We’re only interested in the sort of terrorism that suits our paranoia, says matthew carr
last week when two men appeared separately in Burnley Magistrates’ Court, charged under the 1883 Explosive Substances Act with possession of an explosive substance for an illegal purpose.
One of the accused was a BNP council candidate in last May’s local elections in Colne, named Robert Cottage. In a raid on his house, police found what they called “the largest amount of chemical explosives of this type ever found in this country”.
The other was a retired dentist named David Jackson, who was allegedly found in possession of a rocket launcher and a nuclear biological protection suit.
Both men were accused by the prosecution of common involvement in “some kind of masterplan”. What this masterplan consisted of is not yet known. Nor has the identity of the 22 chemical compounds found by police been revealed.
But what is striking about their court appearance (they were remanded until October 23) is the failure of any mainstream newspaper or media outlet to report it at all.
It is not difficult to imagine what the response might have been had two Muslims been involved. There would have been banner headlines, police statements celebrating the prevention of another apocalyptic plot, suggestions of a wider conspiracy with nebulous ‘linkages’ to al-Qaeda. There would have been a collective shudder at another averted outrage, experts holding forth on the dangers of dirty bombs and homemade WMD. There would have been warnings of the ongoing threat to our ‘values’. Above all, there would have been fear, all of it magnified by a credulous media, fed by inside information from nameless intelligence sources.
Instead there was total silence. In a week dominated by Muslim ‘stories’ in which veiled women and an unpleasant taxi driver constituted evidence of the alien, dangerous subculture in our midst, two white men accused of having explosives, a nuclear protection suit and a ‘masterplan’ fell outside the frame of the ‘war on terror’ and therefore did not get mentioned beyond local papers.”
