Bob Lambert

Detective Inspector Robert Lambert is the former head of the Muslim Contact Unit in the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command (SO15).

In January 2002, Bob and a Special Branch colleague, set up the Muslim Contact Unit (MCU), with the purpose of establishing partnerships with Muslim community leaders to help tackle the spread of al-Qa'ida influence in London. Previously, Bob worked continuously as a Special Branch specialist counter-terrorist / counter-extremist intelligence officer from 1980, which involved dealing with all forms of violent political threats to the UK, from Irish republican to the many strands of International terrorism.

Bob Lambert is at the liberal end of the Special Branch, in its eight person Muslim Contact Unit. He promotes the idea of partnership working with muslim community organisations. He explicitly counterposes this to repressive policing and attacking the muslim commumity in politics, the press such as the assault unleashed by Jack Straw’s remarks about the veil or the ‘terror experts’ who suggest that universities are a hotbed of muslim ‘radicalisation’.

This means he is seen by some in government and the press – including some ‘left’ journalists such as those supporting the Euston Manifesto – as an appeaser of radical Islam. Lambert noted that he wasn’t bothered by the Chatham House rule since he had previously been the victim such rules when the existence of his unit was disclosed – he said – by a leak from the Foreign Office to the press.

On the Irish Troubles

Lambert has cited experience from the Northern Ireland conflict in support of his approach to the war on terror.

The MCU has taken a leaf from the book of former head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch, George Churchill-Coleman in challenging conventional counter terrorism thinking by highlighting the danger of unintentionally increasing support for terrorism by recourse to extra-judicial powers in tackling it. Internment in Northern Ireland, he recalls, was immediately followed by a substantial increase in violence, just as the government's unbending approach to Bobby Sands and fellow hunger strikers gave the IRA its biggest ever recruitment boost.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi

Lambert has spoken out against Gordon Brown's decision to ban Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi from visiting Britain.

One man who thinks that's not just bad for community relations but actually a threat to Britain's security, is Detective Inspector Bob Lambert, who retired six weeks ago as head of the Metropolitan police special branch's Muslim Contact Unit. With more than a quarter century at the sharp end of counter-terrorism operations, Lambert is scarcely a bleeding-heart liberal. But he has been unable to speak out publicly until now and is deeply frustrated by the Qaradawi ban. "Qaradawi is clearly useful in countering al-Qaida propaganda", Lambert told me this week. "He is held in high esteem: how can we think meaningfully about enlisting credible Muslim community support against al-Qaida if we're not prepared to engage constructively with the likes of Qaradawi?"

Neocon attacks

Lambert's approach has been heavily criticised by Neoconservatives.

David T of the Harry's Place blog has charged that 'Lambert's policy is premised upon a fundamental error. The Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami share the same "clash of civilisations" analysis as Al Qaeda.'

Hugh Fitzgerald of the New English Review has said that Lambert "does seem to be tailor-made as a figure of fun, the exemplar of all that is wrong, in some quarters, with those who have allowed themselves to be led by the nose, or perhaps are simply too stupid, all by themselves, to grasp the meaning, and full menace, and meretriciousness, of Islam."