 pril
26,
1999
ON SATURDAY a nail bomb
detonated in Brick Lane, in the East End
of London where the street signs are
written in both English and
Urdu. According to the newspapers, a
passer-by saw the heavy sports bag
standing by itself, and picked it up and
placed it in the trunk of his very nice
red car and locked it. We have this gentleman's word for it
that before the nasty shock of seeing his
car thereupon blow up before his eyes in a
ball of fire, he had taken the bag "to the
nearest police station" but found the
doors locked; whereupon, he says, he
returned, still carrying the bomb, meaning
to drive it to another police station with
more amenable opening hours. I suppose the East End always has bred
rather odd characters. We must remark upon
the sense of public duty of this ethnic
gentleman, who finding a sports bag
identical to the one widely publicised as
containing the nail-bomb that devastated
Brixton, a Black community in south
London, only one Saturday before, did not
leave it well alone, but picked it up and
placed it in the trunk of his evidently
expensive car. This gentleman is last seen in the
newspapers as being "interviewed by
police" -- in any other circumstances he
would be regarded quite improperly as a
pickpocket or bag snatcher. Being far less
brave myself, I confess I would have given
such a bag a very wide berth indeed. There are however other noteworthy
features of this "Nazi nail bomb"
story. The news came at a convenient moment to
divert newspaper attention from the
increasingly shameful spectacle of Nato-
mangled civilians in Serbia, where Mr
Tony Blair's brave bomber offensive
has just wrought such famous victories as
flattening an evil TV make-up girl, a
dangerous tool of Milosevic's
propaganda weapon, beneath tons of
Belgrade television studio debris, in a
building-pancake oddly reminiscent of the
Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in
Oklahoma City. So who did plant the nail-bomb in
Brixton? Combat 18, a fictitious "right wing
extremist" body which I believe has in
fact as much flesh on its bones as Mr
Abu ("they seek him here, there
seek him there") Nidal? After all
Combat 18 is evidently boneheaded enough
to phone-in its claim to having fathered
the Brixton Bomb from a pay-phone in the
street where Stephen Lawrence's
alleged racist killers lived. Duh? Perhaps the Brick Street weapon was
planted by the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency, trying to take the heat off
President Bill Clinton -- who that
very day was speaking of the school
massacre at Littleton, Colorado, a little
town in mid-America which I know well,
having spoken half a dozen times to
Ordinary Americans in a little bookshop in
its centre: Mr Clinton spoke in properly
measured presidential tones of people who
try to make politics by using violence,
even as his high-tech bombers were doing
precisely that to the Littletons of
central Europe. Or are the real culprits of Brixton and
Brick Street to be sought nearer home: I
ask only, cui bono? Whom do such
"Nazi nail-bombs" really benefit? A clue: pre-empting any outcome of the
police inquiry, our widely loved Home
Secretary Jack Straw has hinted at
tougher laws to clamp down on the right
wing, revisionists, and "extremists".
London's newspapers this evening announce
that a vigilante body of five hundred
"armband-wearing" young men will patrol
the streets of Southall, the Indian suburb
of London, from now on: would these
musclemen be a million miles from the
Community
Security Trust, we wonder (and we all
know who are behind them). Are these bomb outrages, we wonder, an
uglier manifestation of the
synagogue-daubing self-mutilation
practiced by such bodies when they need to
attract attention to themselves? Whatever:
I am proud to offer from my own pocket one
thousand pounds to add to the police
reward offered for the capture of the
Brixton Bomber, if (and only if) he should
turn out to be a bona-fide member of
"Combat 18." Somehow I feel my money is
quite safe. | 
Posted
Tuesday,
January 26, 1999 
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