Bomb attack on London Underground sets stage for further state repression
By
Steve James
16 September 2017
The explosion of a suspected homemade bomb on a packed Underground commuter train in southwest London Friday morning has become the occasion for a massive police and intelligence operation.
Before anything about the origins of the attack aboard a train at Parsons Green station had officially been made public, the government called a meeting of its COBRA emergency committee. The meeting was convened in the afternoon amid speculation that the UK’s terrorism threat level could be raised from “severe” to “critical”—the highest level. Late Friday evening, Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May announced in a televised statement that the threat level was being raised to critical for an undefined period.
She stated, “For this period, military personnel will replace police officers on guard duties at certain protected sites that are not accessible to the public,” adding, “The public will see more armed police on the transport network and on our streets…” Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said this would free up 1,000 armed police officers for use on the streets.
Earlier, May seized the opportunity to push for more surveillance powers, declaring, “[W]e are looking very carefully at the powers that our police and security service have to make sure they have the powers they need,” while “working with the Internet companies.”
She also announced a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron “to talk about what more we can be doing to ensure that we deal with the terrorist propaganda, with the extremist propaganda, with the hatred that is put out across the Internet.”
During the evening, Islamic State claimed…