Whilst I am quite rightly pleased with the recent announcement in the London Evening Standard by the UK Security Minister Ben Wallace that there will be a purge of ‘extremists’ from sensitive positions working in London’s transport network, I do find myself asking: ‘Why on earth was this not done before?’ To check whether your potential employee has made statements friendly towards terrorism or who has connections with or membership of groups that could be seen as being aligned with Islamic extremism before you employ them looks to me like a no brainer of a idea. The fact that this is only being announced now does make me wonder how lax pre employment security checking has been in the past on London’s Transport network?

You can’t help but notice when you travel on London’s Underground or on London’s buses a noticeable presence as employees, Muslim men with the sort of bushy beards that often signify an identification with more conservative readings of Islam. These are the same or similar sort of beards we see on the faces of those arrested and convicted of terror offences. How many of those men who have Islamic extremist tendencies are working as bus drivers, tube drivers, who are manning the gates to the platforms and who have other jobs that may negatively impact the safety of travellers should they go ‘full Islam’ in some way? The frightening thing is probably because of lax vetting procedures when they were employed, the transport authorities may not know.

It would I concede, be difficult if not practically impossible for all these transport employees to be subjected to Developed Vetting, one of the more intrusive and far reaching security checks that HMG can carry out. This would involve specially trained civilian investigating officer visiting families and friends of the potential employee and looking at the person’s background in great detail. There are too many people to check for that to be practical or affordable I can see that and that is why, as I understand, this procedure is only used for examining potential government employees who are likely to have access to material or premises that are subject to higher than usual security classifications. However, there does not seem to be any indication from Mr Wallace that even the lower levels of security vetting, such as the Counter Terrorism Check or the Security Clearance, has been done on London’s transport employees and I have to ask just what checking if any has been done?

The lack of proper vetting on potential employees of London’s transport system was highlighted by the case of Khurram Butt, one of the Islamic murderers who took part in the London Bridge attack was a former employee of London Underground where he held the post of ‘customer safety officer’. He got this job despite having appeared a few months previously in a television documentary about Islamic extremists in Britain called ‘The Jihadis Next Door’. If this case is in any way representative about the vetting system for potential employees of Transport for London then it shows an almost criminal laxity on their part in not properly examining those they employ for links or sympathies to Islamic extremism. If I was being charitable then I’d like to think that this was a rare oversight, however looking at the number of guys with obvious ‘jihadi beards’ who are working for Transport for London I have the distinct fear that Khurram Butt may not be the only ticking bomb employee or former employee having access to sensitive areas or sensitive information.

It is possible that Transport for London an organisation in thrall, as many state organisations are, to the cult of ‘diversity’, may have deliberately overlooked signs that potential employees may be dodgy in order to tick ‘diversity’ boxes on personnel data. After all how can any organisation be considered as ‘diverse’ if it doesn’t include at least one bearded angry, potentially unstable Moslem? If that is the case then the lives of those who live and work in London may be at risk because those who follow the groupthink of ‘diversity’ did not or could not bring themselves to be justifiably suspicious of someone and dig further into their background. The desire of these diversity cult members to have employees of every possible identity group given jobs is turning from a joke and a cause of inefficiency into something that could be completely lethal. It’s horrible to think that those who should have had some common sense when hiring people for sensitive jobs may have allowed a desire for the workforce to be ‘representative’ to put dangerous people in places where they should not have been.

Imagine these scenarios for example. Firstly, Abdul the bearded savage, who attends extremist mosques, keeps his wife in a binbag and cleaves strongly to Islam has been given a job on the Underground that puts him in a safety critical position with regards terror prevention such as watching the ticket gates at somewhere like Upton Park station. Would such a person, someone with such a strong allegiance to Islam, if put in place as the first line of defence against an Islamic terrorist would they stop them at the gates or report them in a timely manner? Although some Islamic individuals would immediately report or take action, this fictional employee’s deep involvement in Islam does raise suspicion that they may keep the information to themselves because their loyalty to Islam is greater then their loyalty to the peace of the land and its people. The second scenario relates to technical staff who may have access to areas of the Underground system restricted to the public and kept under lock and key for good reason, places like escalator machinery rooms, storage areas, closed off access tunnels, ventilation shafts, switch gear and signalling and train management equipment. Now much of the information about the existence of things like disused stations and ventilation shafts is public knowledge but they are not places of public access. I dread to think what death or destruction a rogue TFL employee could do with a bomb in an emergency escape or ventilation shaft could do and the disruption that could be caused by an attack on one of the Underground’s trainsheds or sidings, such as at Ruislip or Stratford for example, could cause chaos on the system for weeks or even months.

I can’t help but wonder if the fact Mr Wallace is talking about this issue only now after the savage Islamic attack on London Bridge, will raise suspicions among the public that the problem of infiltration into London’s transport system is bigger than the government and the transport authorities may have either realised or wanted to publicly admit? There certainly seems to be a laxity in vetting of potential employees in the past that would suggest this is the case.

As I said at the beginning, I cautiously welcome the idea of expunging proven Islamic extremists from sensitive positions and it is a policy that other areas of government should consider for their areas of responsibility. It is a scandal of terrible proportions that those who hate us and harbour desires to murder us in our hundreds or thousands should be employed in sensitive positions in transport, the NHS, the police the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office and other areas. These individuals can wreak great damage to our security not just by their own treacherous actions but by helping to foster an environment which causes those in authority to see Islam as less of a threat than it actually is in reality.

There is some evidence of this ‘don’t look at the Islam’ attitude contained within Mr Wallace’s words to the London Evening Standard when he says:

He added: “We have an acute number of people in this country who are attracted to extremism or violent extremism. You can’t arrest your way out of that so you have to develop a way that you can early intervene with some people. Disruption is really important. “

Note well that he does not name the primary problem, that of Islam and chooses instead to use the bland statements ‘extremism’ and ‘violent extremism’, phrases that say nothing about and do not identify the primary threat. Of course Mr Wallace as many of his ilk in government do, tried to invoke the fake threat of ‘far right extremism’ a threat which we the people, no matter how much we may despise the violent far right, can see is not the primary one. We can see just by the body count how many lives have been taken by ‘far right extremism’ and the vastly greater number of deaths caused by those following Islam. I suspect, if I don the hat of cynicism here for a moment, that Transport For London will make a big fuss over kicking out a few people who are or used to be members of the British National Party, or who have attended anti-terror demonstrations of the sort put on by the Football Lads Alliance for example, but leave a lot of dodgy Muslims in place as employees, for cowardly ‘community cohesion’ reasons. I have seen too much of a ‘don’t upset the Muslims’ attitude from those in Government and in the police to expect that this policy will be enforced either equally or effectively.

Mr Wallace’s words and the policy of belatedly removing terror-linked employees from Transport for London look like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. It would have been far better had TFL never employed such people in the first place and I suspect that a lot of dodgy Muslims will be left in place because it is too much trouble to get them out and there may be too many false accusations of ‘racism’ if they do so. I fear that those who have taken such an attitude of cowardice in the face of whining, or who have fail to do their jobs properly when checking employees, will have to share some of the blame the next time a TFL employee or former employee goes ‘full Islam’ and slaughters innocent people on the TFL network.