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Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

My hon. Friend is right. We avoided a backlash against the Irish during the 30 years of terror in which atrocities were carried out. One of the advantages of age—there are many disadvantages, I am sure—is having a pretty long memory. My hon. Friend may remember that after the war there was Jewish terrorism in Palestine rather than Britain. I shall not go into the rights and wrongs of it, but attempts by fascists to create a backlash against Jews did not succeed. Fortunately, in the main we are sensible people and we do not want to create martyrs. We also recognise that when it comes to the IRA or Islamic terrorism—if we can call it such—we want to locate the guilty and not penalise the innocent in any way. Long may that continue to be so. I have a couple of points in conclusion. I believe that it is going to be a long haul against terrorism. The IRA’s murderous campaign lasted some 30 years, but whether the present terrorism will last 30 years I do not know. It would be optimistic to believe that it was going to go away in the next year or two. I do not believe that, because terrorism has worldwide significance and what happens here is undoubtedly connected with events abroad. Adopting a different view would be optimistic, and I believe that we have to be realistic and have the patience to deal with this latest curse.