rights in the UK should override European human rights law, while making it impossible for foreigners to exploit libel laws to quash legitimate inquiry into terrorist finance.

One purpose of these afterthoughts has been to update our current predicament in the global jihadist insurgency. Events in Pakistan or Somalia really do re-impact on Europe or the US, just as events in Europe do on the States and those in the States on Europe. To recall Michael Doran’s concern with advertising branding, I suspect that the bin Laden brand is not what it was in 2001. Perhaps Doran is right to talk too in Churchillian tones of ‘the end of the beginning’. I have left one matter to the end. On 7 July 2005 four Islamist suicide bombers murdered fifty-two people travelling on London’s transport system. The survivors of that mass atrocity are writing accounts of their experiences, which should be part of any history of the most recent terrorist activities, although it sometimes seems that this is an exclusive two-way dialogue between the authorities and Muslim minorities. Actually it is not. Among the best accounts of 7/7 are Canadian journalist Peter Zimonjic’s account of that morning when he embarked on another trip to purgatory on the overcrowded London tube. Within a few minutes, three men blew themselves up on trains packed to capacity which, depending on the line, were between fifteen and seventy feet underground. For those unfamiliar with such journeys, that means about a thousand people jammed noses to armpits in a metal cylinder in tunnels that are so tight it is impossible to walk between the train and the walls. That is bad enough, without some maniac trying to kill you.

The victims on 7/7 included Danny Biddle. He had gone to work reluctantly rather than take the day off because of a bad migraine. He was a couple of seats away from Mohammed Siddique Khan when the latter calmly reached into his rucksack and detonated a powerful bomb. Danny was hurled out of the train into the tunnel. After a few seconds he realised he was in flames, and was thinking ‘Fuck, I’m on fire. Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ His metal watch was burning into his wrist. After some minutes it dawned on him that the leg he was contemplating some way off was his own. It had been blown off at the hip. His right leg had also disintegrated into the shreds of his trousers. His head was both swollen and cut across the entire forehead. An eye was missing. It took forty-five minutes for paramedics to reach him, during which time two strangers managed to stop massive blood loss with primitive tourniquets made from torn-up shirts. There are many academic definitions of terrorism. Try this one:

Danny was certain he was going to die in that tunnel. He looked at Adrian and Lee, shadows fidgeting in the darkness around him, and he thought that these two men, two strangers, were the last people he would ever see. It broke his heart. He was going to die in the dark, with no one who loved him by his side, with no one who knew him even aware of what was happening. The thought terrified him. ‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die,’ he thought. ‘I am twenty-six. I don’t want to die this way. Not like this. I have a lot of things left to do. Not like this, please.’ With the panic came guilt. He was going to leave his fiancee behind, alone without him. For the rest of her life she would have