You’d think, if they had an actual ‘far-right’ terror plot targeting their beloved Muslims, the UK legacy media would be giddy with excitement. The political class, too, would practically be turning cartwheels. The rozzers would be beside themselves.
They certainly got their hopes up for a few moments. After all, it had everything they could possibly wish for: a ‘right-wing’ group dressed in black and carrying St George’s flags, drones, and a ‘moderate Muslim community gathering’. Then, just as quickly, the whole thing vanished from the news cycle.
So, what really happened?
The innocuous footage of the festival captured by the volunteers was uploaded to the sound of rock anthem Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes. It showed men wearing traditional robes walking between long rows of tents at the British ‘Ijtema’ (Arabic for ‘gathering’) held two weekends ago at the magnificent Shrubland Hall.
British Security Project volunteers had chosen to ‘monitor’ the event organised by the ultra-orthodox Islamic sect Tablighi Jamaat – a movement banned in multiple countries, whose European headquarters is a towering ‘mega mosque’ in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.
Within 24 hours of the drone being flown, Counter Terrorism officers had swooped on British Security Project over an alleged ‘Right-wing terror threat’.
A handful of amateur curtain-twitchers playing weekend warriors, spying on a jihadi mass-meeting. They flew a drone over the big ol’ Islamic knees-down-arse-up in the Suffolk countryside, waved a St George’s flag for the cameras and filmed men in robes wandering between tents. Their sole arsenal was a stun gun and a baton they left in their car.
Cue the full apparatus of the British state descending like a ton of bricks. Twelve arrests. Terrorism Act detentions. The gathering shut down early. Armed officers lining the roads.
After the weekend, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood stood in the House of Commons to praise in the strongest terms the rapid and heavy police response, saying officers had ‘undoubtedly saved lives’.
Don’t think they did, mate. Unless the lives had been threatened by laughing themselves to death.
Still, Starmer and Burnham joined the chorus, solemnly declaring that hatred against Muslims would not be tolerated. It was almost perfect for the establishment narrative.
Almost.
Then reality, that eternal spoilsport, intervened.
Yet within days, all terrorism claims were dropped. ‘We have made extensive inquiries but at this time have found no evidence... linked to the alleged threat,’ was how Commander Helen Flanagan, head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, put it in a terse statement on July 18.
No conspiracy to murder. No foiled massacre. Just a rather clumsy bit of amateur surveillance that the political class had inflated into the far-right equivalent of 9/11 before the facts had time to get their boots on.
And the group they were watching? Not exactly the local Village Green Preservation Society.
With up to 100 million followers across 180 countries, the hardline sect, founded in India in 1926, is now one of the largest in the world. It instructs its adherents to replicate the life of Mohammed to the tiniest degree, even eschewing beds and toothbrushes.
One of its leading lights has helpfully explained that the organisation’s mission is to rescue Muslims from “the culture and civilisation of the Jews, the Christians and [other] enemies of Islam”.
The sect is banned in Saudi Arabia, where ministers have declared it a ‘danger to society’ and ‘one of the gateways to terrorism’. Ditto in Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, which all have reason to be concerned about a rising tide of Islamism, have all declared the organisation a threat to the secular life of their citizens. But not in Britain, where this controversial movement is welcome to rent out our most beautiful stately homes for its private events.
The exquisite timing only makes the farce complete. This entire pantomime played out while the establishment was carefully managing the narrative around the brutal murder of Ann Widdecombe. Local police initially suggested her death was unlikely to be terror-related or political. Only after Reform kicked up a fuss did counter-terror officers get involved. Mahmood used her Commons statement to warn the public against speculation: on the very same day she was breathlessly inventing a far-right plot that never existed.
When the preferred villains are involved, the state moves with theatrical urgency and the politicians reach for the nearest microphone. When the facts refuse to cooperate, the story is quietly dropped and everyone is instructed to move along.
