A Work in Progress: The United Kingdom's Campaign Against Radicalization
Abstract
The United Kingdom (UK) has ample experience of terrorism. Over three thousand people were killed during the thirty-year long campaign by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) for a united Ireland. However, the death toll from a single attack never exceeded twenty-nine and the British public developed a certain stoicism in the face of intermittent bombings in London and other British cities. Like other European separatist groups, PIRA sought to establish legitimacy and broaden support by largely restricting its killings to representatives of the British government, members of the security forces and collaborators. Indiscriminate attacks on civilians were generally avoided and warnings were often sent to the British authorities before bomb attacks on civilian or infrastructure targets. When suicide bombers struck the London transport system without warning on 7 July 2005, killing fifty-two people and injuring over seven hundred, it marked a stark departure from PIRA s methods and highlighted the fact that the UK faced a terrorist threat far more ruthless and dangerous than anything that had preceded it. This paper examines the problem of countering ideological support for terrorism (CIST) in the UK. For convenience, the American acronym CIST is used in the paper, although this is not a common term in the UK. Instead, British officials and commentators normally refer to understanding and combating radicalization. The paper is structured into five parts covering: the ideology of Islamist terrorism; the sources of radicalization; the motivation and background of UK terrorists; British government policies to address radicalization; and the barriers to effective implementation of CIST measures.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 2007
- Accession Number
- ADA478858
Entities
People
- James Wither
Organizations
- George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies