Murphy's letter from Edinburgh

 

Don't let your ignorance exceed you intelligence

The speed that the police and our security services have acted on the terrorist acts and attempted acts on London has been fast and unrelenting.  They have swung in to action with the carefully laid plans that they have been working on for years, and they are a credit to the policing of this country along with all the other emergency services who have carried out their duties in a well executed fashion.

We in Britain were well aware that we were targets for the extremists who don't care who they target in their campaign of disrupting normal life for their own ends.  It was a just a case of when and where we were going to be targeted.

Our police and security services are the people who are best placed to catch the perpetrators of the events that have happened in London over the last two weeks, and no one should be tempted to try and take the law in to their hands.  Because you can be sure they will get it wrong and some will let their ignorance exceed their own intelligence through the lack of knowledge.

London has to be kept moving like any other city in the world, and the investigations have to be carried out by the people best placed with the information to do this, and our police and our security services will be working on this as fast as they can.  Throughout their investigations they will be able to piece the events together and gather all the relevant information to try and prevent these types of acts happening again.

The people caught up in these types of attacks have to try and remain calm and try to help anyone around them who may be in a state of distress.  The people caught up in any event have to try and move on and get back to some sort of routine again, no matter how hard that may appear to be at the time of any kind of incident.

The type of people that carry out these types of acts are cowards who are targeting anyone and everyone in their twisted way of thinking.  They don't care who they target as long as they can bring disruption and fear to the rest of the world.  But they won't win.

We had the IRA who did this in London a number of years ago and London carried on as did all the other cities that they targeted.  Now in hindsight they can watch how their acts effected other people with the new groups that have sprung up with their campaign of hate towards the innocent people who get caught up in these types of acts.

No matter where the terrorist strike they will always attack innocent people from all races and religions, and the reasons will always be blurred as to why they are doing it.  Many other countries have been subjected to these types terrorists for years, and there still is no solution on how to bring it to an end.

The main thing we have to remember is that this is a police and security service operation and that no one should take the law into their own hands on the belief that by someone's looks that they are guilty of any crime by colour of skin or traditional dress.  These are terrorists who come from many countries and who may be white as well as of any other appearance.

We have to let the police and security services do their job without the people of this country making assumptions that people are guilty by appearance.  To do that would play right in to the terrorists hands by causing distrust and splits within the communities that live in this country.

There is no place anywhere in this country for bigots, racists or people who try to stir up hatred because their ignorance exceeds their intelligence.  We all have a part to play in the eradication of terrorism, but no one can make assumptions or take the law in to their own hands believing that what they are doing is right for any reasons that they may think are justified.

The police and our security services are the people who have to do the job, and up to now they have moved fast in a calculated response to the threats on our country. Anyone who has photographs or information on any terrorist act should pass it on to the police so that they can study the information in an unbiased and calculated way.

The police have now given out an Anti Terrorist Police hotline number which is a free number for those who may hold such information, and that number is 0800 789 321.

We now have to remain calm and let our police and security services get on with the job that they are trained to do.

Written by: Andrew Murphy Tuesday 23 July 2005

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