Leo Marsh

The recent events in London are provoking a wide range of reactions. I heard ‘Any Questions?’ on Radio 4 this week. It featured people who thought that if the police need to detain suspects for up to three months without charge, they should be allowed to do so. If they didn’t need more than the 21 days they have currently – 21 days, mind – they wouldn’t ask for it, would they, the argument ran. They know what they’re doing.

Well, the mistaken suspect who was shot and killed gives one cause to doubt. It seems to me that he panicked, and the police did, too. Eight shots, seven of them to the head, does not sound to me like the response of people calm and in control.

But as I say, the reactions are wide-ranging. At one end, the Sunday Express says the accidental shooting was all the terrorists’ fault. Also, Sir John Stevens, former head of Scotland Yard, says his heart goes out to the police gunman.

Someone put this on the BBC message board: ‘If a guy who fits the profile of a terrorist is running through a subway station and does not obey orders to stop then lethal force is completely justifiable.’ A quite astonishing comment.

But in Pakistan, a well-educated family interviewed for Radio 4 at the weekend said that Britain is reaping what it sowed by invading Iraq. “The public reaction in Britain is disproportionate,” the wife of the family also said. “There were only 50 deaths.” “ONLY 50 deaths?” asked the incredulous interviewer. “There were 56.” “50, 56,” the woman said. “It is not a big number. Not when compared to the numbers of people being killed in Iraq every day.”

“The people killed in the Middle East are Moslems,” her husband said. “Moslem deaths are not as significant as those of non-Moslems. Moslem victims don’t have names.”

The old man of the family, a retired colonel, said that Ken Livingstone was the only western commentator he’d heard who pointed out that the West was reaping what it sowed in another sense: in the sense that in the 80s, it recruited Osama bin Laden and people like him, trained him and gave him weapons, so that he could provide guerrilla support in the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The West should not be surprised, he said, that guerrillas such as these should turn on them.

This family has a point, of course. In fact, several well-made points. But, such is the mood in Britain right now, and such is the understandable horror at these events, that few people will regard them as anything other than cynical.

I think that’s a shame. I think it’s useful to see things from different perspectives. So, wherever you’re reading this, and especially if you’re abroad, I’d be interested to hear what local opinions are as to the events here in London.