Plotters: The UK Terrorists Who Failed

by Lizzie Dearden

Since 2017, the UK has seen fifteen terrible terrorist attacks. But the atrocities on our evening news are the tip of a vast iceberg. Security services are striving to contain a staggering 3,000 jihadists, far-right extremists and other potential threats. We are in a new age of terror, with self-radicalizing, hard-to-categorize individuals planning violence--but each one caught by the British state tells us something about British society.

For every successful plot in the six years since Westminster Bridge, more than twice as many have been foiled. Some were thwarted by nerve-wracking undercover operations; others were narrowly averted by heroic citizens, or ruined by the absurd mistakes of would-be attackers. Invariably, the all-too-human stories of these failed terrorists reveal the true picture of UK extremism.

Through interviews with senior counter-terror figures and astonishing court testimony, Plotters unpacks how and why British terror attacks happen--and don't. From dating websites and prison cells to Telegram networks and Tesco knives, Lizzie Dearden's deep dive offers one disturbing the plotters will keep coming. To confront them, we need to understand them.

Genres: Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

Published June 1, 2023

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

A readable book, however one I found to be very dark and depressing in its descriptions of modern Britain and indeed the world as a whole. As a man, this work really seemed to make clear to me that the majority of awful terrorist attacks in the modern day are not done by hardened religious fanatics, but by sad, lonely, mentally ill young men and teenagers who have had miserable lives. Neo Nazi, Islamic fundamentalists, it doesnt matter the same building blocks are almost always there. They almost all seem to be autistic on some level, and this paints such a bleak picture about A) the state of mental health understanding and care in this country, and B) the state of men in the UK, where, if you have a tough time at school and have a bad home life and some neurodiversity, it seems to be a very real danger you become self-radicalised and plan something awful.

I felt the book missed how central and deep-seated this societal issue is, constantly describing mentally ill loners but missing quite why there seem to be so many men from all ethnicities and religions that fulfill that parameter. Instead more time was given over to geopolitics, rather than why things like the Gaza war or the rise of ISIS and the media that ensues can make attacks more likely. The writing and phrasing was also sometimes quite repetitive, criminals 'gorging on violent propaganda' etc. And i think with such a dark subject matter perhaps more weight could have been given to potential solutions and hope for the future.

[Jack Varley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book but there were some minor errors littered throughout which were troubling; I'm really not sure how they weren't picked up. For example the Christchurch mosque shootings are described multiple times within the book as taking place in 2018 and then again later on says they happened in 2019. They actually occurred on March 15th, 2019, but it's such a blatant error I'm astonished it got printed - and within the second edition no less!

It also made some other spurious claims, including that incel motivated mass shootings have killed in excess of 50 people in North America since 2015. That was extremely puzzling. The most infamous incel motivated mass shooting was Elliot Rodger's in which six people were killed and that took place in 2014. The deadliest incel motivated attack didn't even involve guns at all, when Alek Minassian killed 11 people in a vehicle ramming attack through Toronto, Canada in 2018.

I'm really not sure where that figure of 50 dead came from, unless the net cast on what counted as incel motivated was incredibly broad and included attacks such as the 2018 Parkland High School massacre. It's unfortunate too because the bizarre statistic distracts from a genuinely interesting discussion as to whether Jake Davison's shooting spree through Plymouth in 2021 should count as terrorism. The police decided it wasn't, and their reasoning is deftly examined in this book.

What really comes across is just how incredibly lucky the UK has been in avoiding further terrorist attacks beyond those which occurred in the 2017 wave. Many of the plotters discussed herein were fantasists egged on by undercover agents who likely never would have done anything if left to their own devices. Others got caught because they couldn't shut up, bragging to infiltrated Telegram groups about their intentions enabling them to be swiftly arrested before they acted.

There have been numerous near-misses that the police had no real hand in thwarting. Nicholas Prosper is one example - though it occurred too recently to be included in this book, Prosper successfully acquired a firearm and ammunition with the intent to carry out a school shooting and only failed because he noisily massacred his family first. Emad al-Swealmeen is another example; his botched bombing in Liverpool only failing (likely) due to the poorly constructed device he used.

I do think too much praise is heaped upon the police in this book, especially when it comes to convicting individuals such as Safiyya Amira Shaikh (formerly Michelle Ramsden) a drug addict accused of plotting to bomb Saint Paul's Cathedral in London who was in reality likely an extremely mentally ill and heavily traumatised woman without even the remotest realistic prospect of carrying out the elaborate terror plan she told undercover agents she wanted to execute.

[Rachael having a nice time · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough and fascinating look at all that goes into stopping the plots and plotters.