Ian Acheson

Sinn Fein is not a normal political party. Don’t take my word for it, the charge is laid by the Irish Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, in his frequent clashes with the party’s leader Mary Lou McDonald in the Irish parliament. The Shinners smell power in the South. According to the latest polls they are the most popular party in the Republic of Ireland. Meanwhile the Irish political ruling class have long disdained Sinn Fein, a party that sees itself as the authentic inheritor of the 1916 uprising that ejected Britain from most of Ireland. But Sinn Fein shouldn’t be let off the hook for their unrepented and inextricable links to the Provisional IRA who, above all other combatants, perverted the cause of Irish unity with 30 years of sectarian slaughter.

Jonathan Hall QC, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, has launched an inquiry into how our prison service is managing the threat posed by terrorism. The backdrop to his review is the rapidly accumulating evidence that, across our penal system, violent extremism has increased its grip resulting in outrageous attacks on either side of the prison walls. In an interview with the Times, Hall said he found it ‘astonishing’ that convicted terrorists, far from being at risk from other vengeful inmates, achieve iconic status. This is not astonishing for those of us who have been writing and arguing for some years about the need for a transformed response to jail extremism that goes beyond benign containment.

Is it possible to 'deradicalise' terrorists? Jonathan Hall QC, the government's terror watchdog, doesn’t think so. He may have a point, but it’s complicated. One of the institutional problems we have is a sort of misplaced arrogance based, in part, on the historic experience of counter-insurgency against violent Irish republicans. Until quite recently, the Ministry of Justice press office referred to our prison deradicalisation processes as ‘world-class.’ Hall himself only recently began looking at our distinctly Heath-Robinson terrorist risk management ‘system’ after London Bridge killer Usman Khan ran rings around it.

Use of force isn't like the movies. It’s often messy, frightening and it can go sideways very quickly. I vividly remember my first arrest as a volunteer police officer, surrounded by jeering teenagers in a seaside amusement arcade wrestling on the ground with a completely non-compliant powerfully built kid. When we eventually got the cuffs on him, it turned out he was deaf and most of his resistance was because he couldn’t understand my repeated attempts to negotiate with him.  As head of security at HMP Wandsworth, I recall standing in the centre supervising an entirely correct and proportionate restraint and relocation of a prisoner. All the staff were white. The assailant, bowed double, handcuffed, bellowing with rage and distress, was black.

This weekend is the first anniversary of the London Bridge attack. Usman Khan murdered two young people at an event he was invited to, run by the ‘Learning Together’ scheme, which is part of the University of Cambridge. The conference was designed to celebrate the achievements of people like Khan who had joined the course while serving in high-security HMP Whitemoor. Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt were stabbed to death by the dedicated Islamist, supposedly on community supervision nearly a year after being released from prison for terrorism crimes. Twelve months later, are we any closer to understanding that fatal convergence of perpetrator and victims?

Given recent stories about the police putting your door in if you have more than six people over on Christmas day, it seems almost quaint to be talking about Stop and Search as an abuse of state power. Yet the release of statistics this week that show black people are nine times more likely to have this power used against them in the street, ought to give us pause for thought. Stop and Search is an unavoidably intrusive state activity. You can be stopped by the police if they have a reasonable suspicion that you have illicit items in your possession, such as guns, drugs or equipment to be used in a burglary. When stopped, you are asked to account for your movements and a search of your outer clothing takes place.

Is the British countryside racist? BBC Countryfile presenter Ellie Harrison thinks so. 'Even a single racist event means there is work to do,' she said. 'In asking whether the countryside is racist, then yes it is; but asking if it’s more racist than anywhere else — maybe, maybe not.' As a native Northern Irishman who has been warmly welcomed on the fringes of southern England’s Big Empty, Dartmoor, I don't agree. It's sadly true, as Harrison points out, that there are racists everywhere in life. There are homophobes, misogynists and all sorts of intolerant people often hiding in plain sight. But these people are in the minority. And that includes in the countryside. So Harrison's performative shaming will achieve little.

Later today, two men will be sentenced for their part in the attempted murder of a prison officer at high security HMP Whitemoor in January 2020. Unfortunately, extreme violence against the men and women who put on the uniform has become almost normalised in a system beset with squalor, overcrowding and unchecked predatory behaviour. Even so, the particular characteristics of this incident are of huge concern. The two prisoners were charged under terrorism legislation.

The wheels of justice have, for once, turned with decent haste and Andrew Banks is now banged up. Banks's crime? To relieve himself at Saturday's demonstration just inches away from the memorial of PC Keith Palmer, who was murdered trying to prevent an Islamist terrorist gain access to Parliament in 2017. The contrast between supreme sacrifice and supreme idiocy can hardly be greater. My reaction, like those of many others was repulsion at what looked like a disgusting act of desecration.  Westminster Magistrates' Court was told that Banks had consumed 16 pints, hadn’t slept, didn’t notice PC Palmer's memorial and was in London to ‘defend statues’ but he couldn’t say which ones.