It is now five years since the London bombings on 7 July 2005, which were shocking not just because of the devastation they caused but because they were carried out by four ‘home-grown’ bombers. The British Security Service had warned that it was a matter of ‘when, not if ’ we would see the emergence of a home-grown threat, but the focus had remained on counterterrorism efforts overseas and bolstering defences at home. The idea of a community-based approach to counterterrorism was not new, it was a cornerstone of the approach latterly adopted in Northern Ireland. But in the aftermath of 9/11 it was assumed that this type of response was redundant in the face of what appeared to be an international, foreign and highly coordinated threat