"How could this happen here?" [ie GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR]

CLOCKWORK ORANGE BY DESIGN

... a white woman in her 30s with a tattoo on her neck wearing a tracksuit shouted as she walked past the mosque. "How could Muslims cut the head off a British soldier in broad daylight?"

DECLINE

During its heyday, Woolwich was a flourishing military industrial complex. Sprawling factories produced bullets and shells for the army of the British Empire, while its docks were home to a thriving ship-building industry.

But the area and its industry declined precipitously in the second half of the twentieth century with the last arms-making plant shutting its doors in 1994.

Pockets of the area are so bleak that Stanley Kubrick used them to film his 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, a movie about violent delinquents in a dystopian future Britain.

Ranked among the most deprived in England, according to the local authorities, the district is home to people speaking nearly 200 different languages. A quarter of residents were born overseas.
Scarred by high levels of unemployment and social deprivation, locals say the area's character has undergone a transformation in recent years.

"I've got an eight-year old. At six years old, I was out playing on the street myself. He doesn't go out on the street," said Gary Craig, an unemployed 44-year-old who lives close to the scene of the murder.
Like many local whites, he blames the arrival of outsiders: "The influx of foreigners into this area in the last five years is totally ridiculous."

Woolwich, home to a military barracks for units which have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, has been targeted before by Irish Republican militants.

In 1974, the IRA planted a bomb in a local pub near the barracks, killing two people, including one soldier. And in 1983, it blew up a guards room in the barracks, injuring five.

In 2011, Woolwich was hit hard by city-wide riots when shops, a pub, and a police car were set on fire as an estimated 300 rioters looted the town centre.

Today, Woolwich town centre is dominated by pawnbrokers, betting shops, small kiosks to send money abroad, and specialised African and Asian food suppliers, including several Halal butchers.

Change of another kind is coming. On the other side of the road from the mosque, cranes are working on a new rail link that will radically improve access to central London ... CONTINUED ....

http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/05/23/britain-killing-woolwich-idINDEE94M0EG20130523