Stig: This Is How We Respond To Terrorism

26 March 2017, 19:19

"Keeping calm and carrying on is not a synonym for weakness" says Stig Abell as he shuts down the notion we should be "cowed" after the Westminster attack.

On his Sunday afternoon LBC show Stig Abell had something he wanted to get off his chest. 

Following the Westminster terror attack on Wednesday, there have been various ideas about how the nation should respond to terrorism.

Here Stig gives his take, succinctly shutting down the notion "we should be cowed". 

He said: "So you see Daily Mail headlines saying 'Google taught terror', 'Google lead people to understand how to commit terror atrocities'.  Well Google, in the end, is not needed to tell someone to take a car and kill people.  

"Social media, tech firms, make this stuff easier, definitely. Could they do more to care more about our wellbeing than their profits? Of course they could.  

"But they're not the answer. Migration controls aren't the answer. A police state is not the answer. 

"Here is the answer to terrorism: living with it. Not being cowed by it. Not shrieking about it in an attention-seeking fashion.  

"These are things we can do about it every day, without being accused of false heroism, of puffing our chests. It's not heroic to go to work, it's not heroic to walk down Westminster Bridge, or to still go to restaurants, or to still use the underground.  

"You know what it is? It's British. It's British to say 'there's a lot of strange, evil people in the world, trying to make things worse and we're going to ignore it, we're going to carry on'.  

"And people might say 'well you're appeasing, you're refusing to look reality in the face', and I think exactly the opposite. Because reality is ugly. 

"Human beings are complicated. You can never remove the threat of terrorism, from the world now. We live in an era where terrorism is possible.  

"But as I've just explained, we live in an era at the same time where terrorism in this country is more contained now, than it's ever been before. 

"90 people dead in the UK, thanks to terror in the last 15 years. The previous 15 years, more than a thousand. The previous 15 years, more than two thousand.  

"So 'keeping calm and carrying on' is not a synonym for weakness, and feebleness, and for giving in. It is precisely the opposite, in my view.  Precisely the opposite.  

"We have to get used to it. And not in a terrified way, because the output, when it happens, although it's dreadful and tragic, is not happening as much as it did in previous times.  

"So my thesis to you, this afternoon, and I want to hear your thoughts in return, is simply this: Like the Prime Minister of France said, times have changed, we should learn to live with terrorism.  

"I'm going to change that slightly. Times haven't changed, and we should learn to live with terrorism, because that is what being British is about. That is what being responsible citizens is about."