Eating soup with a knife
UK Policing isn't prepared for a new age of discontent
England, 2024. Rocks. Sticks. Horses. Fire. Watt Tyler would be familiar with the weaponry of 21st century revolt.
TE Lawrence - ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ - masterminded the Arab revolt against the Turks during the First World War. He described how those tasked with quelling insurgents found ‘war upon rebellion messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife.’ I’m reminded of the phrase whenever I’m asked about policing and counter-extremism.
Why do I mention this in the context of Britain in 2025? I’m not suggesting the UK’s about to experience a revolution, although there’s something in the air. That sensation you sometimes feel before an electrical storm. The frenzy of indignation at Donald Trump’s re-election. Opinion polls indicating an existential threat to the UK’s traditional party of the centre-right. The economy’s tanking, our government’s hopeless and ‘social cohesion’ is increasingly an aspiration rather than reality. It’s an environment ripe for exploitation, by malcontents of every stripe.
For the police, counter-extremism (also known as Domestic Extremism, or DE) is both an art and a science, requiring a detailed understanding of ideologies, communities and individuals. It’s asymmetrical; occasionally the authorities have the upper hand, but often the nimbler DE target enjoys an advantage. It’s also a deeply political area of policing. Disputed. Controversial. Nobody likes the idea of a country spying on its own citizens.
The Security Service, MI5, won’t touch this stuff with a bargepole nowadays. Their plate’s full with counterterrorism and, increasingly, Russian, Chinese and Iranian-linked counterintelligence. And, as we saw with the Rudakabana case, what does or doesn’t constitute ‘terrorism’ has become a thorny issue. DE and terrorism often elide. It creates gaps in the theoretical pavement. Gaps where extremists fester and thrive.
I’ve covered aspects of this elsewhere. Here’s one example. The police, meant to operate without fear or favour, are too often hamstrung by the blobby ghost in the machine - whereas once upon a time it was Reds-under-the-bed conservatism (although, to be fair, there were a few), nowadays it’s social justice ideology. It’s how allegations of two-tier policing move from being a meme to accepted fact.
I recently wrote about the Prevent strategy for UnHerd, after Axel Rudakabana’s guilty plea to the Southport murders. The stabbings sparked serious public disturbances. Disturbances for which the police were often unprepared. The subsequent explanation, of a shadowy right-wing plot, were risible. They were a combination of wishful thinking, spin and displacement activity. Although I’m wary of those who overegg the threat from the far-right, I’m not blind to it either. You can read my take on that here.
Despite Sir Keir Starmer’s now-forgotten idea for a national gendarmerie, which I discuss here, there’s little evidence UK policing is prepared for what I suspect is a new age of discontent. A new, digitally-enabled landscape for counter-extremism and public disorder, more disruptive as 1968 or the early-to-mid 1980s (from Toxteth, to Brixton to the Miner’s Strike). This new age will provide fertile soil for domestic extremism and, yes, terrorism.
The context is sobering; the police are terrible at forward planning, ‘red teaming’ and environmental mapping. Chief officers are too focussed on the news cycle or drippy Home Office Spads whispering in their ears. They have been since the counterterrorism policing machine delegated DE to the margins in the mid-2000s. The Met, for example, dismantled its special branch, handing its work to a series of national units of varying efficacy. As ever, politics, resourcing and chief officer rivalries catapulted DE from where it belonged (locally and regionally) to where it didn’t (in an office block on Victoria Street in central London). I speak as someone who worked on counterterrorism and DE operations, on and off, for over half of my 25-year policing career.
Trump V2.0 and the ‘ascendancy of the global Right?’ The UK’s spikier activists are rubbing their hands together. London’s Mayor seems more interested in hot air than public order policing.
Ah, but what of X and Facebook and the retreat of the fact-checkers? Isn’t this febrile environment really the fault of space-faring social media titans?
No.
It’s a factor, sure. Not the reason. I say this as someone who was a covert internet and open source intelligence (OSINT) investigator. I even worked, briefly, for this lot. My experience was this; Governments (of any political persuasion) and senior police officers aren’t much bothered about freedom of speech, especially when the shit hits the fan. I think social media’s an occasional whipping boy for piss-poor ministers and spineless senior cops.
Having said that, I think the tech giants aren’t entirely blameless - they enjoy power without responsibility, especially when it comes to information-sharing for entirely legitimate law enforcement purposes. Nonetheless, narratives attributing blame for complex problems on simple reasons, be it online opinions or Amazon selling knives, are usually bullshit. Too often, governments are like nervy schoolteachers. One kid misbehaves so the whole class gets detention. Attributing individual responsibility? That means blaming people. It means making judgements and decisions.
Scary.
No, the biggest problem for British policing is squeamishness. What I call the ‘appeasement problem.’ It’s how Prevent ended up as (in the words of Neil Acheson) a ‘safeguarding crèche for unhappy teenagers who were unlikely ever to take up arms’.
It’s a typically British response; dismantle your special branch and turn the investigation of dangerous obsessives into a form of social work. Is there space for multiagency working in this field? Yes. However, it isn’t a replacement. For example, a more muscular version of Prevent would’ve put a target on Rudakabana’s back for repeated police stop and search. He’d have had his ‘fortune read.’ Maybe he’d have been banged up sooner, preferably in a secure hospital. Who knows?
Is this harassment or policing? You decide. Sometimes it’s a fine line. I’d write my decisions down and be judged on them. Quite happily (as I did throughout my service). But that’s just me. A few readers, at this point, might notice something of a dichotomy here. I’m very aware of how, on one hand, I champion freedom of speech and liberty. Then, on the other, I’m advocating investigating people for their political views or actions.
How does that work?
Like everything else, it’s a question of judgement and balance - but not impossible when you factor in the possibility of violence or criminality. Policing forever balances the demands of licence versus restraint. It requires experienced people capable of demonstrating moral courage and working for the greater public interest. As opposed to the interests of noisy pressure groups, thinktanks and self-appointed community leaders. It means police being allowed to genuinely operate without fear or favour - with politicians keeping their noses out of their business.
I’m not suggesting there shouldn’t be oversight - simply that politicians and civil servants (the civil service blob being more influential with the police than politicians could ever dream of) should practice operational independence rather than preach it. This, of course, means senior coppers being fully accountable for their actions (pace the rape gang scandal). Which means them developing vertebrae. Sadly, this requires a level of cultural change beyond the scope of this essay.
These criticisms aren’t simply me being chippy. I’ve sat in meetings with senior officers. I’ve had candid conversations with more than a few. I’ve read reports from Gold Groups. The problems I describe are very, very real. And if I didn’t care? I wouldn’t bother writing about this stuff.
The National Police Chief’s Council - tirelessly changing everything except themselves
And so here we are. The rape gangs scandal. The Southport stabbings and subsequent riots. The sour - no, poisonous, political mood. The organisational inability of our authorities to concentrate on results and not processes. I’d suggest the intelligence gaps in the pavement I mentioned earlier, between terrorism, domestic extremism and radicalisation, have narrowed. The post-9/11 counterterrorism strategies, designed for complex, mass-casualty terror plots, require revision. Systems need streamlining. Vested interests need crushing.
The artificial void between counterterrorism (which the police find sexy) and counterextremism (which the police do not) requires filling. Not narrowing. The entire discipline of DE requires mainstreaming, which means devolution to regional and local level.
Part of the problem is cultural and organisational. After the Met disbanded its special branch, I remember a meeting with our new counterterrorism command (SO15) management. They couldn’t wait to get rid of DE, which they saw as a distraction from the high-octane world of Al-Qaeda (few chief superintendents fly club class to the States for a DE conference). A colleague pointed out the loss of DE would impact on our ‘tribal memory’ of policing the homegrown extremists capable of becoming terrorists (an aside - a point-scoring guvnor pointed out the term ‘tribal memory’ could be construed as being insulting to indigenous peoples. This is the sort of fuckwittery endemic in policing).
We were told to, quite literally, shut the fuck up and get with the program. I transferred to another department. When I returned to SO15, some years later, it was worse.
As for the way forward? There are possibilities. I’ve long noticed the similarities between managing violent, or potentially violent, DE subjects with monitoring convicted paedophiles in the community. I also remember how effective locally-based special branch units were in Northern Ireland during the Troubles - every police station had embedded counterextremism / terrorism intelligence specialists. Then there’s the notion of what police intelligence is and what it requires now.
Before the pearl-clutching starts, I must reiterate; problems like Rudakabana aren’t going away. The current structures aren’t working. What else can we do? Well, I suppose we can continue lobbying the tech titans or blaming Amazon for selling something most kids can grab from a kitchen drawer. Or steal from a shop, because we don’t police shoplifting anymore. We could gaslight the public about the causes of radicalisation and clampdown on freedom of speech. We could continue to slash police budgets and public order capability. We could mercilessly persecute police officers using any sort of force against suspects. We could pump more money into quasi-social work, guaranteed to tickle the tummies of a Labour-voting quangocracy and our academic-dominated counterextremism industry.
Yes, that’ll work, won’t it? And if it doesn’t?
The next time it kicks off, I suppose we can always blame the coppers behind the riot shields.
Blair gvt responded to 9/11 era attacks, the new terrorism, with new strategy, Contest. That was taken by Acpo to allow them to set up National CT Infrastructure which meant end to SB ethicl of specialist experienced intelligence CT officers with careers in countering political violence. CT is a contradiction. Pol don't counter terrorism they react to it, often post event. SB countered terrorism by working to detect and prevent it by knowing and learning about it from those who were closest to it. And from the decades of experience ofvtheir colleagues. The National CT network is a glorified national SO13. Both Blairs and Hayman led the charge, Acpo did the rest.
Box took over the realm of intelligence. After all the Cold War had ended and all those people had nothing to do. So let's get into bed with Whitehall, and hey presto....
When I hear an NPCC rank officer or government minister/senior civil servant say 'look, this stuff is inherently messy, bad people will fall through holes in the system and the risk from people who are mad/sad/bad/offender for a cause will never be entirely eliminated only then will I think we have moved on.
The political/media class operate on the principle that if a bad person does something bad someone in 'authority' must be somehow blameworthy for failing to stop that person. The media/politicians want a single person 'in authority' to pin the blame on. That is easier than saying that this is a complex issue and sometimes people will fall through the net.
The view of a past director of the FBI is that we are now dealing with 'salad bar' extremism whereby individuals will radicalise themselves online and pick from a range of competing ideologies. In short the whole issue is messy and a grey area and we need to pull together intelligence from policing, education, health and other bodies and despite that a bad actor will fall through the gaps. How long before we get a Nazi Marxist radical Islamist environmentalist vegan terrorist?