Terrorism - admitting that it works is too hard to take...

Progress is often stifled by pretending to live in a world that one would prefer to live in, rather than the world one does live in. For example, the UK is saddled with a political and administrative entourage suited particularly well to a powerful, wealthy nation running a large empire, but singularly ill-equipped to manage a post-industrial society sinking under a load of debt.

Another example - hallucinogenic drugs make people feel good and don't do any lasting harm to most of the people who use them. Include alcohol and tobacco in this definition, as they should be included, and it's patently true. Now, this doesn't excuse naive scientists who tangle with governments, but it does explain why any policy which refuses to acknowledge this fact is bound to fail.

And here's a big one to follow up with - violent terrorism gets results. The IRA only won a place at the political table because they were pretty handy with guns and bombs. The Protestant ruling classes steadfastly ignored the Catholics in Northern Ireland - if they hadn't, there would never have been the support for the IRA in the first place. The ANC, too, weren't above using paramilitary tactics, and you can't accuse them of failing. And the Basque separatists won the considerable autonomy they now have as a direct result of civil violence.

Even the women's suffrage movement in the UK ran a low-level campaign of breakages and constant disruption - not bombs, but perhaps that was a peculiarly English sort of terrorism. Disrupted the Derby, don't y'know, end of the world...

And yet the default position is to see terrorism against a state - any state - as wrong, and the state as the righteous party. Who's to say the state is correct? - if a group of people want something badly enough that they're prepared to risk their lives and liberty for it, shouldn't they be listened to?

Of course, the downside to all this is the victims. It's a coward's way out to act against anyone apart from those responsible for the situation you rail against - a war against the politicians isn't morally justified, but at least it has a certain logic about it. Killing ordinary citizens is despicable, whichever way you look at it. So if any goons at Cheltenham are scanning this copy for signs of support for terrorist groups, forget it. I don't.

But the point I'm making is that - in the absence of a willingness to listen to the claims of minority groups on power and self-determination - political acts of violence are an effective way of getting noticed and getting listened to. The only real way to avoid them happening is to be prepared to cede power over parts of a country's population. Now, if that had happened in Serbia before 1914...