I beg to differ - please do read the
link which was the source of my stats for the Northern Ireland troubles. In 1972, 249 civilians (i.e. not army, not police and not members of any terror group) were killed. In the following four years, the civilian death toll was 119, 192, 174 and 207.
To suggest that these figures are less significant than the Madrid train bomb because each set took 12 months to accumulate, rather than being incurred in any single event, is to wilfully misrepresent the seriousness of the situation in Northern Ireland. The fact that the Troubles occurred over 30 years and generally saw people die in ones, twos and sometimes tens, should not detract in any way from the seriousness of them. There was virtually a civil war on British territory and yet we did not start eroding liberties as we are now doing, or talk about threats to the very fabric of our nation.
As above, this is simply not true. In 1972, the single worst year, while there were 249 civilian deaths, there were 149 police and army deaths and 78 paramilitary deaths. Civilians took more than 50% of the total casualties. Civilians were the single biggest casualty group in 18 of the 29 years for which stats are available on
this site.
IRA warnings were as often as not designed to confuse the security and emergency services, rather than to prevent loss of life. Security establishments were heavily fortified because they were the obvious targets, not because they were the only targets. Again, the statistics prove that soft, civilian targets were most frequently the target of IRA attacks. Canary Wharf, Warrington, Manchester, pubs in Guildford and Birmingham, the Grand Hotel, Brighton, good heavens, 10 Downing Street itself ... need I go on?
There is no 'new breed' of terrorist. Just the same bunch of religious nutters the world has endured throughout history. It so happens that one particular bunch of nutters were fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time - just when an incredibly rich nutter with a grudge against the USA was looking for someone to do his dirty work for him.
The religious nutters may be still less respectful of life and property than were the IRA, but they are not fundamentally cleverer or more powerful. They are more disparate, which might make them harder to catch, but I am confident the security services will catch up with them the way they caught up with the IRA.