Ruth Dudley Edwards: Islamist extremists are the real enemy in the UK, not the far right

Sir Henry Wilson (Ulster Unionist), ex-chief of the Imperial General Staff, was shot dead on 22 June 1922 outside his London home by members of the Irish Republican Army.

Airey Neave (Conservative) was blown up by a car bomb outside the Palace of Westminster on 30 March 1979, by members of the Irish National Liberation Army.

Robert Bradford (Ulster Unionist) was shot at his constituency surgery in Belfast South on 14 November 1981 by members of the Provisional IRA.

Sir Anthony Berry (Conservative) was one of five people killed in the Grand Brighton Hotel on 12 October 1984 by Patrick Magee of the Provisional IRA with a bomb aimed at the Conservative Party Conference.

Ian Gow (Conservative) was blown up by a Provo car bomb on 30 July 1990 at his East Sussex home

Jo Cox (Labour), was shot and stabbed on her way to conduct a constituency surgery in West Yorkshire on 16 June 2016 by Thomas Mair, a reclusive neo-Nazi white supremacist.

Sir David Amess (Conservative) was fatally stabbed multiple times in his Essex constituency office on 15 October 2021 by Ali Harbi, an Islamist extremist.

Since the Provos exited the killing fields, it’s Islamists who are the main enemy in the United Kingdom, though establishment figures including senior police, terrified of being accused of racism or Islamophobia, keep pathetically alluding to the far right as an equal threat.

They’re so not. The guy who murdered Jo Cox had no supporters: Islamist extremists have plenty.

In the United Kingdom, the terrifying enemy now is Islamism. There are many heated arguments to be made on various sides in the present horror of the Middle East, but to suggest that in the UK the lives of public representatives and non-Jews are threatened by Israeli extremists is absurd.

I live in central London, and every Saturday I’ve been alarmed and depressed by the dreadful, angry, anti-semitic marches running into six figures and bringing hatred to our streets. I've been to a few pro-Israel demonstrations on Sundays, where we called for the release of hostages, sang along and heard no warlike sentiments.

I suspect that many of them, like me, think it necessary to eliminate Hamas terrorism if there is ever to be peace in the Middle East, but there is no blood lust. Just sadness. We know perfectly well that to demand “an immediate permanent and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza” is a call for the complete annihilation of Israel.

Now, though, while many MPs are cowed by fear of violent Islamist activists, others are telling the naked truth. Mike Freer, the MP for Finchley and Golders Green, who had been on the target list of David Amess’s murderer, told us he was stepping down from parliament after the firebombing of his office and the intimidation of him and his family.

And since Sir Lindsay Hoyle gave the game away last week, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. People see that the speaker of the House of Commons made an unprecedented change in procedure to avoid angering Muslims, and see that for what it was: democracy bowing down to violence.

I hope the speaker realises he must resign.

Anna Firth, Sir David Amess’s successor as MP, wrote starkly yesterday that “many, many Islamist fundamentalists with bad intentions live and walk amongst us”. She railed against the “subversion of democracy that undermined the integrity of parliament. At its worst it was naked appeasement and a deliberate act of bowing to the mob who were protesting loudly outside and projecting anti-Semitic slogans onto Big Ben”.

Those intimidating Palestinian parades are determinedly subversive and rabble-rousing. Political parties should unite to ban them, outlaw demonstrations outside MPs’ homes and offices and urge the police to implement the rule of law, not that of the mob.

Otherwise, the list of murdered MPs will surely lengthen​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​.