The fatal flaw in ‘see something, say something’

The official review into the Manchester Arena bombing was published this week. Four years after 22 mainly young people were killed at a pop concert, the review by Sir John Saunders reveals a catalogue of failings, as such reviews always do. Yet one failing stood out in particular.

On the night in question the bomber, Salman Abedi, had been standing around the exits to the stadium for over an hour and a quarter. You would have thought that in that time, the sweaty young man with a rucksack might have attracted some attention. And you would be right. A number of people, including security guards hired to protect the venue, expressed alarm about the man struggling to walk because of the weight of his rucksack, which was packed with a 32kg bomb. One, called Kyle Lawler, had the honesty to tell the inquiry about his reaction. He said that he sensed that there was ‘something wrong’ about Abedi. He said that Abedi had ‘a slightly nervous reaction’ when people looked at him and that he ‘seemed fidgety’. Lawler admitted that he wasn’t sure what to do and that although the national terror threat level was at ‘severe’, he knew nothing of any ‘potential attack’.

The report goes on: ‘He [Lawler] stated he was fearful of being branded a racist and would be in trouble if he got it wrong.’ It might be easy to castigate Mr Lawler here. But in truth he only made the same calculation almost any sensible person would make in a similar situation.

One of the mantras of the age of terrorism has been ‘See something, say something’. But as I have often pointed out, if you do ‘see something’ in modern Britain, you would be utterly mad to say something.