It’s ridiculous to compare terror to reformist protest

PAUL Pickering (Letters, 25/9) rejects my claims in Quadrant that he draws on British history to defend the Islamist terrorists who carried out the July 7, 2005 London bombings that killed 52 people and injured 700 in the most deadly terrorist attack in British history.

In his contribution to the book Terror: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism, Pickering mounts this defence by comparing the actions of these terrorists sympathetically to the activities of the Chartists, who pursued parliamentary and political reform in the years 1836-48 via a monster petition to parliament; and the Anti-Corn Law League, which promoted the cause of free trade from 1838 to 1846, largely through effective political lobbying.

In his chapter titled “Peaceably if We Can, Forcibly if We Must: Political Violence and Insurrection in Early-Victorian Britain”, Pickering rejects British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s claim that “a passion for liberty anchored in a sense of duty and an intrinsic commitment to tolerance and fair play” runs through British history (p.114), insisting instead that the emphasis should be on the “systematic, willful, insouciant violence ... in the repertoire of British politics” (p.115).

He goes on to claim that the right to resort to violence and terrorism in the pursuit of political objectives remains a part of this “repertoire of politics” in Britain, and that high levels of political violence are legitimate when minority groups feel themselves excluded from the “political nation”.

In the past, he claims, such groups included the Chartists and the Anti-Corn Law League, and now other groups—Islamists and radicalised Muslims—perceive themselves to be excluded and are claiming their legitimate right to use violence and terror. He states explicitly: “Modern Britain now has a ‘democratic deficit’ in relation to a significant minority who feel that they are outside the political nation. At the very least it appears that the political conditions which made the ‘terrorism’ practised by the League and the Chartists seem a viable strategy have been recreated” (p.132; emphasis added).

Consequently, Pickering insists that if he wants an explanation for Islamist terrorism, “Gordon Brown (can readily) find a parallel ... for the four young men (ie, the Islamist terrorists) ... The Chartist years were not that long ago” (p.133).

Unless people are prepared to agree that there is no difference between the Chartists and the Anti-Corn Law League, and al-Qa’ida, then the comparisons Pickering wants to make between murderous contemporary Islamist terrorists and early 19th-century British reformists are quite ridiculous.

Mervyn Bendle
Senior Lecturer in History and Communications, James Cook University
Townsville, Qld