You may have seen some of the truly odious billboards that the police have scattered around the United Kingdom encouraging people to rat on their neighbours if, for example, you aren’t familiar with what they’re putting in their bins. Or you don’t like the fact that all the men in the house next door wear beards and go to the mosque on Friday. Or they keep to themselves so they must be terrorists. Or something.
I was wondering when someone would put up a site allowing you to put your own slogan on the billboard—and now someone has.
Here’s my take.
I think the initiative is a great idea, providing it isn’t trivilised or abused in the way you suggested.
It’s a bit like ratting on benefit cheats isn’t it? Only with terrorists, lives could be saved. I think it’s far better to have eyes and ears of the public, as opposed to police-state type surveillance. To be honest, I am deeply suspicious of those wearing Taliban-style beards. But it doesn’t mean I’d automatically report them to the police.
There are many difficulties with such an advertising campaign.
First, people have various reasons for ratting on their neighbours. Not all of them are connected with terrorism. If someone doesn’t like the cut of their neighbours’ jibs, they may just report their suspicions in order to make trouble. This is an old British pastime which mostly comes out in court fights over hedges that encroach on their neighbour’s property. Encouraging this will end up with lynch mobs armed with torches and pitchforks. The paediatrician down South who was driven away when people mistook her for a “paedophile” is a good example of this.
Second, the communities where such surveillance and “ratting” techniques would be most useful will feel embattled and even less likely to inform on their neighbours. They will draw in on themselves and show a (perhaps misguided) sense of solidarity with their neighbours, whether they have “terrorist” sympathies or not.
The way to deal with terrorism is to strengthen the community bonds among all communities, not just “British” communities. Make it clear that we’re all in this together. Encourage newcomers to embrace shared British values of fair play, independence, responsibility, and political activity. This, more than anything, will defeat the terrorists before they can get a toehold here. It requires intense efforts in schools to capture and hold the minds of young people.
Second, there needs to be better vetting of people who are coming here for studies. Pakistan has offered its help in vetting prospective students: perhaps we should take them up on their offer, while cross-checking what vetting is done.
Third: ensure that imams and other foreign religious leaders know English and can preach in it, are in broad agreement with British values, and are willing to publicly recommend those values to their congregations.
This all reminds me of something that was said by Willie “Every Prime Minister needs a Willie” Whitelaw when he was Home Secretary. “Every time there was a crisis in crime, the police would come to me and ask for more powers. I would send them packing, and they would cheerfully admit that they were trying it on.” Our current government has never, to my knowledge, refused anything that the police want to be able to do, and look where it’s gotten us. We are now a police state. Our computer interactions are kept for a year and the state and police can rummage through them at will. However, if we wanted to rumnmage through an MP or minister’s expenses, they bleat that they are private.
This is not limited to Britain, by the way. A week after 9/11, in the police log of my home town in Massachusetts, one report was “Five bearded men seen walking down the street. Investigated.” Perhaps there were a group of Amish men visiting town.
I appreciate your points. However, you can’t deny peoples’ natural feelings. Of course bearded men shouldn’t be persecuted. Luckily most of us know that. The reverse of this I suggest is the Asian community denying the existence of radicals in their midst, possibly exploiting those communities. I’m afraid the benefit of doubt is over, ever since London’s 7/7.
As far as I’m concerned, Pakistan has become a breeding ground for extremist terrorists, all under the cloak of religion (i.e madrassas). Quite frankly, that’s their problem. But if they are imported over here, then we the public need to rat on them, definitely. If my neighbour – whether they wear beards or not – suddenly stock up on tonnes of ammonia “fertiliser”, I’m not going to wait till that bomb goes off in a shopping centre before I go to the police!