It looks like the people of Vienna have been spared a devastating terror attack.
Following international co-operation between intelligence agencies, Austrian security officials revealed on Thursday that they had foiled a suicide-bomb plot targeted at one of two Taylor Swift concerts at Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadium. The concerts have now been cancelled, four people have been arrested, and two teenage suspects have been remanded in custody.
The Austrian police have said that the suspects had planned a mass-casualty attack involving knives and explosives. One of the suspects told police that the intention was to kill ‘as many people as possible’. While there is still a great deal we don’t know about the plotters, those arrested may be part of a wider terrorist conspiracy. Two US officials have claimed that Austrian law enforcement is looking for others who may have some knowledge of the plans. One of the male suspects was well-known to the authorities, and was already on a terrorist watchlist. He had reportedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a video message prepared to justify the certain carnage that would have taken place at the Ernst Happel Stadium.
It’s very easy to ignore the bombs that never go off. But there are worrying aspects to this foiled plot that ought to capture the distracted attention of the UK’s own security services. For a start, Taylor Swift is due to perform at Wembley towards the end of August. London mayor Sadiq Khan may have said that the event can go ahead safely, but worries persist. After all, mass-casualty terrorist attacks on concert venues are something we in the UK are already sadly familiar with, following the bombing of an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena in 2017. Perpetrator Salman Abedi killed 22 people, and injured over a thousand, many of them young girls.
Venue security was and still is a problem in the UK. The Manchester Arena Inquiry, which concluded last year, revealed myriad security failures around the Ariana Grande concert. Some of these are now the subject of civil claims, after survivors and relatives launched legal action against MI5 earlier this year. Indeed, the security arrangements at the Manchester Arena were so deficient that the then Tory government announced Martyn’s Law in 2022. Named after one of the victims of the Manchester atrocity, this law requires locations with a capacity of more than 100 people, such as places of worship and health facilities, to put certain counter-terrorism measures in place, from training to threat-mitigation processes. This legislation still has not been enacted.
There is further facet to the foiled Vienna plot that ought to concern us here in the UK. Austrian police have revealed that one of the alleged plotters had been hired only days earlier by a facilities company providing services at the concert venue – access which no doubt would have been exploited by the alleged terrorists to maximise casualties. This is a problem in the UK, too. The Manchester Arena Inquiry showed that concert support staff, including security staff, were inadequately screened and trained.
At Wembley, there are likely to be anywhere between 300 and 500 ancillary staff supporting the gig. Vetting people to screen out those with criminal records, or anything else that might make them unsuitable, is a time-consuming business in both the public and private sector. In commercial enterprises, the vetting process must compete with the bottom line. This means hiring temporary staff as cheaply as possible, often at the last minute with minimal training. In the public sector, the United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV) service has been described by consultants as the ‘worst government shared service’ because of its acute staff shortage and bureaucratic processes. The National Audit Office warned last year that dire and slow performance in clearing job applicants was putting UK national security at risk. In Vienna, a potential suicide bomber on a watchlist got a job as a cleaner with apparently no questions asked. It’s not difficult to imagine something similar happening here.
No doubt there is considerable preparation and intelligence gathering taking place in the UK to ensure the safety of those attending the London part of Swift’s Eras tour. But complacency and depleted police resources, even more so after this month’s riots, are not good companions to safety.
The decision to cancel all Swift’s Austrian tours will have disappointed tens of thousands of her fans. It can also be seen as capitulation to the Islamist threat posed to young people at concert venues – a threat that has come back into focus after Hamas massacred 260 youngsters at the Supernova festival in Israel on 7 October. Islamists, their misogyny rarely far from the surface, seem to have a particular rage against young women enjoying themselves.
As much as I’m against terrorists controlling behaviour and sapping morale through stoking our fear of what might come, we do need to be vigilant. Think it couldn’t happen here in Britain? It did and it can. The monsters are already inside the castle.
Ian Acheson is a former senior civil servant at the Home Office.
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