How the Call for "No Revenge" Is Made Sleight of Hand for "Defence of Our Way of Life"

Tony Blair had been quick to claim that those responsible for the July 7 bombings acted "in the name of Islam". "We know that these people act in the name of Islam," he said in his televised address. "I think we all know what they are trying to do, they are trying to use the slaughter of innocent people to cow us, to frighten us out of doing the things we want to do, of trying to stop us going about our business as normal as we are entitled to do and they should not and must not succeed."

Blair later vowed to bring to justice those responsible for the attacks. "There will of course now be the most intense police and security service action to make sure we bring those responsible to justice," he said. "When they try to intimidate us, we will not be intimidated, when they seek to change our country, our way of life by these methods, we will not be changed."

The significance of this is that with the saturation reporting of the alleged identity of those who it is said carried out the atrocities, the government and media are pushing a scenario down our throats as though it were hard undisputed fact. Since the four alleged suicide bombers are dead, they cannot put forward any defence. They conveniently also cannot be brought to trial. Where is the caution of sifting through evidence and making a case, which is then examined before a jury? Brian Paddick, deputy assistant commissioner of London police, had originally said, "We are keeping an open mind as to who the perpetrators might be. We have received no claim in terms of who was responsible and so at this time we wouldn't speculate." Now we have abruptly gone from it being said the forensic evidence was being painstakingly gathered and patience is required to an open and shut scenario that four young Muslims from West Yorkshire were the perpetrators.

Thus Tony Blair's premature accusations without evidence against Muslims are being brought to pass. The Queen's breach of protocol with her New Labour speech that no one was going to sway us from following "our way of life" is being brought to pass. The scenario is being set in stone that these were "extremist" Islamic fanatics who are inspired by hatred of "our way of life" and are committing outrages to sway the British people. This is the "clash of civilisations" scenario.

The more the authorities harp on that the people should not carry out "revenge" attacks, the more they are promoting this scenario that Muslims and national minorities from South Asia are the communities against whom "revenge" is due. Of course, this is also done under the guise of separating "extremists" from the majority of those practising Islam, who, the implication is, in fact practise the Christian virtues of "tolerance" and "live and let live".

Thus on the one hand the call for "no revenge" is by sleight of hand transformed into the call for "defence of our way of life", which is part of the attack which has been carried out for some time on immigrants and particularly South Asians to "integrate" into a "British way of life" in order to divert the people from uniting to tackle the problems in society and fighting for the rights of everyone. On the other, by its very insistence, and in conjunction with the government's focus right from the outset on "Islamic extremists", it is itself an incitement, a green light, for the very attacks it purports to be opposing. The whole outrage is being manipulated to set the people against each other, to inculcate suspicion, and to divert the mass of the people from their growing opposition to the programme of the state for fascism and war, for oppression, exploitation and a world subject to the domination of the monopolies. It is being manipulated to psychologically bludgeon the people from becoming aware of the context in which the atrocities took place.

The scenario which the government and monopoly-controlled media are promoting to the exclusion of all others cannot be accepted. The hands of the state are not clean, but as they are stained in the blood of the Iraqi people at present, so too, history shows, are they also stained with the blood of innocent civilians domestically. The state chooses its targets and mercilessly pursues them. The working class and people must heighten their vigilance and strengthen their unity against the reactionary outrages the imperialists are committing at home and abroad.