The convenient fiction of recent days has been that the London suicide bombings of 7/7 were the first in the UK, and never you worry, chaps; the stiff upper lip is back, and we're not going to back down before such terrorism!
Well, actually, chaps, the British have already experienced suicide bombings, and back down they bloody well did.
For back in 1990, the IRA dabbled in suicide bombing, though not quite on the London model, which at least has the merit that that those intending to kill also intend to die: the IRA's variation on the theme was the involuntary suicide bomber. In October 1990, terrorists made poor Patsy Gillespie drive a lorry-bomb into a British army vehicle checkpoint outside Derry city, where it was detonated - presumably by remote control - killing five soldiers.
The afternoon before the attack, a prominent republican and his brother had arrived at the checkpoint, and started shouting and slamming the car-doors. The guard was stood to, which might - had they been interested in such things - have enabled the two men to count the number of soldiers on duty. Needless to say, the attack some hours later was wholly coincidental and utterly unrelated to the events of the afternoon.
That same evening the IRA volunteered another involuntary suicide bomber to enjoy the pleasures of dying for Ireland, when James McEvoy was forced to drive his lorry-bomb to a VCP outside Newry, where it exploded. A young Irish Catholic soldier of the Royal Irish Regiment, Cyril Smith, sacrificed his life saving his comrades.
The Islamic suicide bomber chooses to die, with 74 virgins waiting to tend to his every need. However, Patsy and James had rather more prosaic motives: they were told their families would be butchered unless they obeyed IRA orders. Nothing - apart from a patch of beard - was found of Patsy's body. James, miraculously, survived with extensive injuries, but only briefly: a broken man, he died of "natural causes" a few months later.
So, let us consider. How did the governments of Ireland and Britain treat the organisation which brought the UK its first suicide bombers? Did they sonorously intone about never surrendering to terrorism? Did they hound it to extinction? Did they agree that it must be repressed, whatever the cost, and no matter the means?
No, they did not. Instead, they made the unionist population of Northern Ireland share power with the representatives of the organisation responsible for these suicide bombings. Moreover, the British government unconditionally freed all IRA prisoners and provided the suicide-bomber organisation's representatives with offices in the Palace of Westminster. Why, it even gave the IRA money, though the latter ran - and runs - the largest criminal conspiracy in Ireland.
Did the authors of the UK's first suicide bombings do anything in exchange? Did they declare that their terrorist war was over? Did they cease to recruit and train and organise terrorist operations against the British, or disarm and disband? Absolutely not. Indeed, they systematically broke their word whenever it suited them.
Did nationalist Ireland accordingly shun these killers? No: quite the reverse. There are no more welcome guests in the Department of the Taoiseach than the groomed and grinning reptiles of the IRA. And now, 10 years on, and we're still hearing Government-sponsored bilge about the imminence of IRA decommissioning.
Appeasement is a seamless robe: thus we heard the Taoiseach the other week querulously remind any would-be suicide-bombers that Ireland is non-aligned. Of course - why not? - for non-alignment is the absolute guarantee that you will not be bombed! Bali in Indonesia was not aligned. Tanzania was not aligned. Kenya was not aligned. And that saved them from al-Qaeda terrorist attacks, didn't it? And look at the happy example of Spain, and how it benefited from its gallant de-alignment after the Madrid bombings!
Hold on. Now that I come to think about it, were not hundreds of blameless Indonesians blown apart in Bali? Were not scores of hapless Africans explosively despatched to kingdom come in Nairobi and Dodoma? And Spain's reward for capitulating to al-Qaeda? Why, it is now in a permanent state of terrorist alert.
And so on these islands we have now finally arrived at the time of steel, and the dawn of a long, existential struggle, when we might have to fight tenaciously for western European values of democracy, law, sovereignty and, most of all, tolerance of those of whom we disapprove, but only those who tolerate our disapproval. Or shall we allow the brainless high priests of campus-multiculturalism, with all their blithering mumbo-jumbo, to delude us into tolerating the imams of jihad and mullahs of bigotry? Survival of our culture means that there can be no room for ambiguity, no penumbra between the light of law and the dark of terrorism.
But how can we expect such vital realism from our pathologically Laodicean political class, which did not condemn Trevor Sargent for sharing a platform at an anti-war rally in Dublin last March with people backing the terrorist insurgency against Iraq's democratic government? In other countries such a disgraceful deed would mark the man as a complete knave or an irredeemable buffoon, and either way, utterly unelectable; but here in Appeasement Central, he is actually a party leader.
So in this intellectually and morally enfeebled culture, with those responsible for protecting our Constitution gleefully consorting with its sworn enemies, what meaningful action against terrorism can we seriously expect?