The atrocity in Woolwich last week was one of almost unspeakable cruelty. Any right-minded person would have felt shock and intense anger that a British citizen was publicly butchered to death on the streets of his own capital city. The fact that the victim was a soldier, and targeted for this reason, made the killing feel much more raw and direct, as if this was an attack on us all. That this happened in full public view added a feeling of helplessness and frustration to our anger.

The minority of people who argue that this should be treated as ‘just another murder’ – as though this case was not exceptional – are not only wrong but callous and wilfully blind to the problem. An unarmed British soldier was murdered in the most brutal way in broad daylight on a London street for the very reason that he was a British soldier. The killers then stood there and gloated over their crime and shouted their reasons, based on their extreme Islamist ideology.

Those who claim that this killing was done by two ‘nutters’ who ‘happened to be Muslim’, or ‘happened to invoke Islam’, are dodging the issue. This is just intellectual laziness or moral cowardice, an unwillingness to face up to the very real problem of extreme Islamism.

The contemptible tiny minority that tries to draw comparisons between this killing and British military actions in Afghanistan are morally warped. All wars cause civilian deaths, but British soldiers in Afghanistan are not in the business of running down Afghan civilians and then hacking them to death with cleavers. British troops are there with the consent of the elected Afghan government and the authority of the UN. The vast majority of deaths in Afghanistan (as all UN and NGO studies demonstrate) are caused by the Taliban and other Islamist insurgents, not ISAF forces.

If our critics really wanted to look at who was ‘killing Muslims worldwide’, they would find that the answer is violent Islamists and repressive regimes, not the West. The argument that ‘Western foreign policy’ causes terrorism does not get us very far. What are they suggesting: that Al-Qaeda should be given a veto over every action we take abroad, that we should defer to the judgment of machete-wielding terrorists?

Yet rather than addressing the actual atrocity, a certain type of leftist felt the need to lecture the rest of us about how we must not respond in a racist or ‘Islamophobic’ way. They quickly forgot the dead soldier who had been butchered and moved on to their fears of an anti-Muslim backlash. They evidently found it easier to condemn hypothetical hordes of racist Britons for things they may or may not do than to condemn the Islamist murderers for what had already been done. Likewise, they were far more comfortable condemning the EDL and the far Right than condemning the Islamist extremists who perpetrated the atrocity.

While claiming to stand against bigotry, these leftists display a bigoted and patronising view towards their fellow British citizens. They are happy condemning their ‘own people’ and yet do not feel at all comfortable having to confront and condemn the Islamist extremists who hate Britain and whose ideology opposes our entire way of life.

The possibility that there is an enemy worse than their own country is a challenge for these people. The thought that there might actually be extremists from a minority within a minority, who are more dangerous than the EDL and the BNP, is clearly something they struggle with.

Indeed, I suspect that many, especially in the media and the political elite, had rather forgotten about the problem of Islamist extremism, thinking it had died down and mostly gone away. I fear that some in our political class viewed Islamist extremism as mere ‘blowback’ from the Iraq  War and the War on Terror, an unfortunate by-product of the interventionist foreign policy of the Blair era which we could now ‘move on’ from as our troops are back from Iraq and on their way to coming back from Afghanistan.

This view is dangerously naive and fails to comprehend the depth of the problem, which is rooted in Islamist ideology, not the policy of any British or other Western government. But people find it easier to imagine that terrorists have rational grievances that can be appeased. Some continue to view our enemies as ‘bogeymen’ who have been exaggerated, even though Islamist terrorists demonstrate again and again that the danger they pose is very real.
While the attack on Woolwich is the first of its kind in this country, it is not the first time Islamist terrorists have tried to target British soldiers in the UK. In nearby Thamesmead (my old hometown), in 2005, Abu Bakr Mansha planned to murder Corporal Mark Byles, an Iraq war hero, and acquired a gun for the purpose. For this he got just six years. As far back as 1998 – before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – Amer Mirza, a member of the now banned Al-Muhajiroun, was convicted for a failed petrol bomb attack on a Territorial Army Base. More recently, in 2007, four men in Birmingham were convicted for a plot to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier. This year, four men in Luton were convicted for a plot to bomb a Territorial Army base.

In France last year, Mohammed Merah murdered three French soldiers in Toulouse and Montauban in killings which were originally blamed on the far right and even (ironically) on Nicolas Sarkozy’s tough rhetoric on immigration and Islamism. Tragically, a French soldier has now been stabbed in the neck in Paris, although fortunately he has survived.

The Woolwich murder is not an isolated freak event, but the first successful UK attack in a series of attempts. It is no exaggeration to say that hundreds, possibly thousands, of British people would have been killed by Islamist terrorists in recent years were it not for the success of our police and security services in foiling so many plots.

Those who think that by turning our back on the rest of the world and not ‘interfering’ overseas we can avoid this threat are only kidding themselves. Islamist power bases abroad become launching pads for attacks on the homeland. Displays of weakness and attempts at appeasement only invite further Islamist aggression.

Islamism therefore needs to be fought both at home and abroad. A policy of trying to do one without the other is doomed to failure, as this is a global movement we face which does not respect borders or boundaries.

At home, we must do all that we can to prevent further similar atrocities. While we can never guarantee complete security against crimes such as this, we must ensure that our security services can use all the tools at their disposal and have the law on their side.

Of course, ‘lone wolf’ or ‘self-starter’ terrorists, not backed up by an international network that can be traced and followed, are particularly difficult to guard against. The Internet is their main sphere of activity and source of guidance, so the security services must be able to trace and monitor what they do online. The Government should therefore push ahead with the draft Communications Data Bill, which would enable the security services to better access communications data and records of online activity.

This has so far been blocked by Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, cheered on by the more civil liberties-minded parts of the Conservative Party. In my view, however, freedom of speech is a civil liberty, the right to a fair trial is a civil liberty, but being able to go on terrorist websites and download terrorist material without being tracked

and without records being kept is not. If necessary, the Conservative and Labour parties should unite to push this bill through, with or without the Liberal Democrats.

There are other aspects of our laws that need to be looked at. Why was no action taken against Michael Adebolajo when he was deported from Kenya back to the UK after trying to join the Somalian Islamist group Al-Shabab? Why have those from the banned extremist group Al-Muhajiroun (of which Michael Adebolajo was a member) simply been able to relaunch and carry on under a succession of different names: Al Ghurabaa, The Saviour Sect, Islam 4UK, Muslims Against Crusades?

Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale are home-grown terrorists, but an overhaul of our human rights laws in relation to deportation is long overdue. Put simply, laws which stop us from deporting foreign extremists need to be changed or scrapped. It is right that we do not abuse anyone’s human rights, but it is not our responsibility to look after the human rights of a foreign extremist in their own country. If people from other countries abuse our hospitality, we should be able to deport them.

The Home Secretary recently proposed that those convicted of murdering police officers should receive a whole-life sentence without parole. I firmly believe that the same principle should apply to those who murder members of the armed forces. And finally, given the need to deal with the Islamist threat at home and abroad, we cannot afford to cut our defence and security budgets any further.

This is an atrocity which demands a response. This killing cannot be allowed stand. It is no good offering words of condemnation and then carrying on just as before, as if nothing has happened. We owe it to those who serve and defend this country to do all that we can to defend them from atrocities such as this one. No one else should have to suffer the fate of Drummer Lee Rigby.

Peter Cannon is a Conservative councillor on Dartford, Kent