Blunkett and Blair based policing on internet legends

[muriel_volestrangler]

or so Blunkett claims, anyway.

From Blunkett's diary, just serialised on Radio 4:

I spoke to my old school friend, Graham McCreith, and his wife Christine, who live in Vancouver. Christine said that a patient in her physiotherapy clinic had told her a curious story: a relative who'd been in London had found someone's wallet, and having returned it to them, were offered money as a reward. They turned this down, so the owner of the wallet, who was an Arab, said "Well, I've got to do something for you: don't be in London on the eleventh of November". I immediately registered the significance of this - the eleventh of November is Armistice Day, the one day in the year when all leading politicians from the three parties, the Queen, other members of the royal family, and the leading personnel of the armed services are in the same place at the same time - a known time, in central London. I decided that I should at least tell Tony as it was absolutely clear that nobody had fully thought through the significance. We agreed there was no way we could possible cancel Armistice Day, but we were certainly going to have to take increased precautions.
...
Sunday 11th of November: And we've come through Remembrance Sunday safely. All the worry was for nothing, thank God.

Meanwhile, posted on the Snopes "legend debunking site" on the 12th of October 2001:

Origins: The
current wave of "warning terrorists" tales began their lives during the final week of September 2001. (The Birmingham referred to in the first warning is in the United Kingdom and is not any of the many cities of same name in the U.S.A.)

The rumor exists offline too in versions that variously name a number of United Kingdom towns as the one the grateful terrorist cautioned the kindly woman against visiting. Depending on where the rumor is encountered, Coventry, Birmingham, Tamworth, Milton Keynes, and Chester are named as the definitive targets. (Such scares do tend to localize, so someone living in the Birmingham area will likely hear a version that asserts great harm is about to befall Birmingham, as opposed to another town commonly featured in the whisper.) The story always comes from a friend who says he heard it second or third-hand. In true urban lore fashion, the woman who had the encounter with the terrorist is never named; only her experience is described.
...
The West Midlands Police has issued a statement about the rumor, which reads (in part):

This rumour, with an implied security threat, bears all the hallmarks of a so-called "urban myth," having no apparent basis in fact, nor any evidence to support it. West Midlands Police Chief Constable, Sir Edward Crew, has repeated his earlier message that people should be reassured that there is NO intelligence to suggest there is any specific threat to the West Midlands.

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/warning.htm

Snopes notes this kind of story has been around for not just years but centuries, in a specific form such as a warning from an Irishman about a bomb, and more generally as prophesies from strangers to whom kindness is shown.

So the West Midlands Chief Constable knew a baseless rumour when he saw it, but his boss claims to have beefed up security for Remembrance Sunday on the basis of it. I don't know what I would find more appalling - that Blunkett and Blair would actually do that, or that Blunkett would lie about it in his memoir just to spice it up - and then claim that "it was absolutely clear that nobody had fully thought through the significance". That's a slur on the security services - of course they would have realised that security needs to be tight on the occasion, especially in the atmosphere of 2001. But to claim they would have paid attention to a fifth-hand rumour is insulting to them.

[non sociopath skin]

1. If, as Blair, Bush and some of the flakiest of their acolytes claim ...

... their policies are guided by the hand of the Big Politician In The Sky, believing in omens, flukes and premonitions is surely par for the course.

Frightening.

The Skin

[sweetheart]

2. who governs the UK, anyways?

[Briar]

3. This is called listening

and reacting to the concerns of the ordinary person in the street, I fear. Ordinary people in the street think and talk about an awful lot of rubbish, especially when their xenophobic nerve is struck.

[CJCRANE]

4. Blunkett seems very naive.

[LeftishBrit]

5. Reminds me of Nancy Reagan

She used to consult an astrologer about where it was safe for Ronnie to go on which days, and tried to set up his schedule on the basis of the astrologer's predictions - much to the annoyance of his staff members.