The brutal, and utterly pointless, killings in Paris have once again brought the current chaos of the Middle East and its consequences - the huge migration of dispossessed peoples to Europe and safer Middle Eastern countries, the growing number of calls for further bombings of Isis in Iraq and Syria, the increasing power of Isis affiliate, Boko Haram in Nigeria and bordering countries and, of course, fear to the streets of Europe - to the fore once more in the form of a cacophany of political and media demands for immediate tough responses. These responses have ranged from the absurd (that British Muslims should organise mass protests against Isis terrorism, as 'The Sun' demanded, to clearly demonstrate their opposition to Isis, the group that has been systematically murdering Muslims throughout their occupied territories),  the contradictory, (Cameron et al charging that Russian air strikes are fuelling terrorism - the downing of aircraft over Sinai - whilst simultaneously demanding that we should begin air strikes in Syria to combat terrorist attacks) and the dangerous (that Britain should substantially increase its military intervention in the Syrian conflict, specifically against Isis forces). 
The day after the Paris killings I phoned a good friend of mine who has lived in France, on the Paris outskirts, for forty years. He is married to a woman from Senegal, who is a Muslim, although my friend has no religious faith, and I was interested to hear his take on this terrible event. He sighed, and reiterated a view I had often heard him give: that France has an enormous Muslim population (over 6 million) who have for years experienced deeply entrenched prejudice and systemic discrimination in almost all areas of public and social life. They mainly live in poor, ghettoised housing, have little chance of rising in French society and experience overt discrimination in their daily lives. This has given rise to alienated young people, experiencing unemployment rates of over 25%, living in the banlieues around Paris and other cities, with high crime rates and with little sense of being fully integrated, or even welcome, in French society. He has experienced racist comments himself in France when out with his wife, and feels that overt racism in France is more pronounced than in the UK. He is not surprised that France has had the highest number of people travelling to Syria to join the ranks of Isis than any other European country, or that a number of recent atrocities have included home-grown terrorists from the banlieues, many of whom have petty criminal histories and low educational achievement. Isis can offer status and empowerment to those who feel alienation and disaffection from their society. None of this excuses such barbarism, but it must be understood. And France has made little effort to get to grips with the problem, not even collecting data on ethnic or religious background when analysing social conditions. At government level, the problem has not been properly acknowledged, let alone addressed.  
The ratcheting up of military engagement in Syria will increase the threat of terrorism on European streets. There is a clear causal connection between military action and terrorism at home, between Western foreign policy and deaths in clubs and restaurants at home. To deny this is folly. It must be accepted as a likely consequence of a military interventionist policy. This is not to say the policy is necessarily wrong, but it is to say, clearly, that such policies increase the possibility of terror attacks. 
What we have not seen in recent months is any concerted effort to push for a diplomatic initiative to generate something positive in the deteriorating Syrian situation. With Russia now an active participant, and a victim of Isis terrorism, there is an opportunity to get a UN brokered gathering of the various groups active in the civil war in Syria to try to find an interim coalition government which will have to include a resurgent Assad at this moment, as a preliminary to a more permanent resolution of a complex and seemingly intractable situation. This may seem absurdly optimistic, but at some point a political solution will have to be found, and concerted efforts to get this started are infinitely preferable to calling for increased air strikes. At the moment in Britain, the only use to be made of the UN seems to be to legitimise Cameron's demand for British air strikes. The demand must be for UN mandated talks, including Russia, France, the USA, representatives of the Assad regime and the leaders of the opposition groups fighting him, now exhausted and losing their initiative. An interim government has to be formed, which will inevitably include Assad at the moment, with a clear programme of political reform to be overseen by the UN. Such a government would then have the legitimate backing of the West and Russia to take on Isis as a clear threat to the integrity of the Syrian state and to the region. Any military action against Isis must have the leadership of relevant states in the region, with Western support if asked for, but not initiated by the Western powers themselves. Turkey, with a huge army, although more preoccupied with its dispute with the Kurds, could be a key player in such an initiative. Another coalition of Western superpowers causing further swathes of "collateral damage" in the region will only serve to add recruits to Isis and generate further terror threats in Europe. Pressure must also be put on our chief weapons importer, and regional 'ally',  Saudi Arabia, to curtail its funding and arming of Sunni insurgent groups, whose weapons make their way to Isis. Not the only irony of this crisis is that our huge armaments sales to Saudi Arabia are helping to prolong and exacerbate the very tragedy we proclaim to be wishing to resolve. 

Back in 1960, my council estate was far removed from anything resembling a Parisian banlieue. Most people were employed, and some in white collar jobs, many owned cars and several played golf on the local council golf course nearby.The only family of foreign extraction I can remember were Belgian and lived on the third floor of my block of flats. Their only child, Francis, a little younger than me and never allowed out to mix with the likes of us kids on the estate (probably very wisely, looking back) would look down on us from his balcony eyrie and shout various insults at us. These were both touchingly outdated and also almost incomprehensible due to his accent and unfortunate speech impediments. "you're weally thilly and thtupid" he would shout in a strongly accented voice. "Sorry Francis, can't hear what you're saying " we would reply. "You're weally weally thtupid then" he would scream . "Sorry Francis, can't understand you. Try it in English", we would respond. " I am thpeakin' English. You're just thtupid and weally weally thilly." "Sorry Francis. Can't understand a word you're saying son. We don't know any Belgian here." Now he would scream in a fury, "I'm going to thwow a bwick at you and I've got lots of bwicks up here, and I'll thwow them wight down you're thwoats". "Sowwy Fwancis, didn't quite get that. Did you say you'd thwow bwicks down our thwoats? What are bwicks, Fwancis and what are thwoats?" we'd shout back, and simultaneously hurl a round of stones upwards to his balcony as he ducked for cover, screaming and crying in impotent frustration. At this point, his dad, always wearing a caricature French beret for some reason, would appear and hurl further insults and threats at us as we departed. Francis' performances on his balcony were always a treat for us, and thinking of new ways to humiliate and torment him always added some spice to the day.
I mentioned the local golf course, and this also played a not insignificant part in my council estate life. Money was always in short supply, and one way of making some was to climb under the wire fences surrounding the golf course and make your way, surreptitiously, to the shrubs and trees that lined most of the fairways. From these, if you kept yourself reasonably well hidden, you could observe the progress of the golfers from hole to hole. What we were looking for was, of course, lost golf balls. These could be gathered, spit and polished, and sold back to the golfers, the price depending on their condition. We would wander through the camouflage offered by the golf course flora along the periphery of the course, bashing the undergrowth with sticks, searching for the prize of a good condition lost ball. Actually, they were surprisingly easy to find. The golfers, generally, must have been of pretty poor quality, since I usually retrieved five or six balls in an afternoon of searching. 
The next stage, and the most difficult, was to initiate a possible sale. This involved approaching a group of golfers and getting a sense of whether they might be interested or not. Most were at least willing to appraise what you'd found, and some would then offer a price, usually a few pennies. Some, however, were hostile to your very presence on the hallowed green. They would tell you, in very forceful language, not only to get out of their sight, but to get out of the course entirely and not come back. This would sometimes be backed up with vivid descriptions of what could be done to you with a golf club - usually a number seven iron, but I know not why. This kind of golfer would sometimes literally chase you away, and this would necessitate our last resort, but also our 'piece de resistance', emphasis on resistance. ( We would also, if the golfer was particularly obnoxious, find a hiding place way down the fairway, wait until he had teed off, and then run out, take his ball, and run as fast as we could to get out of the course, laughing hilariously at his impotent fury way back in the distance.)
 The golf course was criss-crossed with very long, and quite large, drainage tunnels. We all knew exactly where they were, and how long most of them were. We would all dash for the nearest entrances to this underground maze of escape routes and crawl into the tunnels where no golfer would follow. You had to keep your head right down to your knees and try to crawl forward on your feet since there was always a few inches of water at the bottom of the tunnel. They were very dark, but most of them straight enough for you to see the light at the far end. Slowly, and in some pain, you would place one heavily weighted foot in front of the other, and carefully waddle your way down toward the light. When you finally emerged, you were in another part of the golf course entirely, and a new group of golfers were there to do business with.
Only once was I forced to enter a tunnel I'd never tried before, only to find that it curved, and so there was no light to see at the far end. I couldn't go back, since the thought of a golf club being thrust somewhere unmentionable about my being, as had been threatened, was more worrying than negotiating the seemingly endless darkness. I painfully manoeuvred my body forward into the black space ahead, and just kept on going, hoping to round a bend and see light ahead. This didn't happen. I began to have fears of sudden onrushes of water coming up behind me and drowning me helplessly underground. Or encountering fierce underground animals that would tear me apart. I looked back, but only blackness. Ahead, the same. On I carried, until, finally, I did indeed negotiate a bend in the tunnel, and was able to perceive, a long way ahead, a glimmer of daylight. On I crawled, finally emerging, blinking and terrified into the daylight, still clutching my cherished haul of golf balls. I was rewarded by a friendly golfer offering me a shilling - a whole shilling (and a lot of sweets could be bought with this) - for my best golf ball. More than I'd ever got for one ball before. (For younger readers, a shilling was twelve pennies and there were two hundred and forty pennies in a pound. Base twelve. Such a simple monetary system, so much lamented).
The four years of my Junior School era were passing quickly, and Secondary school was on the horizon. This meant, THE ELEVEN PLUS!!! was looming. I could sense there was to be no light at the end of this particular tunnel, but only darkness unending.