On the anniversary of the 11 September attacks, Britain has learned just how close it came to its own version. The trial of the Heathrow plotters, three of whom were convicted this week, shows how developed the jihadi menace had become in our country. They planned to bring down six aircraft, in all likelihood killing far more than the 3,017 slain in New York and Washington eight years ago. Given how many of the perpetrators would have been British, it would have been calamitous not just for Britain’s trade but for our reputation in the world.
The trial threw up many sobering facts. Britain has, for reasons which we still struggle to understand, the biggest Muslim extremist problem in Europe. Whatever France’s trouble with Algeria-related terrorism, there is no continental equivalent to the suburbs of Birmingham and Leeds, which seem to have become Petri dishes for terrorism. Rashid Rauf, the Birmingham-bred co-ordinator of the attacks, was part of a very British phenomenon — one that was not fully recognised by our government even after the destruction of the Twin Towers.
At the time, the police and security services feared that the sheer volume of British extremism would overwhelm them and that it would only be a matter of time before the next Heathrow-style plot succeeded.
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