Chapter 4: Londonistan

For decades the word ‘terrorism’ in the UK immediately brought to mind the Troubles — the long-running conflict in Northern Ireland. The region experienced close to 4,000 recorded attacks from 1970 to 2010, resulting in 2,840 known fatalities. During the same period, Irish terrorist groups were responsible for nearly half of 606 recorded attacks on the UK mainland, the remainder of which are attributed to more than 50 other identifiable groups and unknown perpetrators with diverse ideological agendas. Given such a long-standing and formidable threat, British authorities were understandably preoccupied with the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and their contemporaries, and were slow to adjust to the emerging danger posed by Islamist terrorists. It was not that the security services were unaware of the jihadi networks steadily growing in their midst, nor were they oblivious to their connections to militants overseas. But until 2004–2005, no-one truly grasped the extent to which these networks and their violent ideology were becoming ingrained in British communities and turning their venom against Britain itself.