Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott responds to the statement by Home Secretary Amber Rudd in the House of Commons on the recent terror attacks in the UK, June 22,2017. Press Association Wire. All rights reserved.In less than two weeks, Jeremy Corbyn managed to see through (at least) two spectacular achievements. One was a staggering political earthquake, which puts Labour much closer to a parliamentary majority than was ever thought possible. The other was to open up some breathing space in the asphyxiating and toxic public debate about terrorism and counter-terrorism.
In the aftermath of the tragic Manchester attacks, Corbyn emphasised that the War on Terror was not working, that an effective response required a more informed understanding of the causes of terrorism and that this included looking seriously into the government’s foreign policy decisions.
It is no surprise that foreign policy or political and social conditions have stayed out of public debate on terrorism for so long. It may be the sheer shock and consternation that follows terrorist violence. It may be the (false) assumption that talking seriously about the causes of terrorism is to justify it. Or it may be the view that nihilist violence is not something we can, and therefore should, try to understand. But it is also years of repeated counter-terrorism legislation that have kept hammering the point that terrorism is something exogenous rather than endogenous to society and that we can fight it by legislation rather than radical political or social change.
