The news that Poole council used surveillance powers designed to track down terrorists to spy on an ordinary middle-class family they suspected of not living in the correct catchment area for their chosen school is not as surprising as it first seems. The government is, after all, fully aware that there exists in this country an organised group that propagates an infectious ideology which considers government officials to be mere obstacles to their goals. Arranged in tightly knit ‘cells’ (usually of two senior operators and one or more younger members), the group as a whole communicates via an informal network of personal contacts, workplace colleagues and Internet forums.
Despite their minority status, they have highly placed members in all the major professions: medicine, law, teaching, business, even politics. The senior members tend to be radicalised while at university. Their main purpose of communication is to target vulnerabilities in the state, and share knowledge of resources that will allow them to pursue their fanatical goal that they are willing to sacrifice all to achieve: the education of their children. The government’s greatest fear is that their ideology, of self-improvement, responsibility and working hard for the future, could spread round the whole of the UK, making much of government obsolete and without a client group to control.
