Janet Daley on De Menezes.

Janet Daley looks at those protesting about the shooting of De Menezes and dosn’t like what she sees.

Then came the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. A tragedy by any standards, his death was a direct consequence of the febrile atmosphere that followed the second terrorist plot that held, as a consequence of its failure, the prospect that four determined killers were still active in the city.

Now it is that death that consumes columns of print and hours of broadcasting debate to the extent that, as some of the July 7 victims’ relatives have noted, the attention of the country has almost completely shifted away from the premeditated murder that struck their families. So why is that? How is it that one wrongful death committed mistakenly by our security forces can obliterate coverage of the greater number of deaths committed intentionally by people openly dedicated to destroying our society? I got the first hint of what was to happen with the de Menezes shooting when amid the flowers on the street memorial to him, there appeared a printed notice likening his death to that of “all the innocent Iraqis who had been killed by the US and Britain”. Ah, I thought, here we go.

The tireless anti-war, anti-American, anti-government operation is moving in. Sure enough, within days we had the entire panoply of a classic operation by the sort of left-wing activists among whom I spent my youth.

The police had not just made a horrific error: they were cast as “executioners” on behalf of a government that was “racist” and determined to persecute anybody who looked vaguely foreign. And further, the confusion and obvious panic that led to misleading official statements after the shooting were part of a sinister cover-up: a conscious plan to deceive the country rather than a shambolic attempt to come to terms with an appalling misjudgment.

I take the point that the shooting is indeed being used by some unsavoury types. I’ve also been quite vocal on the subject myself. Does the fact that (other, for there are those who would consider myself to be unsavoury) those unsavoury types are latching on to the incident mean that I retract my own views? No, it doesn’t.

I still think that the killing by the State of an innocent is worse in many ways than the killing of 52 by religious nutters. The latter we’ve always had with us and always will. The former we have been generally  free of in the UK, other countries not having been so fortunate. And one of the lessons I take from the 20th century is that it is the former that is the biggest danger in the long term.

That the SWP is using the same story to promote their delusions doesn’t change the validity, to me at least, of my own. Yes, I know there are those who disagree but I am still firmly of the opinion (or as some would say, delusion) that a society in which the powers that be claim the power to kill some innocents in order to protect the rest is the beginning of a very slippery slope.

That’s why I want the full investigation (that we do seem to be getting), the full information released, and those who made the decision, the wrong one, to be punished. For if the State takes to itself the power to decide who may live and who may die the least I think we can expect of it is that it is responsible for those decisions.

Update. Gandalf informs the world that I think this way because I am class obsessed. Mhhm Hhhm. Stunning analysis there.