Savagery in Woolwich

The terrorists will never win,because they can never beat the values that we hold dear. That was David Camerons response to the barbaric scenes that shattered the calm of a south London street8230; with a British soldier being hacked to death by two assailants in broad daylight8230;

While it would be premature to reach any firm conclusions,the government appears to be treating this as a terrorist incident: the fact that Theresa May,the home secretary,responded to the attack by calling a meeting of Cobra,the governments emergency committee,as well as receiving a detailed briefing from MI5,suggests that this was no ordinary murder. The atrocity certainly fits al-Qaedas blueprint for home-grown terrorism,whereby its supporters have been urged to carry out individual attacks,rather than trying to undertake sophisticated operations on the scale of the July 7 bombings. It will be cold comfort to the family and friends of the dead man that the call by al-Qaeda leaders such as Anwar al-Awlaki the cleric killed by a US drone strike two years ago for sympathisers to carry out individual outrages was,in large part,a reaction to the success of our intelligence and security services in disrupting more elaborate and more deadly plots8230;

From a leader in The Telegraph,London