FOCUS ON TRANSNATIONAL TERRORISM: A Global Response to Terrorism
Feb 2006, Vol. 151, No. 1
By Jack Straw
Terrorism is not new; nor is it new to Britain. In the great medieval chamber of Westminster Hall, they have just taken down the exhibition marking the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder plot. Read the Hansard records of 1853 and you will find my predecessor as Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary, Lord Palmerston, defending the seizure of a stockpile of 'war rockets' from a warehouse in Southwark – allegedly intended for use against the Austro-Hungarian imperial family. And no one in this country will forget the decades of terrorist attacks carried out by the Provisional IRA. In fact, it was from a white van parked just outside RUSI that the Provisional IRA launched three mortars at Downing Street. Had they been just ten metres more accurate, they would have wiped out the entire Cabinet. It was the second time that PIRA had attempted to destroy that democratically-elected Government. I do not, then, underestimate the threat we have faced in the past. But what we have seen develop over the last decade is of a different order of magnitude to previous domestic and international terrorism. It combines global ambition, global reach and powerful means in an unprecedented way.
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By Jack Straw
Terrorism is not new; nor is it new to Britain. In the great medieval chamber of Westminster Hall, they have just taken down the exhibition marking the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder plot. Read the Hansard records of 1853 and you will find my predecessor as Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary, Lord Palmerston, defending the seizure of a stockpile of 'war rockets' from a warehouse in Southwark – allegedly intended for use against the Austro-Hungarian imperial family. And no one in this country will forget the decades of terrorist attacks carried out by the Provisional IRA. In fact, it was from a white van parked just outside RUSI that the Provisional IRA launched three mortars at Downing Street. Had they been just ten metres more accurate, they would have wiped out the entire Cabinet. It was the second time that PIRA had attempted to destroy that democratically-elected Government. I do not, then, underestimate the threat we have faced in the past. But what we have seen develop over the last decade is of a different order of magnitude to previous domestic and international terrorism. It combines global ambition, global reach and powerful means in an unprecedented way.
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