Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Who are you calling a terrorist now?

For the second time in a month unnecessary upset has been caused by the inappropriate use of the term counter terrorism in the context of British law & order

Sir Paul Stephenson, a very down to earth sounding Lancastrian, was explaining to the metropolitan police authority this morning why counter terrorism officers were involved in the arrest of an MP

It is just an organisational thing – the old special branch was merged into the new more macho sounding counter terrorism division. There is no suggestion that the MP was involved with terrorism in any way

But surely there was no need to change the name of Special Branch? That began life in the 19th century as the Special Irish branch, set up to deal with the Fenian threat, so it was countering terrorism from its very inception


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