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Extremism, Radicalization and
Security
 Julian Richards

Extremism,
Radicalization and
Security
An Identity Theory Approach
Julian Richards
University of Buckingham
Buckingham, United Kingdom

ISBN 978-3-319-55202-6 ISBN 978-3-319-55203-3 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-55203-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940279

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

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For Lynne
 PREFACE

The year in which this book was written was a truly extraordinary one in
politics and society. In Britain, a long and bitter campaign leading up to
the referendum on whether to leave or remain in the European Union
(EU) – a campaign which seemed to be based as much on myth as on any
solid fact on both sides of the debate – culminated in a seismic shock to the
political and economic establishment with a decision by a majority of the
voting public to remove the country from the Union. The campaign
managed to turn politics on its head and deliver complex alliances that
rode roughshod over traditional party boundaries. As far as Britain was
concerned, if there was any doubt that postmodern and postmaterialist
politics had resolutely arrived, it was dispelled during 2016.
On a much darker note, the referendum campaign had also seen the
murder of the Labour MP, Jo Cox, by a man supporting Far Right
ideology; the first time a sitting MP had been killed in Britain for more
than twenty-five years. The period before and after the June 2016 refer-
endum was also marked by an upsurge in abuse and intimidation directed
at immigrant communities and ethnic minorities, some of it at a very
serious level. It seemed as if the overthrow of traditional politics was
revealing a dark underbelly of us/them intersubjective politics, with all
its attendant security concerns.
Such a populist political wave and its accompanying acrimonious rheto-
ric have been repeated across many parts of the world, as evidenced by the
election of Donald Trump; a fitting finale to a most surprising year in
world politics.

vii
viii PREFACE

While all this was happening, many parts of Europe continued to

experience a number of serious terrorist attacks, many of which seem to
masquerade under the banner of a zero-sum sectarian ideology. Many of
these incidents are bound-up in the ongoing maelstrom of politics in the
Middle East, and in the intractable conflict in Iraq and Syria, but there is
also an apparent ideological underpinning in the shape of rejectionist us/
them discourse. This seems to strike at the very heart of European and
Western identity.
All these security concerns and developments come together in the
question of why selected individuals in our society choose to turn to
extreme violence against their neighbours as a way forward.
This book attempts to address this question by adopting a theoretical
approach rooted in matters of identity.
Clearly for some, identity theory is an unhelpful deflection from the
deeper structural questions of socio-economic and political inequity in
society. Some will even suggest that to consider individual motivations in
violent attacks somehow opens the door to a moral justification for
terrorism. Instead, argue such critics, we should be focusing squarely on
the top-down effects of radical and extreme ideology.
The argument presented in this book, however, is that an identity-
based approach that begins with a bottom-up analysis of why individuals
may be motivated to turn to violence is not only of critical utility for
observers and policy-makers alike, but seems to be becoming ever more
prescient in an environment of heightened identity politics in contempor-
ary society.
Within such a thesis, this book takes the view that identities are social
and political constructions based as much on myth as on any reality. This
allows for a detailed and critical look at discourses across different realms
of identity politics and commentary, and a deeper understanding of the
way in which identity is manipulated and shaped to pursue political
agendas.
The case study of Britain is the centre of focus in this book, but this
absolutely does not exclude the significance of other environments and
societies when considering questions of identity and security. Frequent
reference is made in this book to parallel and contrasting factors in other
contexts outside of Britain, with the overall aim of encouraging further
research and assisting our collective understanding. Indeed, promoting
such a comparative analysis is one of the central aims of this book.
 PREFACE ix

A further key factor is the question of policy decisions and approaches

which flow from the academic debates and critiques. I often say to my own
students that they must always consider the “so what?” question in their
analysis. What I mean by this is that, while it is interesting to debate
particular moral, ethical or political questions, what should the people
paid to translate these into sensible policy do with our money? This book
asks such questions in the context of the British policy experience, not
least since British counter-terrorism and counter-extremism policy have
been uniquely bound-up in questions of “suspect communities” and
“threats within”. Such controversies and debates are explored in this
analysis, again with the aim of stimulating similar discussions across a
variety of environments.
Some of the critical strands of research in this area have suggested that
much academic debate and indeed government policy have been based on
limited empirical data. This book somewhat rejects such a charge in its
entirety, but does acknowledge that we are a long way from having
conducted anything like enough empirical research on how an individual’s
identity is shaped and formed; and what the link is between identity and
security in our societies. The answers to such questions remain of the
highest significance in social studies and policy development, and it is
hoped that this book generates at least some further steps towards an
understanding.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

An undertaking of this complexity is not possible without the help and

advice of a good many friends and colleagues. There are many people to
thank for helping me to complete this task.
First and foremost are my parents, without whose bedrock of support
and encouragement through the years, I would never have had the
strength and self-belief to take on the challenges. You have always
shown me what is right and wrong, and your support has been of incalcul-
able value. Particular thanks go to my father, whose self-confessed pedan-
try was completely invaluable when reviewing first drafts. You worked so
hard and it helped so much.
My friends and colleagues at the University of Buckingham have also
been of enormous support and deserve great thanks. Together, you have
provided the intellectual and emotional environment that allowed me to
formulate my ideas and develop my narrative. I greatly enjoyed my fre-
quent and often intriguing debates and discussions with Steffi about
human agency in violence, which were always conducted with the greatest
respect and understanding, even if we did not always agree! And of course,
Anthony has remained a tower of strength, support, encouragement and
advice, fashioned from years of invaluable experience. It is difficult to
quantify the significance of your advice and support and I remain so
grateful for them.
Similarly, all the students with whom I have had the honour and
pleasure to debate these issues over recent years, deserve enormous thanks,
even if they are too numerous to name. I have learnt as much from you as I
hope you have learnt from me.

xi
xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Great thanks go to Sarah Roughley (for starting me on this track) and

Samantha Sneddon at Palgrave Macmillan, who have shown the sort of
professionalism and good grace that I have come to expect from such a
prestigious publisher. Many thanks go to both for providing the oppor-
tunity and helping me to deliver it with such consummate expertise and
support.
My family deserve enormous thanks for helping the shoulder the phy-
sical burden of the writer, manifested in endless understanding about lost
time, and endless support and encouragement for the results. You have
always been my biggest and most loyal fans, and I cannot thank you
enough.
At the pinnacle of my thanks can be found my wonderful wife, to whom
this book is dedicated. Your fundamental belief and good cheer in guiding
me through this process has meant more to me than can ever be
quantified.
There are doubtless numerous others who have helped and deserve
thanks, not least the subjects of my interviews and focus groups, here and
abroad. Many of you cannot be named, but that does not detract from the
fact that I remain so enormously grateful for the insights you gave and the
light you shed. Without your help, it is quite clear that none of this could
have happened.
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Identity and the British Case Study 3
1.3 Globalization and Extremism 8
1.4 Threat and Myth 10
1.5 Questions of Defining “Radical” and “Extreme” 16
References 23

Section I Identity, Extremism, Radicalization, Terrorism

2 Intersections Between Identity and Security 29

2.1 Introduction 29
2.2 Identity Theory 33
2.3 Primordialism versus Circumstantialism 41
2.4 History, Myth and Politics 43
2.5 Performing Identity: Hijabs and Beards 45
2.6 Conclusions 50
Note 51
References 51

3 Radicalization, Extremism, Terrorism 55

3.1 Introduction 55
3.2 Conceptual Critiques 57

xiii
xiv CONTENTS

3.3 State Approaches 60

3.4 Islamism and Islamophobia 62
3.5 Radicalization Models 68
3.6 Policy, Institutional and Bureaucratic Factors 71
3.7 Conclusions 73
Note 77
References 77

4 Reactive Identity Movements 81

4.1 Introduction 81
4.2 Identity Politics 83
4.3 Reactive and Identity Politics in the Postmaterialist Era 84
4.4 Structural Factors 89
4.5 Micro-level and Psychological Perspectives 93
4.6 Case Study: The English Defence League (EDL) 96
4.7 The EDL: Organization and Rhetoric 99
4.8 Conclusions 106
Notes 108
References 108

Section II State, Society, Narrative, Political Myth

5 Political Myth and Discourse Analysis in Security 115

5.1 Introduction 115
5.2 Political Myth 117
5.3 Identity and the West 121
5.4 Political Myth and Islam 125
5.5 Political Myth and the “War on Terror” 131
5.6 Conclusions 135
Note 137
References 137

6 Identity and Security Narratives in Contemporary Britain 141

6.1 Introduction 141
6.2 Government Strategy and Discourse Analysis 143
6.3 Case Studies 147
 CONTENTS xv

6.3.1 Case Study 1: Prime Minister’s Speech on

“Extremism” 148
6.3.2 Case Study 2: Hizb-ut Tahrir Press Release
on David Cameron’s Counter-Extremism Strategy 154
6.3.3 Case Study 3: English Defence League (EDL)
Media Announcement, August 2016 159
6.4 Conclusions 166
Notes 169
References 169

7 State Policy and Strategy: Prevent, “Multi-agency”

Responses, and the Way Forward 173
7.1 Introduction 173
7.2 Counter-Terrorism Legislation in Britain: A History 175
7.2.1 Northern Ireland 175
7.2.2 After the Troubles 179
7.2.3 Prevent 180
7.3 Channel 188
7.4 Counter Extremism Policy 192
7.5 Conclusions 195
Notes 198
References 199

8 Conclusions 203
Notes 222
References 222

Index 225
 ABBREVIATIONS

ACT Affect Control Theory

AfD Alternatif für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany)
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BFP British Freedom Party
BNP British National Party
CAIN Conflict Archive on the Internet
CESB Counter Extremism and Safeguarding Bill
CIRA Continuity Irish Republican Army
CNN Central News Network
CONTEST Counter Terrorism Strategy
CTSA Counter Terrorism and Security Act
DG Director-General
DPP Danish People’s Party
EDL English Defence League
ETA Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Country and Freedom)
EU European Union
FGM Female Genital Mutilation
FPŐ Freiheitliche Partei Ősterreichs (Freedom Party of Austria)
FOIR Freedom of Information Request
GWOT Global War on Terror
HUT Hizb-ut Tahrir (Party of Liberation)
ICSR International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political
Violence
ICT Identity Control Theory
IRA Irish Republican Army
IS Islamic State
ISIS Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shaam (Syria)
JIC Joint Intelligence Committee

xvii
xviii ABBREVIATIONS

LeT Lashkar-e Toiba (Army of the Pure)

M5S Movimento 5 Stelle (Five Star Movement)
MAPPA Multi-Agency Police Protection Arrangements
MASH Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub
MI5 Security Service (Britain)
MQM Mohajir Qaumi Mahaz (Mohajir National Movement)
MP Member of Parliament
NF National Front
NI35 National Indicator 35
NPCC National Police Chiefs’ Council
NUS National Union of Students
NYPD New York Police Department
PEO Prevent Engagement Officer
PSNI Police Service of Northern Ireland
PTA Prevention of Terrorism Act
PVE Preventing Violent Extremism
PVV Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom)
RAF Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction)
RIRA Real Irish Republican Army
RUC Royal Ulster Constabulary
SNP Scottish National Party
SVP Schweizerische Volkspartei (Swiss People’s Party)
TACT Terrorism Act
TPIM Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measure
UAF United Against Fascism
UK United Kingdom
UKIP United Kingdom Independence Party
US United States
WMD Weapons of Mass Destruction
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.1 INTRODUCTION
It seems clear in the twenty-first century that, when considering security,
the question of identity has become an inescapable component of the
picture. In attempting to simplify increasingly complex narratives in a
globalizing world, politicians, journalists and citizens in general will often
try to explain the troubling scene before them by “othering” a particular
group, and drawing a distinction between that group and themselves.
Trying to understand complex problems is, of course, an entirely
natural pursuit. Human beings, as the psychologist Daniel Kahneman
(2012) observed, have a natural and powerful desire to make sense of
the world before them by developing a story that links pieces of informa-
tion together into causal inferences. That is how conspiracy theories
develop and become so popular in some parts of society, and, perhaps
more controversially, how religions have developed to help people make
sense of events that might otherwise seem inexplicable.
Alongside attempts to explain the human condition, however, society
has also seen far too many episodes in which a perceived security threat or
problem in society has been met with an industrial-scale othering of a
whole community. From the Jews in 1930s Germany to the Tutsis in
1990s Rwanda, not to mention countless other episodes of sectarianism
and ethnic oppression, we can see that identity politics sometimes become
inextricably linked with conceptualizations of security threats and how to
respond to them.

© The Author(s) 2017 1

J. Richards, Extremism, Radicalization and Security,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-55203-3_1
2 1 INTRODUCTION

In more recent times, the problems of globalization, which Aldrich

(2009:889) describes as the “underside of a globalising world”, have led
to similarly simplistic, if not quite so apocalyptic otherings of communities
perceived to be at the heart of problems. In late twentieth and early
twenty-first century Europe, for example, security debates have become
intertwined with debates about migration, societal change, and terrorism
driven by ideology. In general terms, Western European society has
become immeasurably safer than it ever was, not least when compared to
the situation a hundred years ago, when the continent found itself in the
early stages of two world wars to rival all previous conflicts. This might be
one of the reasons why sudden violent events as the gunning-down of
citizens by terrorists in European cities, are met with such consternation
by a public no longer attuned to death and destruction. It might also
explain the rise of populist, xenophobic politics by Western political actors
who perceive that globalization is causing an irreversible change to the
very nature of European society. For them, such changes are doubly
frightening when conceptualized in terms of an “us” and “them”, or
good versus evil struggle.
Politics and political discourses are not, of course, black and white
processes that deliver the “truth” about human society. Perhaps even
more than in previous times, the process of globalization has meant a
growing and complex intertwining of political, social, cultural and eco-
nomic spheres of society across national boundaries. There has been much
talk about postmodernity, and questions have been raised as to whether the
traditional Westphalian state may be facing its demise. The Arab Spring
showed that entrenched authoritarian regimes, which had been a staple
feature of the Middle East for most of the second half of the twentieth
century, could be swept aside (at least in places) by popular revolutions. The
results may not have been uniform, or indeed indicative of progress as the
bitter and miserable Syrian civil war demonstrates, but the point was made
that political history could be changed. Europe and other parts of the world
were not immune to the new atmosphere in the air. In Spain, for example,
the very name of the Podemos movement, which holds the balance of power
in parliament at the time of writing, echoes the point made earlier by
President Obama in the US that the people can make changes. Thus is
ushered in a postmodern politics in which traditional left and right cleavages
are realigning themselves. (In Britain, the political aftermath of the EU
referendum vote in 2016 has caused turmoil within both mainstream
political parties of the right and left.)
 1.2 IDENTITY AND THE BRITISH CASE STUDY 3

1.2 IDENTITY AND THE BRITISH CASE STUDY

Explaining such political complexity is a difficult business, and the best
that democratic leaders can do is to offer ideas and narratives around
which particular constituencies can cohere. In early 2006, the British
Prime Minister of the time, Gordon Brown, addressed the Fabian
Society in London. Brown was speaking just six months after the first
major terrorist attack on British soil of the twenty-first century, in which
56 people had died and hundreds more had been injured in a coordinated
set of suicide bombing attacks on the transport network of the British
capital. Because the attacks, as it later transpired, had been conducted by
British citizens, much of the debate about what had happened and how,
focused on questions of national identity. Brown noted that:

When we take time to stand back and reflect, it becomes clear that to address
almost every one of the major challenges facing our country . . . you must
have a clear view of what being British means, what you value about being
British and what gives us purpose as a nation . . . . I would argue that if we are
clear about what underlies our Britishness and if we are clear that shared
values – not colour, nor unchanging and unchangeable institutions – defines
what it means to be British in the modern world, we can be far more
ambitious in defining for our time the responsibilities of citizenship; far
more ambitious in forging a new and contemporary settlement of the
relationship between state, community and individual; and it is also easier
too to address difficult issues that sometimes come under the heading
‘multiculturalism’ - essentially how diverse cultures, which inevitably con-
tain differences, can find the essential common purpose without which no
society can flourish (Brown 2006).

The terrorist attacks of 7 July 2005, to which Brown explicitly referred in a

list of challenges including “how we equip ourselves for globalization”;
relationships with the US and Europe; and issues to do with citizenship
and governance, were seen as an episode that had the potential to divide
communities beneath the level of national identity. The argument was that
a set of “values” could unite the nation across ethnic or sub-national
identities, and that multiculturalism was the key: indeed, multiculturalism
itself represented one of the supposed core values of the national identity.
This book examines the salience of identity to contemporary security
debates in the West, focusing as a case study on Britain in terms of identity
formations, threats, and security policy. Questions of how complex and
4 1 INTRODUCTION

contested notions of “radicalization” and “extremism” are discussed and

debated in the contemporary context are viewed through the lens of
identity theory. The key area of analysis concerns the interplay between
micro- and macro-levels of identity construction. Applying these to secur-
ity allows us to ask such questions as whether individuals become violently
extreme through processes specific to themselves as individuals (an essen-
tially “bottom-up” perspective) or whether grander societal processes of
radicalization and recruitment by leaders and organizations are paramount
(a “top-down” perspective). In addressing this question, this analysis will
follow the core tenets of Stryker’s (2008) structural symbolic interaction-
ism, which stresses the symbiotic relationship between individual and
society. However, while it is accepted that no individual can operate
completely in a vacuum and is the product of his of her environment
and history, it is also postulated here that every individual’s journey into
violent extremism is specific and context-bound. This inevitably reduces
the significance – while not ignoring the effect completely – of top-down
actors in the process.
The second key thesis in this book is the Foucauldian notion of identity
as mythical, in the sense that it is constructed (and indeed performed) as a
liminal phenomenon and is not a display of essentialist categorizations of
human society (Foucault 1972). Such a notion also allows for considera-
tion of identity politics and narratives as fine examples of political myth.
Like many states, Britain forms a particularly interesting example of
Benedict Anderson’s (1991) “imagined community”. Unlike most of its
European neighbours with whom it shares a close and in some cases
intertwined history, the state of Britain is composed of a form of federal
union of devolved states, with varying degrees of autonomy away from the
central parliament in London. Indeed, the second most populous element
of this union – Scotland – narrowly voted not to break away and become
an independent state in a referendum in 2015. Renewed calls for such a
move have followed the 2016 EU membership referendum. Many have
observed how a notion of Britain was “imagined” after the formal signing
of the union in 1707 between Scotland, and England and Wales, creating
a larger state unit which is still often confused as being synonymous with
England and Englishness (most usually by the English themselves; Croft
2012:57). As the 2016 referendum showed, such a union could yet
unravel again to create newly imagined communities.
The question of Britain and what it does or does not comprise at the
macro level is the first element of Britishness and its complexity. The
 1.2 IDENTITY AND THE BRITISH CASE STUDY 5

second element concerns how British society has and still is transforming
through the period of globalization and the heightened mobility of popu-
lations this entails. For Britain, some of the picture here relates to the
history of colonialism and post-colonial connections, including some sig-
nificant periods in the post-war period in which citizens of certain
Commonwealth communities were encouraged to migrate to the country
to alleviate labour shortages in specific sectors of the economy. Many of
these migrant communities have settled permanently in Britain and had
families, leading to a range of complicated “hyphenated identities” that
display an amalgam of Britishness and identity relating to a former post-
colonial setting. Overlaid on this picture is a more recent experience of
migration to Britain from a range of places, including from former
Communist Bloc countries in Eastern Europe who have joined the
European Union (EU) and taken advantage of freedom of movement.
Such migrants have been joined by refugees leaving fragile and fractured
states such as Iraq and Syria. The resulting picture of British society is a
very multicultural one, which, in its sheer diversity, rivals many other
places in the world and certainly other parts of Europe.
Gordon Brown’s address in 2006 suggested that an effective multi-
culturalist policy could hold together an otherwise frail society that might
easily be pulled apart by forces on the darker side of globalization. By
focusing on generic and agnostic values as a unifying force, differences in
identity below the level of the state would become less important. Indeed,
such differences could be a force for good and make Britain better
equipped for globalization than many of its peers. This positive vision of
a form of separation of church and state to resolve problems and move
forwards had lost some of its lustre a few years later. In 2011, a subsequent
British Prime Minister, David Cameron, was casting doubt on the merits
of a “state multiculturalism” that had led to a dangerous situation in which
communities could increasingly grow apart from one another within the
national space (Number10.gov 2011). Cameron called for a new doctrine
of “muscular liberalism” that would strengthen and reassert the notion of
Britishness and the values supposedly underpinning it. The catalyst for this
thinking was security: the Prime Minister was speaking at the Munich
Security Conference, and was suggesting a link between fissiparous com-
munities and security threats such as terrorism.
Part of the issue is again to do with globalization, but, in this case, a perhaps
surprising tendency noted by many for the media to actually fragment its
messages and constituencies (Gamson et al. 1992:386). Most of the
6 1 INTRODUCTION

hypothecation about the effects of globalization assumes it to have the homo-

genizing effect of cultural imperialism, whereby local and regional cultural
expressions gradually succumb to an agnostic and all-encompassing global
culture. But in actual fact, there are two processes that seem to be doing the
opposite in many cases. Globalization has allowed a flowering of media outlets
away from the original hegemonic powers in the field, such as CNN and its
Western counterparts. (On its launch, the slogan of Russia’s RT News was
“Question more”, implying that we should not just blindly follow what the
Westerners were telling us.) At the same time, the development of social media
has meant a shift towards the consumer in news consumption: citizens can
now choose the news outlets to which they would like to subscribe rather than
be dependent on news pushed towards them. In effect, citizens can choose the
narratives they wish to consume.
In a community context, this means that sub-national identity groups
could now more easily live within a chosen identity-oriented narrative and
culture than they could before, while simultaneously living within a
metropolitan and multicultural environment such as Britain. In Brown’s
pro-multiculturalism thinking, this might not matter as long a set of
central values are understood and followed: indeed, it could even make
British society richer. More recent views expressed by Cameron, however,
start to argue the opposite, and to suggest that a widening gap between
sub-national identities in their cultural expression and narrative could
actually be a problem for the state, in that disenfranchised and embittered
ghettoes could develop into a “threat within”.
This more negative and pessimistic reading of the situation is also
pertinent when considering the rise of the Far Right in recent European
politics: a process that some have described as “cumulative extremism”
(Mughal 2014). A couple of years after Gordon Brown’s rousing address
to the Fabian Society, the otherwise unremarkable British town of Luton
revealed itself to be a fascinating microcosm of the risk of cumulative
extremism. In the Summer of 2009, a radical Islamist pressure-group
called Al Muhajiroun, which was subsequently proscribed by the UK
government, mounted a small but noisy demonstration at the event of a
parade of British soldiers returning from deployment in Iraq. The provo-
cation of the demonstration, which lambasted the soldiers for being
“butchers of Baghdad” among other things, caused an angry reaction in
the town. Later in the same year, two new groups emerged which demon-
strated an overlap between them in terms of membership. The first was led
by a renowned football hooligan called Jeff Marsh, who announced the
 1.2 IDENTITY AND THE BRITISH CASE STUDY 7

formation of a new pan-UK football supporters’ group called Casuals

United. This group, perhaps confusingly, proclaimed itself to be against
“Muslim fundamentalists”. At around the same time the English Defence
League (EDL) also emerged in Luton with the same professed agenda. In
August 2009, the EDL mounted its first major street rally protesting
against the spread of “militant Islam” in Birmingham, initiating a series
of demonstrations across the country, some of which attracted upwards of
2000 supporters (Richards 2013:181).
There was much consternation at the time of the EDL’s formation, as it
seemed to be a revival of the dark days of the 1970s and 80s, when the Far
Right and neo-nazi National Front had mounted a number of angry
demonstrations in British cities, many of which had descended into street
violence. (The target of such groups, as will be discussed later, was not so
much Muslims but any non-white communities.) Despite the EDL claim-
ing to be open to a rainbow coalition of supporters – including Muslims –
who were opposed to the rise of “militant Islam” in Britain, the group has
clearly been a focal point for neo-nazi and xenophobic sentiments within
white British society. Indeed, the leader of the EDL, Tommy Robinson,
formally announced his resignation from the group in 2013, claiming it
had been hijacked by Far Right extremists (although his motivations for
subsequently joining the anti-extremist think tank, the Quilliam
Foundation, have since been questioned (BBC 2013)).
There were also fears that the EDL were symptomatic of a wider wave
of rising Far Right extremism across Europe, which was manifesting itself
both as the rise towards unprecedented levels of power for political parties
such as the Front National in France, Jobbik in Hungary and various
“people’s parties”; and the rise of street-level pressure groups such as
Pegida (Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamierung des Abendlandes) in
Germany. In Britain, where Far Right parties have never won a single
parliamentary seat (with the exception of the populist UK Independence
Party (UKIP), which won one seat in the 2015 parliamentary elections),
the EDL has proved itself to be something of a false dawn for its suppor-
ters, with gradually waning attendance and interest in its rallies. At the
same time, the pattern of low-level racism and sectarian animosity in
Britain, including anti-semitism, should not be underestimated. A study
by Teeside University in 2014 of incidents of “cumulative extremism”
found that, while the police in England and Wales were recording a
gradual overall decline in hate crimes including religious-motivated
attacks, the proportion of such incidents directed at Muslims was rising.
8 1 INTRODUCTION

There was also a clear link between specific incidents of terrorism, such as
the murder of the British soldier Lee Rigby in London in 2013, and a
spike in anti-Muslim attacks, some of them involving serious violence
(Feldman et al. 2014). Furthermore, the 2016 referendum vote to leave
the EU also appears to have encouraged a spike in racist attacks on
minority communities (BBC 2016).

1.3 GLOBALIZATION AND EXTREMISM

The picture here is linked to globalization, in the sense that the economic
downturn of 2008 onwards has placed stresses on European labour markets,
and made them more susceptible to the effects of inward migration, especially
at the socio-economically lower and unskilled end of the market. This has
allowed populist political leaders to articulate the problems being faced as
being caused by an “out-group” of immigrants, with clearly defined identity
labels. The very name of the English Defence League (which demonstrates the
ongoing confusion between Englishness and Britishness) shows that it is all
about identity politics, and the linkage of that with security. Many observers,
including President Obama, have suggested that the surprising vote by the
British public to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum was a worrying
manifestation of the anti-globalization, populist political movement’s ability
to overturn traditional politics (Reilly 2016). His concerns have subsequently
been deepened by events closer to home in the shape of Donald Trump’s
victory in the US presidential elections. The pessimist’s argument is that there
is a deep iceberg of risk here in Western society which relates, in David
Cameron’s words, to “failed multiculturalism”.
The terrorist attacks in 2005 by a group of British citizens had catalysed
this debate. More recently, the phenomenon of Western European citizens
travelling to Iraq and Syria to join the fight for Islamic State (IS) has also
raised the temperature in the debate about identity and security. Many of the
more robust commentators in politics and academia have suggested that a
choice to become a jihadist means that citizenship must be renounced: in
effect, that pursuit of violent jihadism is incompatible with the right to have a
European national identity (Elgot 2014). Of course, state citizenship is not
necessarily the same as ethnic or religious identity, and the two levels of
identity can and do overlap in extremely complicated ways.
The global terror threat at the beginning of the twenty-first century has
been described as something “new” by many commentators. First appear-
ing in discourses on terrorism in the late 1990s (Laqueur 1999:58), the
 1.3 GLOBALIZATION AND EXTREMISM 9

notion of “new terrorism” rapidly gained momentum after the 9/11

attacks in the US in 2001. The British Prime Minister at the time of
those attacks, Tony Blair, spoke of the “calculus of risk” having changed
after the attacks, whereby terrorism could, for the first time, reasonably be
linked with the threat from nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, since
the terrorists no longer appeared to set any boundaries on the number of
casualties they wished to cause (BBC 2004).
Writing about the same time and using a historical notion of distinctive
“waves” of terrorism, David Rapoport described the latest period of
terrorism as “religious”, which allows for a notion of “fanaticism” and
unbounded “extremism” (Rapoport 2002). The salience of these words
and concepts, which some critics reject as being too relative to be of utility,
is at the centre of analysis in this book.
For a country such as Britain, a key question is whether and how the
terrorist threat has changed. Firstly, older threats such as that from Irish
Republicanism and Loyalist sectarianism in Northern Ireland could be
considered to be more bounded in both the specific nationalist objectives
being contested, and the degree to which death and destruction would be
undertaken by the groups involved. At the same time, analysis shows that
many more people died during the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland during
the latter part of the twentieth century than have succumbed to “Islamist”
threats more recently in Britain. More importantly, despite the differences
between the two periods, some have suggested a similarity in the way in
which a particular group of citizens have been identified by the state as a
“suspect community” at the core of the problem (Pantazis and Pemberton
2009).
With the advent of Al Qaeda and terrorist attacks attributed to it,
however, macro identity factors have become arguably more important
in security discourse. The experience of the “Prevent” strand of the British
counter-terrorism strategy (called CONTEST) is highly indicative in this
regard. Designed to be part of a multi-agency and holistic response to
counter-terrorism constituted by four ‘P’s (Pursue, Protect, Prepare and
Prevent), the Prevent policy was the part of the strategy that dealt with the
longer-term societal elements of the threat, encompassing such contested
and complicated notions as “radicalization” and its effects on individuals
moving towards expressions of violent extremism.
Prevent now encourages strong reactions from many in counter-terrorism
policy fields. The initial phase of Prevent, under the Labour administration
of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, followed the traumatic episode of the
10 1 INTRODUCTION

2005 terrorist attacks in London. The policy saw these attacks as the result of
something broken within British society, whereby certain sections of the
community were turning violently against those amongst whom they had
been born and raised. The policy was aimed at undertaking a set of inter-
ventions and indeed community investment which would identify potential
problems of violent extremism emerging within Muslim communities. The
way in which the funds were prioritized and allocated regionally to these
projects and interventions was based on a formula connected with the size of
the Muslim community in each area, with a higher than 5 percent Muslim
population allowing the local authority in question to qualify for Prevent
funding (Richards 2012:147-8). This led to the perhaps inescapable criti-
cism that Prevent was all about the state turning the spotlight squarely on the
Muslim community and making them the out-group. In a book subtitled
“How Not to Prevent Violent Extremism”, Arun Kundnani (2009:6) claims
that the manner in which Prevent was designed had the effect of “construct-
ing the Muslim population as a ‘suspect community’”. Many critics of the
policy have subsequently felt that it is fundamentally flawed as a result, and a
“toxic brand”, to such an extent that a later revision and relaunch of the
policy by the Cameron government has done little if anything to allay fears
about the approach.
There is no doubt that lessons have been identified – if not yet entirely
learnt – about how this particular strand of counter-terrorism policy could
and should look in the future. Some of the criticisms about how the early
stages of Prevent made the policy avowedly about a particular religious
and community identity, and how this process caused alienation and a lack
of trust in some cases, are not without validity. At the same time, the
argument in this book is that the nature of the contemporary terrorist
threat; its relationship to societal developments in a globalizing metropo-
litan context; and our understanding of the best policy approaches to
tackle it, are all phenomena which we are at a very early stage of under-
standing. It is argued that preventive and multi-agency policies such as
Prevent need to remain a staple part of security policy, even if they end up
looking very different from how they look now.

1.4 THREAT AND MYTH

One of the planks of the critical approach to terrorism is that the threat
from groups such as Al Qaeda is essentially a myth, deliberately shaped by
securitizing actors for their own political objectives. In late 2004, the BBC
 1.4 THREAT AND MYTH 11

released a series of three programmes by the documentary-maker, Adam

Curtis, called “The Power of Nightmares” (Curtis 2004). The pro-
grammes charted the course of two separate political movements on
different sides of the world, which, argued Curtis, came together in a
curious form of synergy. The first was the neo-conservative movement in
the US, whose roots lay in the “Team B” episode during the Cold War.
Here, a lobby of assertive politicians and military officers, which included
then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, successfully persuaded suc-
cessive American presidents that the Soviet Union was the epitome of
expansionist evil, and had weapons that were so sophisticated, they could
completely out-fox detection equipment. In essence, these weapons could
not be seen because they were invisible (and not, as it would later tran-
spire, fictitious). This idea directly challenged Kissinger’s conciliatory
approach and set the US on a course of military expansion and
expenditure.
The second movement was Al Qaeda, whose roots lay in the revolu-
tionary Islamist ideology of Sayyid Qutb, who was jailed, tortured and
eventually executed by the Nasser regime in Egypt in 1966. Qutb’s ideas,
published in the book Ma’alim fi al-Tariq (Milestones Along the Way),
led to the development of the underground Islamist movement in Egypt,
including both an expansion in support for the Muslim Brotherhood and
the emergence of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ). One of the leading figures
in EIJ was Ayman al-Zawahiri, who would later team up with Osama Bin
Laden in founding Al Qaeda.
Curtis’s argument is that the objectives of these two movements
display a curious nexus. Qutb’s ultra-conservatism, which felt that
American society was becoming inescapably corrupt and morally bank-
rupt (and infecting society in other parts of the world, such as Egypt),
chimes with the sentiments of the neo-conservative movement in the
US, albeit in slightly different ways. At the end of the Cold War, the
idea of using the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to defeat the great Evil
Empire of Moscow, fed into the notion, in a curious twist of fate, that
the subsequent Al Qaeda movement that grew from the remnants of
the Mujahideen represented a renewed threat of evil to the American
project. This allowed a reversal of the peace dividend following the end
of the Cold War, and a replacement of the communist threat with that
of Islamist terrorism. Al Qaeda were, in the view of Curtis, a mythical
echo of the invisible weapons supposedly held by the Soviet Union in
the 1970s, allowing the neo-conservative lobby to seize the political
12 1 INTRODUCTION

initiative in Washington and launch the War on Terror. In this way,

Curtis argued, the global and millennial threat of Al Qaeda was secur-
itized and constructed upon mythical foundations.
In academia, terrorism studies were increasingly characterized after the
9/11 attacks and subsequent launch of the so-called War on Terror with a
strong critical strand of analysis, of which securitization theory was an
important part. This strand of analysis generally targeted itself at the
Western state and its motivations in prosecuting the struggle against
terrorism. A Curtisian logic is followed that the threat from Al Qaeda is
not necessarily entirely mythical, but is exaggerated by the state and its
protagonists and used to justify the continued expansion of the military-
industrial complex, which had suffered a severe blow at the end of the
Cold War and its supposed peace dividend. Furthermore, the violence and
extent of the War on Terror, including the problematic justification for the
attack on Iraq; episodes of abuses of human rights such as the Abu Ghraib
torture debacle, water-boarding and extraordinary renditions of suspects;
and sovereignty-busting drone attacks launched from safe American terri-
tory, all add-up, in the critical thesis, to a suggestion that the West is itself
entirely to blame for the terrorist problem.
Indeed, even senior Western security officials have been critical of the
way the last decade has unfolded. Eliza Manningham-Buller, for example,
who was Director-General of Britain’s MI5 intelligence agency at the time
of the 2005 London attacks, has repeatedly stated her belief that the attack
on Iraq from 2003 onwards provided a ready-made justification for ter-
rorist attacks on the West and was wholly ill-advised (Norton-Taylor
2010). Similarly, a British Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) secret
assessment written in 2005 and released subsequently to the Iraq
Inquiry, showed that the British intelligence community was of the firm
belief at the time that the attack on Iraq had worsened the international
terrorism threat (JIC 2005).
Bill Durodié, who worked with Curtis on The Power of Nightmares,
does not necessarily suggest that Al Qaeda is a complete myth per se, but
that the notion of it being a well-organized, top-down structure that
directs multiple attacks across the world with efficiency may well be a
fantasy. He suggests that the 9/11 attacks were essentially a “one-off”,
and that there is no real evidence that Islamist terror cells and groups are
connected in any real way (Beckett 2004). This links with Marc Sageman’s
“leaderless jihad” idea, which suggests that Al Qaeda-related terrorism is
loosely inspired and “self-starting” rather than directed by a top-down
 1.4 THREAT AND MYTH 13

organization, as was generally the case with groups earlier in history

(Sageman 2008). For Durodié, the implications of this for Western coun-
ter-terrorism policy are clear, and critical. A “politics of fear” leads to a
self-fulfilling prophecy of a social constructivist dilemma for the state, in
that people’s perception of fear becomes as important as the actual threat
level, and has to be addressed accordingly with stringent counter-terror-
ism measures (Durodié 2007:441, 443).
However, there are also important messages about how and why indi-
viduals become drawn into committing violent terrorist acts. Again,
Durodié raises the element of identity, and specifically a troubled search
for identity by certain individuals within a metropolitan, postmodern
environment. Thus, the July 2005 bombers in London were “fantasists –
want-to-be terrorists – driven by a search for identity and meaning to their
lives” (Durodié 2007:429). In this sense, identity is again presented as a
moving phenomenon rather than a static noun, describing both a state of
being and a developmental process. More importantly, this notion of the
possible motivations of terrorists is that it is connected to a complex form
of identity formation by second- and third-generation migrant commu-
nities within a Western metropolitan environment. These questions of
identity formation are critical, and could, if valid, suggest that the threat
is less about a coordinated ideology and more about a deeper process of
social and societal development in the globalizing world.
Writing around the time of the 9/11 attacks, Ulrich Beck developed a
notion of the rise of the “risk society”, which, he claimed, was linked to a
structural anxiety about globalization (Beck 2002). In the risk society,
prediction and risk become interlinked in that fear of apparently rising
threat vectors such as transnational organized crime and terrorism, lead to
a growing attempt to predict and pre-empt such risks before they manifest
themselves (Kerr and Earle 2013:68). In Europe, a long period of relative
security coupled with the rise of sophisticated surveillance technologies
can lead to a perhaps misguided belief that the risks thrown up by globa-
lization can be mitigated and reduced to virtually nothing.
The critical theorist, Stuart Croft, raised the example of the new “smart
bin” deployed to London’s streets in 2007, which costs £18,000 per bin, but
can withstand the blast of a bomb placed within it (Daily Mail 2007).
Interestingly, because the bin’s creators and subsequent media reporting
referred to “7/7” (shorthand for the July 2005 terrorist attacks in London),
Croft claimed that discussion of the bin “was part of the normalization of the
everyday reality of a capital city facing terrorist threats from Muslims” (Croft
14 1 INTRODUCTION

2012:215). This arguably forgets that the reason there are generally no litter
bins in central London is because the IRA had a history of placing bombs
within them during the 1970s and 80s.
With this challenge aside, however, Croft identifies another important
strand of the critical thesis, which is that of the apparent rise of
Islamophobia (a term that reputedly originated around the end of the
Ottoman Empire (Alghamdi 2011:19)). The argument is that Western
European risk society, if such exists, articulates the terrorist threat repeat-
edly around identity factors, and specifically around an apparent “threat
within” from the Muslim community. One of the arguments is that threats
from non-Islamist sources, such as from maverick Far Right actors, or the
continued threat from Irish Republican terrorism, are generally down-
played in British political discourse when compared to “threats from
Muslims”, as Croft described it above. It is true that one of the single
most murderous terrorist attacks in a Western city in the post-war period
was committed by the Far Right activist, Anders Breivik, in Oslo in 2011.
Attacks have also happened in London, such as the murder of three people
in a bomb attack in 1999 by the neo-nazi sympathizer, David Copeland.
Should we therefore be worrying just as much about “lone wolf” Far
Right activists as we do about Islamist terrorists?
Arun Kundnani explores the issue of Islamophobia and misguided
conceptions of “extremism” extensively and arrestingly in his 2014
book, “The Muslims are Coming!” He describes another area of myth:
that of “radicalization”, which, he argues, morphed after 9/11 into a
more general description of “a psychological or theological process by
which Muslims move towards extremist views” (Kundnani 2015:119). In
this way, identity is not just a static factor, but something with movement
and transformation, although whether and how that happens are very
much open to debate. This is a dimension to the discussion explored in
chapter three.
Much of the myth debate about the threat from terrorism in Western
societies comes together in what we might call the “bee-sting” or “furni-
ture” arguments. In a much-quoted Washington Post article in 2015
shortly after the Bataclan terror attacks in Paris, Shaver pointed out that,
despite the acres of news coverage about terrorism and discussion of the
threat that followed the attacks, it remained the case that more Americans
were crushed to death by toppling furniture each year than were killed by
Islamist terrorists (Shaver 2015). Similarly, in 2012, the UK’s indepen-
dent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, noted in his
Another random document with
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IV.

“I have won me a youth,” the Elf-queen said,

“The fairest that earth may see;
This night I have won young Elph Irving,
My cupbearer to be.
His service lasts but for seven sweet years,
And his wage is a kiss of me.”
And merrily, merrily laughed the wild elves,
Round Corrie’s greenwood tree.—
But oh! the fire it glows in my brain,
And the hour is gone, and comes not again.

V.

The Queen she has whispered a secret word,

“Come hither, my Elphin sweet,
And bring that cup of the charmèd wine,
Thy lips and mine to weet.”
But a brown elf shouted a loud, loud shout,
“Come, leap on your coursers fleet,
For here comes the smell of some baptized flesh,
And the sounding of baptized feet.”—
But oh! the fire that burns, and maun burn;
For the time that is gone will never return.

VI.

On a steed as white as the new-milked milk,

The Elf-queen leaped with a bound,
And young Elphin a steed like December snow
’Neath him at the word he found.
But a maiden came, and her christened arms
She linked her brother around,
And called on God, and the steed with a snort
Sank into the gaping ground.—
But the fire maun burn, and I maun quake,
And the time that is gone will no more come back.

VII.

And she held her brother, and lo! he grew

A wild bull waked in ire;
And she held her brother, and lo! he changed
To a river roaring higher;
And she held her brother, and he became
 A flood of the raging fire;
She shrieked and sank, and the wild elves laughed,
Till mountain rang and mire.—
But oh! the fire yet burns in my brain,
And the hour is gone, and comes not again.

VIII.

“Oh, maiden, why waxed thy faith so faint,

Thy spirit so slack and slaw?
Thy courage kept good till the flame waxed wud,
Then thy might began to thaw,
Had ye kissed him with thy christened lip,
Ye had won him frae ’mang us a’.
Now bless the fire, the elfin fire,
That made thee faint and fa’;
Now bless the fire, the elfin fire,
The longer it burns it blazes the higher.”

At the close of this unusual strain, the figure sat down on the grass,
and proceeded to bind up her long and disordered tresses, gazing
along the old and unfrequented road.
“Now God be my helper,” said the traveller, who happened to be
the Laird of Johnstonebank, “can this be a trick of the fiend, or can it
be bonnie Phemie Irving, who chants this dolorous song? Something
sad has befallen, that makes her seek her seat in this eerie nook amid
the darkness and tempest: through might from abune, I will go on
and see.”
And the horse, feeling something of the owner’s reviving spirit in
the application of the spur-steel, bore him at once to the foot of the
tree. The poor delirious maiden uttered a piercing yell of joy as she
beheld him, and, with the swiftness of a creature winged, linked her
arms round the rider’s waist, and shrieked till the woods rang.
“Oh, I have ye now, Elphin, I have ye now!” and she strained him
to her bosom with a convulsive grasp.
“What ails ye, my bonnie lass?” said the Laird of Johnstonebank,
his fears of the supernatural vanishing when he beheld her sad and
bewildered look.
She raised her eyes at the sound, and, seeing a strange face, her
arms slipped their hold, and she dropped with a groan on the
ground.
 The morning had now fairly broken: the flocks shook the rain from
their sides, the shepherds hastened to inspect their charges, and a
thin blue smoke began to stream from the cottages of the valley into
the brightening air. The laird carried Phemie Irving in his arms, till
he observed two shepherds ascending from one of the loops of
Corriewater, bearing the lifeless body of her brother. They had found
him whirling round and round in one of the numerous eddies, and
his hands, clutched and filled with wool, showed that he had lost his
life in attempting to save the flock of his sister.
A plaid was laid over the body, which, along with the unhappy
maiden in a half lifeless state, was carried into a cottage, and laid in
that apartment distinguished among the peasantry by the name of
“the chamber.” While the peasant’s wife was left to take care of
Phemie, old man, and matron, and maid had collected around the
drowned youth, and each began to relate the circumstances of his
death, when the door suddenly opened, and his sister, advancing to
the corpse with a look of delirious serenity, broke out into a wild
laugh, and said,—
“O, it is wonderful, it’s truly wonderful! that bare and death-cold
body, dragged from the darkest pool of Corrie, with its hands filled
with fine wool, wears the perfect similitude of my own Elphin! I’ll tell
ye—the spiritual dwellers of the earth, the fairyfolk of our evening
tale, have stolen the living body, and fashioned this cold and
inanimate clod to mislead your pursuit. In common eyes, this seems
all that Elphin Irving would be, had he sunk in Corriewater; but so it
seems not to me. Ye have sought the living soul, and ye have found
only its garment. But oh, if ye had beheld him, as I beheld him to-
night, riding among the elfin troop, the fairest of them all; had you
clasped him in your arms, and wrestled for him with spirits and
terrible shapes from the other world, till your heart quailed and your
flesh was subdued, then would ye yield no credit to the semblance
which this cold and apparent flesh bears to my brother. But hearken
—on Hallowe’en, when the spiritual people are let loose on earth for
a season, I will take my stand in the burial-ground of Corrie; and
when my Elphin and his unchristened troop come past with the
sound of all their minstrelsy, I will leap on him and win him, or
perish for ever.”
 All gazed aghast on the delirious maiden, and many of her auditors
gave more credence to her distempered speech than to the visible
evidence before them. As she turned to depart, she looked round,
and suddenly sunk upon the body, with tears streaming from her
eyes, and sobbed out, “My brother! oh, my brother!” She was carried
out insensible, and again recovered; but relapsed into her ordinary
delirium, in which she continued till the Hallow-eve after her
brother’s burial.
She was found seated in the ancient burial-ground, her back
against a broken grave-stone, her locks white with frost-rime,
watching with intensity of look the road to the kirk-yard; but the
spirit which gave life to the fairest form of all the maids of Annandale
was fled for ever.

Such is the singular story which the peasants know by the name of
Elphin Irving, the Fairies’ Cupbearer; and the title, in its fullest and
most supernatural sense, still obtains credence among the
industrious and virtuous dames of the romantic vale of Corrie.
 CHOOSING A MINISTER.

By John Galt.

The Rev. Dr Swapkirk having had an apoplexy, the magistrates

were obligated to get Mr Pittle to be his helper. Whether it was that,
by our being used to Mr Pittle, we had ceased to have a right respect
for his parts and talents, or that in reality he was but a weak brother,
I cannot in conscience take it on me to say; but the certainty is, that
when the Doctor departed this life, there was hardly one of the
hearers who thought Mr Pittle would ever be their placed minister,
and it was as far at first from the unanimous mind of the magistrates,
who are the patrons of the parish, as anything could well be, for he
was a man of no smeddum in discourse. In verity, as Mrs Pawkie, my
wife, said, his sermons in the warm summer afternoons were just a
perfect hushabaa, that no mortal could hearken to without sleeping.
Moreover, he had a sorning way with him, that the genteeler sort
couldna abide, for he was for ever going from house to house about
tea-time, to save his ain canister. As for the young ladies, they
couldna endure him at all, for he had aye the sough and sound of
love in his mouth, and a round-about ceremonial of joking
concerning the same, that was just a fasherie to them to hear. The
commonality, however, were his greatest adversaries; for he was,
notwithstanding the spareness of his abilities, a prideful creature,
taking no interest in their hamely affairs, and seldom visiting the
aged or the sick among them.
Shortly, however, before the death of the Doctor, Mr Pittle had
been very attentive to my wife’s full cousin, Miss Lizzie Pinkie,—I’ll
no say on account of the legacy of seven hundred pounds left her by
an uncle, that made his money in foreign parts, and died at
Portsmouth of the liver complaint, when he was coming home to
enjoy himself; and Mrs Pawkie told me, that as soon as Mr Pittle
could get a kirk, I needna be surprised if I heard o’ a marriage
between him and Miss Lizzie.
Had I been a sordid and interested man, this news could never
have given me the satisfaction it did, for Miss Lizzie was very fond of
my bairns, and it was thought that Peter would have been her heir;
but so far from being concerned at what I heard, I rejoiced thereat,
and resolved in secret thought, whenever a vacancy happened (Dr
Swapkirk being then fast wearing away), to exert the best of my
ability to get the kirk for Mr Pittle,—not, however, unless he was
previously married to Miss Lizzie; for, to speak out, she was
beginning to stand in need of a protector, and both me and Mrs
Pawkie had our fears that she might outlive her income, and in her
old age become a cess upon us. And it couldna be said that this was
any groundless fear; for Miss Lizzie, living a lonely maiden life by
herself, with only a bit lassie to run her errands, and no being
naturally of an active or eydent turn, aften wearied, and to keep up
her spirits, gaed, maybe, now and then, oftener to the gardevin than
was just necessar, by which, as we thought, she had a tavert look.
Howsoever, as Mr Pittle had taken a notion of her, and she pleased
his fancy, it was far from our hand to misliken one that was sib to us;
on the contrary, it was a duty laid on me by the ties of blood and
relationship to do all in my power to further their mutual affection
into matrimonial fruition; and what I did towards that end is the
burden of this narrative.
Dr Swapkirk, in whom the spark of life was long fading, closed his
eyes, and it went utterly out, as to this world, on a Saturday night,
between the hours of eleven and twelve. We had that afternoon got
an inkling that he was drawing near to his end. At the latest, Mrs
Pawkie herself went over to the manse, and stayed till she saw him
die. “It was a pleasant end,” she said, for he was a godly, patient
man; and we were both sorely grieved, though it was a thing for
which we had been long prepared, and, indeed, to his family and
connections, except for the loss of the stipend, it was a very gentle
dispensation, for he had been long a heavy handful, having been for
years but, as it were, a breathing lump of mortality, groosy and oozy,
and doozy, his faculties being shut up and locked in by a dumb palsy.
 Having had this early intimation of the Doctor’s removal to a
better world, on the Sabbath morning when I went to join the
magistrates in the council-chamber, as the usage is, to go to the laft,
with the town-officers carrying their halberts before us, according to
the ancient custom of all royal burghs, my mind was in a degree
prepared to speak to them anent the successor. Little, however,
passed at that time, and it so happened that, by some wonder of
inspiration (there were, however, folk that said it was taken out of a
book of sermons, by one Barrow, an English divine), Mr Pittle that
forenoon preached a discourse that made an impression, insomuch
that, on our way back to the council-chamber, I said to Provost
Vintner that then was—
“Really, Mr Pittle seems, if he would exert himself, to have a nerve.
I could not have thought it was in the power of his capacity to have
given us such a sermon.”
The provost thought as I did; so I replied—
“We canna, I think, do better than keep him among us. It would,
indeed, provost, no be doing justice to the young man to pass
another over his head.”
I could see that the provost wasna quite sure of what I had been
saying; for he replied, that it was a matter that needed consideration.
When we separated at the council-chamber, I threw myself in the
way of Bailie Weezle, and walked home with him, our talk being on
the subject of the vacancy; and I rehearsed to him what had passed
between me and the provost, saying, that the provost had made no
objection to prefer Mr Pittle, which was the truth.
Bailie Weezle was a man no overladen with worldly wisdom, and
had been chosen into the council principally on account of being
easily managed. In his business, he was originally by trade a baker in
Glasgow, where he made a little money, and came to settle among us
with his wife, who was a native of the town, and had her relations
here. Being, therefore, an idle man, living on his money, and of a soft
and quiet nature, he was, for the reason aforesaid, chosen into the
council, where he always voted on the provost’s side; for in
controverted questions every one is beholden to take a part, and he
thought it his duty to side with the chief magistrate.
 Having convinced the bailie that Mr Pittle had already, as it were, a
sort of infeoffment in the kirk, I called in the evening on my old
predecessor in the guildry, Bailie M‘Lucre, who was not a hand to be
so easily dealt with; but I knew his inclinations, and therefore I
resolved to go roundly to work with him. So I asked him out to take a
walk, and I led him towards the town-moor, conversing loosely about
one thing and another, and touching softly here and there on the
vacancy.
When we were well on into the middle of the moor, I stopped, and,
looking round me, said,—
“Bailie, surely it’s a great neglec’ of the magistrates and council to
let this braw broad piece of land, so near the town, lie in a state o’
nature, and giving pasturage to only twa-three of the poor folks’
cows. I wonder you, that’s now a rich man, and with een worth pearls
and diamonds,—that ye dinna think of asking a tack of this land; ye
might make a great thing o’t.”
The fish nibbled, and told me that he had for some time
entertained a thought on the subject; but he was afraid that I would
be over extortionate.
“I wonder to hear you, bailie,” said I; “I trust and hope no one will
ever find me out of the way of justice; and to convince you that I can
do a friendly turn, I’ll no objec’ to gie you a’ my influence free gratis,
if ye’ll gie Mr Pittle a lift into the kirk; for, to be plain with you, the
worthy young man, who, as ye heard to-day, is no without an ability,
has long been fond of Mrs Pawkie’s cousin, Miss Lizzie Pinkie; and I
would fain do all that lies in my power to help on the match.”
The bailie was well pleased with my frankness, and before
returning home, we came to a satisfactory understanding; so that the
next thing I had to do was to see Mr Pittle himself on the subject.
Accordingly, in the gloaming, I went over to where he stayed: it was
with Miss Jenny Killfuddy, an elderly maiden lady, whose father was
the minister of Braehill, and the same that is spoken of in the
chronicle of Dalmailing, as having had his eye almost put out by a
clash of glaur, at the stormy placing of Mr Balwhidder.
“Mr Pittle,” said I, as soon as I was in, and the door closed, “I’m
come to you as a friend. Both Mrs Pawkie and me have long
discerned that ye have had a look more than common towards our
friend Miss Lizzie, and we think it our duty to inquire your intents,
before matters gang to greater length.”
He looked a little dumfoundered at this salutation, and was at a
loss for an answer; so I continued—
“If your designs be honourable, and no doubt they are, now’s your
time;—strike while the iron’s hot. By the death of the Doctor, the
kirk’s vacant, the town-council have the patronage; and if ye marry
Miss Lizzie, my interest and influence shall not be slack in helping
you into the poopit.”
In short, out of what passed that night, on the Monday following,
Mr Pittle and Miss Lizzie were married; and by my dexterity,
together with the able help I had in Bailie M‘Lucre, he was in due
season placed and settled in the parish; and the next year, more than
fifty acres of the town-moor were inclosed, on a nine hundred and
ninety-nine years’ tack, at an easy rate, between me and the bailie, he
paying the half of the expense of the ditching and rooting out of the
whins; and it was acknowledged, by every one that saw it, that there
had not been a greater improvement for many years in all the
country-side. But to the best actions there will be adverse and
discontented spirits; and, on this occasion, there were not wanting
persons naturally of a disloyal opposition temper, who complained of
the inclosure as a usurpation of the rights and property of the poorer
burghers. Such revilings, however, are what all persons in authority
must suffer; and they had only the effect of making me button my
coat, and look out the crooser to the blast.—“The Provost.”
 THE MEAL MOB.

During the winter of 18—, there was a great scarcity of grain in the
western districts of Scotland. The expediency of the corn laws was
then hotly discussed, but the keen hunger of wives and children went
further to embitter the spirits of the lower orders. The abstract
question was grasped at as a vent for ill-humour, or despairingly, as a
last chance for preservation. As usual, exaggerated reports were
caught up and circulated by the hungry operatives, of immense
prices demanded by grain-merchants and farmers, and of great
stores of grain garnered up for exportation. As a natural consequence
of all these circumstances, serious disturbances took place in more
than one burgh.
The town of ——, in which I then resided, had hitherto been
spared, but a riot was, in the temper of the poor, daily to be expected.
Numbers of special constables were sworn in. The commander of the
military party then in the barracks was warned to hold himself in
readiness. Such members of the county yeomanry corps as resided in
or near the town were requested to lend their aid, if need should be.
I was sitting comfortably by my fireside, one dark, cold evening,
conversing with a friend over a tumbler of toddy, when we were both
summoned to officiate in our capacity of constables. The poor fellows
who fell at Waterloo sprang from their hard, curtainless beds with
less reluctance. We lingered rather longer than decency allowed of,
buttoning our greatcoats and adjusting our comforters. At last,
casting a piteous look at the fire, which was just beginning to burn up
gloriously, we pressed our hats deeper over our eyes, grasped our
batons, and sallied forth.
The mischief had begun in the mills at the town-head, and as the
parties employed in the mob went to work with less reluctance than
we had done, the premises were fairly gutted, and the plunderers,
(or, more properly speaking, devastators) on their way to another
scene of action, before a sufficient posse of our body could be
mustered. We encountered the horde coming down the main street.
The advanced guard consisted of an immense swarm of little ragged
boys, running scatteredly with stones in their hands and bonnets.
These were flanked and followed by a number of dirty, draggle-tailed
drabs, most of them with children in their arms. Upon them followed
a dense mass of men of all ages, many of them in the garb of sailors,
for the tars had learned that the soldiery were likely to be employed
against the people, and there is a standing feud between the “salt-
waters” and the “lobsters.” There was also a vague and ill-regulated
sympathy for the suffering they saw around them, working at the
bottom. All this array we half saw, half conjectured, by the dim light
of the dirty street lamps. The body was silent, but for the incessant
pattering of their feet as they moved along.
The word was given to clear the street, and we advanced with right
ill-will upon them. The first ranks gave back, but there arose
immediately a universal and deafening hooting, groaning, yelling,
and whistling. The shrill and angry voices of women were heard
above all, mingled with the wailing of their terrified babes. “We
maun hae meat;” “Fell the gentle boutchers;” “Belay there! spank
him with your pole;” resounded on every side, in the screaming tones
of women, and the deep voices of sailors, garnished and enforced
with oaths too dreadful to mention. Nor was this all: a shower of
stones came whizzing past our ears from the boy-tirailleurs
mentioned above, levelling some of our companions, jingling among
the windows, and extinguishing the lamps. Some of the boldest of the
men next attempted to wrest the batons from the constables who
stood near them. In this they were assisted by the women, who
crushed into our ranks, and prevented us giving our cudgels free
play. The stones continued to fly in all directions, hitting the rioters
as often as the preservers of the peace. The parties tugged and pulled
at each other most stubbornly, while the screams of pain and anger,
the yell of triumph, and hoarse execrations, waxed momentarily
louder and more terrific.
At last the constables were driven back, with the loss of all their
batons and most of their best men. The mob rushed onward with a
triumphant hurrah, and turned down a side street leading to a
granary, in which they believed a great quantity of grain was stored
up. The proprietor’s house stood beside it. A volley of stones was
discharged against the latter, which shattered every window in the
house, and the missiles were followed by a thunder-growl of
maledictions, which made the hair of the innocent inmates stand on
their heads, and their hearts die within them. The crowd stood
irresolute for a moment. A tall athletic sailor advanced to the door of
the granary. “Have you never a marlin-spike to bouse open the
hatchway here?” A crowbar was handed to him. “A glim! a glim!”
cried voices from different parts of the crowd. It was now for the first
time discovered that some of the party had provided themselves with
torches, for after a few minutes’ fumbling a light was struck, and
immediately the pitch brands cast a lurid light over the scene. The
state of the corn merchant’s family must now have been dreadful.
The multitude stood hushed as death, or as the coming
thunderstorm. All this time the sailor of whom I have spoken had
been prising away with his bar at the granary door.
At this moment a heavy-measured tread was heard indistinctly in
the distance. It drew nearer, and became more distinct. Some
respectable burghers, who had assembled, and stood aloof gazing on
the scene, now edged closer to the crowd, and addressed the nearest
women in a low voice: “Yon’s the sodgers.” The hint was taken, for,
one by one, the women gathered their infants closer in their arms,
and dropped off. First one and then another pale-faced,
consumptive-looking weaver followed their example in silence. The
trampling now sounded close at hand, and its measured note was
awful in the hush of the dark night. The panic now spread to the
boys, who flew asunder on all sides—like a parcel of carrion flies
when disturbed by a passenger—squalling, “Yon’s the sodgers!” So
effectual was the dispersion that ensued, that when the soldiers
defiled into the wider space before the granary, no one remained
except the door-breaker, and one or two of the torch-holders.
The latter threw down their brands and scampered. The lights
were snatched up before they were extinguished, by some of the
boldest constables. Of all the rioters only one remained—the tall
sailor, who may be termed their ringleader. The foremost rank of the
soldiers was nearly up to him, and others were defiling from behind
to intercept him should he attempt to reach the side streets. He stood
still, watchful as a wild beast when surrounded by hunters, but with
an easy roll of his body, and a good-humoured smile upon his face.
“Yield, Robert Jones,” cried the provost, who feared he might
meditate a desperate and unavailing resistance. But instead of
answering, Robert sprung upon a soldier who was forming into line
at his right side, struck up the man’s musket, twisted off the bayonet,
and making it shine through the air in the torchlight like a rocket,
tripped up his heels. “Not yet, lobster!” he exclaimed, as the bayonet
of the fallen hero’s left-hand man glanced innocuously past him, so
saying, the sailor rapidly disappeared down a dark lane.—Edinburgh
Literary Journal.
 THE FLITTING.

It was on the day before the flitting, or removal, that John

Armour’s farm-stock, and indeed everything he had, excepting as
much as might furnish a small cottage, was to be rouped to meet his
debts. No doubt it was a heart-rending scene to all the family, though
his wife considered all their losses light, when compared with her
husband’s peace of mind. The great bustle of the sale, however,
denied him the leisure which a just view of his condition made most
to be dreaded; so that it was not till late in the evening, when all was
quiet again,—his cherished possessions removed, and time allowed
him to brood over his state,—that the deep feelings of vexation and
despair laid hold of his spirit.
The evening was one of remarkable beauty; the birds never more
rapturous, the grass never greener around the farm-house. The turf
seat on which old Hugh was wont to rest, in the corner of the little
garden, was white with gowans; the willows and honeysuckles that
overarched it all full of life; the air was bland, the cushat’s distant
cooing very plaintive;—all but the inhabitants of the humble dwelling
was tranquil and delighted. But they were downcast; each one
pursued some necessary preparation for tomorrow’s great change,
saying little, but deeply occupied with sad thoughts. Once the wife
ejaculated—
“Oh, that the morn was ower!”
“Yes,” said her husband, “the morn, and every morn o’ them!—but
I wish this gloaming had been stormy.”
He could not settle—he could not eat—he avoided conversation;
and, with his hat drawn over his brow, he traversed wearily the same
paths, and did over and over again the same things. It was near
bedtime, when one of the children said to her mother—
 “My faither’s stan’in’ at the corner o’ the stable, and didna speak to
me when I spak to him;—gang out, mother, and bring him in.”
“If he wad but speak to me!” was the mother’s answer. She went
out,—the case had become extreme,—and she ventured to argue with
and reprove him.
“Ye do wrang, John—this is no like yoursel;—the world’s fu’ of
affliction—ithers ken that as weel as you—ye maunna hae a’ things
your ain way: there’s Ane abune us wha has said, ‘In sorrow shalt
thou eat thy bread all the days of thy life.’ Ye canna expect to gang
free; and I maun say it wadna be gude for ony o’ us. Maybe greater
ills are yet to befa’ ye, and then ye’ll rue sair that ye hae gien way at
this time; come in, John, wi’ me; time will wear a’ this out o’ mind.”
He struck his hand against his brow—he grasped at his neckcloth—
and after choking on a few syllables which he could not utter, tears
gushed from his eyes, and he melted in a long heartrending fit of
weeping. Oh, it is a sorrowful thing to see a strong hard-featured
man shedding tears! His sobs are so heavy, his wail so full-toned!
John Armour, perhaps for twenty years a stranger to weeping, had
now to burst the sealed sluices of manhood’s grief, which nothing but
the resistless struggle of agony could accomplish, ere relief could
reach his labouring breast. Now it was he sought the dearest
sanctuary on earth—he leaned upon his wife’s bosom, and she
lavished on him the riches of a woman’s love. At length he went to
rest, gentler in spirit, and borne down by a less frightful woe than
what had lately oppressed him.
Next morning brought round the bustle of flitting. There is a deep
interest attending a scene of this kind, altogether separate from the
feelings of those who have to leave a favourite abode. Circumstances
of antiquity—of mystery—belong to it. The demolition even of an old
house has something melancholy; the dismantling it of furniture is
not less affecting. Some of the servants that had been at one time
about the farm assisted on this occasion, and entered fully into the
sentiments now described.
“That press has been there, I’ll warran’, this fifty years; it was his
mother’s, and cam on her blithe marriage-day; the like o’t ye’ll no see
now-a-days—it’s fresh yet. Few hae seen the back o’ thee, I trow,
these twa days, but the wabsters and sclaters; they winna ken what to
mak o’ this wark; let me look into the back o’t.”
 “I wad be a wee eerie,” said another, feeling the gloomy
appearance of the old empty dwelling suggest thoughts allied to
superstition, “about ganging into that toom house at night; I wad aye
be thinkin’ o’ meeting wi’ auld Hugh, honest man.”
The flitting set off to a cottage about two miles distant; two cart
loads of furniture, one milk cow, and the old watch-dog, were its
amount. John Armour lingered a little behind, as did his wife, for she
was unwilling to leave him there alone. He then proceeded to every
part of the premises. The barn and stable kept him a few moments;
the rest he hurried over, excepting the kitchen and spence. When he
came to the kitchen (for it was the apartment he visited last), he leant
his head for an instant against the mantelpiece, and fixed his eyes on
the hearthstone. A deep sigh escaped him, and his wife then took him
by the hand to lead him away, which he resisted not, only saying,—
“I hae mind o’ mony a thing that happened here;”—then casting
his eyes hastily round the desolate apartment,—“but fareweel to thee
for ever!” In a few minutes they overtook the flitting, nor did he once
turn again his head towards the desolate place which had so firm a
hold of his heart.—“My Grandfather’s Farm.”
 EWEN OF THE LITTLE HEAD:
A LEGEND OF THE WESTERN ISLES.

About three hundred years ago, Ewen Maclean of Lochbuy, in the

island of Mull, having been engaged in a quarrel with a neighbouring
chief, a day was fixed for determining the affair by the sword.
Lochbuy, before the day arrived, consulted a celebrated witch as to
the result of the feud. The witch declared, that if Lochbuy’s wife
should on the morning of that day give him and his men food
unasked, he would be victorious; but if not, the result would be the
reverse. This was a disheartening response for the unhappy votary,
his wife being a noted shrew.
The fatal morning arrived, and the hour for meeting the enemy
approached; but there appeared no symptoms of refreshment for
Lochbuy and his men. At length the unfortunate man was compelled
to ask his wife to supply them with food. She set down before them
curds, but without spoons. The men ate the curds as well as they
could with their hands; but Lochbuy himself ate none. After
behaving with the greatest bravery in the bloody conflict which
ensued, he fell covered with wounds, leaving his wife to the
execration of his people.
But the miseries brought on the luckless chief by his sordid and
shrewish spouse did not end with his life, for he died fasting; and his
ghost is frequently seen to this day riding the very horse on which he
was mounted when he was killed. It was a small, but very neat and
active pony, dun or mouse coloured, to which Lochbuy was much
attached, and on which he had ridden for many years before his
death. His appearance is as accurately described in the island of Mull
as any steed is in Newmarket. The prints of his shoes are discerned
by connoisseurs, and the rattling of his curb is recognized in the
darkest night. He is not particular in regard to roads, for he goes up
hill and down dale with equal velocity. His hard-fated rider still
wears the same green cloak which covered him in his last battle; and
he is particularly distinguished by the small size of his head.
It is now above three hundred years since Ewen-a-Chin-Vig
(Anglice, “Hugh of the Little Head”) fell in the field of honour; but
neither the vigour of the horse nor of the rider is yet diminished. His
mournful duty has always been to attend the dying moments of every
member of his own numerous tribe, and to escort the departed spirit
on its long and arduous journey.
Some years ago, he accosted one of his own people (indeed, he has
never been known to notice any other), and shaking him cordially by
the hand, he attempted to place him on the saddle behind himself,
but the uncourteous dog declined the honour. Ewen struggled hard,
but the clown was a great strong, clumsy fellow, and stuck to the
earth with all his might. He candidly acknowledged, however, that
his chief would have prevailed, had it not been for a birch tree which
stood by, and which he got within the fold of his left arm. The contest
became then very warm indeed. At length, however, Ewen lost his
seat for the first time; and the instant the pony found he was his own
master, he set off with the fleetness of lightning. Ewen immediately
pursued his steed, and the wearied rustic sped his way homeward.—
Lit. Gazette.
 BASIL ROLLAND.

Chapter I.
In May, quhen men yied everichone
With Robene Hoid and Littil John,
To bring in bowis and birken bobynis,
Now all sic game is fastlings gone,
Bot gif if be amangs clowin Robbynis.—A. Scott.

The period at which the circumstances recorded in the following

narrative happened was in the troubled year of 1639. At that time the
points in dispute betwixt Charles and his subjects were most
violently contested, and the partizans of each were in arms all over
the country, endeavouring, by partial and solitary operations, to gain
the ascendancy for their faction. The first cause of these disturbances
was the attempt of the monarch to establish Episcopacy over
Scotland—a form of worship which had always been disliked by the
Scotch, as they considered it but a single step removed from Popery.
The intemperate zeal with which Charles prosecuted his views
(occasioned by a misconception of the national character of his
subjects), and his averseness to compromise or conciliation, first
gave rise to the combination called the Covenanters; weak at first,
but in a short time too powerful to be shaken by the exertions of the
High Churchmen.
One of the first and most politic steps taken by the Council of the
Covenant, denominated “the Tables,” was the framing of the
celebrated Bond or Covenant; the subscribers of which bound
themselves to resist the introduction of Popery and Prelacy, and to
stand by each other in case of innovations on the established
worship. Charles seeing, at last, the strength of this association,
uttered, in his turn, a covenant renouncing Popery; he also dispensed
with the use of the Prayer Book, the Five Articles of Perth, and other
things connected with public worship which were obnoxious to the
Covenanters.
During this contention, the citizens of Aberdeen remained firmly
attached to the royal interest, and appear to have come in with every
resolution that was adopted by the government. In 1638, a
deputation from “the Tables,” among whom was the celebrated
Andrew Cant (from whom the mission was denominated “Cant’s
Visitation”), arrived in the town, for the purpose of inducing the
inhabitants to subscribe the Covenant; but as their representations
entirely failed of success, they were obliged to desist. The Earl of
Montrose arrived in Aberdeen in the spring of 1639, and, partly by
the terror of his arms, partly by the representations of the clergy that
accompanied him, succeeded in imposing the Covenant on the
townsmen. After his departure, a body of the royalists, commanded
by the Laird of Banff, having routed the forces of Frazer and Forbes,
took possession of the town, and wreaked their vengeance on all who
had subscribed the Covenant. They only remained five days in the
town, and, on their departure, it was occupied by the Earl of
Marischal, who in turn harassed the royalists. As soon as Montrose
heard of these occurrences, being doubtful of the fidelity of the
inhabitants, he marched to Aberdeen again, disarmed the citizens,
and imposed a heavy fine upon them. The citizens, who had been
impoverished by these unjust exactions, were somewhat relieved,
when Montrose, their greatest scourge, after another short visit,
marched into Angus and disbanded his army.
It was in the month of June that the citizens began to feel
themselves elated by the prospect, if not of peace, of the seat of the
war being removed from their dwellings, on the disbanding of
Montrose’s forces, and at liberty to say anything about the Covenant
that might seem good unto them. Those who had subscribed it under
the influence of fear (and they were not a small number) veered
round to the king’s party, and sounded the praises of the Viscount of
Aboyne, who had landed at Aberdeen on the part of his Majesty.
Their former losses and sufferings were all forgotten, and a general
disposition for rejoicing was to be seen among them. Provost Leslie
and his colleagues were inclined to encourage this, as it might lead