Tough on terrorism, tough on the causes of terrorism.

The fervent hope of successive British governments as they rush thither and yon trying to keep a number of spinning plates from crashing with potentially disastrous results.

The plate given an extra birl yesterday was the revamped Prevent Agenda, originally set up in the wake of the London suicide bombings.

There was nothing accidental in the original timing. Here was an act of terrorism not conducted by some shadowy foreign national parachuted into the UK with maximum havoc in mind. Here was a homegrown tragedy featuring young men born, bred and raised in the nation which recoiled from the carnage wrought in its capital.

The rethink intensifies and re-configures the core strategy; how to identify those likely to be radicalised into extremist acts, and how to remove the malign influences which might prompt them. The suggestion that GPs join the front line by bomber-spotting in their consulting rooms has rightly been given short shrift by most medics. The intensification of work with prisoners has a more obvious logic, even against a noisy backdrop of stable doors clanging shut on empty horse stalls. Perhaps most contentious will be the removal of funds from some Muslim groups judged extremist in tone or whose preventative efforts have been largely deemed an expensive failure.

For this comes hard on the heels of David Cameron’s speech earlier this year, essentially pulling the plug on multiculturalism as the answer to inter-community tensions. The need, reiterated again yesterday, was for everyone who chooses to live here to sign up to a set of basic national values.

Ah yes, but whose? There are areas where we need not detain ourselves with unnecessary debate. All citizens should enjoy equal rights and responsibilities under the law of the land regardless of gender, faith or ethnic origin. But some rights are simpler to pursue than others. Freedom of speech for an obvious instance. At what point does an invitation to contemplate radical action from an imported imam contravene the Terrorism Act? When does the verbal rough and tumble on campus become a call to arms rather than an over-excitable contribution to student debate?

It’s been suggested that no fewer than 40 colleges or universities might have a problem with would-be extremists, even although, by common consent, we are talking a tiny minority. The self evident anxiety being that a minority of one small student with one improvised bomb presents one very large concern.

The National Union of Students recognises this and has published guidelines on the value of inter-faith groups, constant dialogue and constant vigilance. Nevertheless this is eggshell-strewn terrain on which too many of us hesitate to tread for fear of giving succour to the more unsavoury right-wing fanatics with their own dangerous take on an anti-integration agenda.

We draw back from too close an examination of how young Muslims can have their best instincts twisted out of recognition and replaced with an overweening sense of injustice which embraces a violent response. The belief in a global Islamic nation which knows no national boundaries begins as a benign acceptance of international care and concern not unlike the Christian concept of being your brother’s keeper.

It’s a belief too easily contorted in impressionable minds by the effect of bloody conflicts which seem to them to follow a pattern of Western belligerence. Inayat Bunglawala of Muslims4UK put it well when he observed that immigrant communities in the UK over the last half of the 20th century posed no internal security threat and that what changed so many mindsets were first the war in Afghanistan and then the invasion of Iraq.

That’s a view which finds a ready echo from many Western commentators, both inside and outside the military, who’ve witnessed first-hand how these events have bred a generation of incipient jihadists. (We have lived through a more localised variation on the same theme in Northern Ireland where an obvious democratic deficit allied to the events surrounding independence in the south bred young terrorists from both traditions who regarded their activities as a badge of honour.)

Then there is the Pakistani dimension. Here in Scotland we have a long settled Pakistani community whose contribution to the economy, not to mention culinary diversity, of our country is unquestionable. Because of these close ties, and personal friendships, we rarely have a fully frank debate about the role of Pakistan in radicalising those who visit the family homeland, or the role of the madrassas which flourish in the absence of universally available state education.

As the impossibly brave Fatima Bhutto notes in her autobiography, Pakistan is the unacknowledged third war zone where American drones routinely wipe out civilians while seeking terrorist targets, and corruption and torture are a way of indigenous political life. Of course, Pakistan is a valued ally. Like the Saudis. It’s difficult not to suppose that all our efforts at achieving and maintaining security at home will continue to be bedevilled by events abroad.

We rightly mourn the loss of yet another mother’s son as the newsreader intones that a soldier has been blown up in Helmand by an improvised explosive device. Few media outlets care to match that information with the equally pointless, tragic and numerically more significant losses by the civilian populations in the lands where we choose to pursue unwinnable wars in the name of elusive freedoms.

Abandoning these follies will not be easy, given all the recent evidence of governments paying scant attention to outraged public opinion over starting conflicts, being altogether too busy reacting to the latest manufactured tabloid media storm. But the battle to make society safe from terrorist acts can also be fought on other fronts. I would contend that multiculturalism is actually the sanest weapon available to us all in this ill-named “war on terror”.

It involves battling mutual ignorance of communities’ hopes and fears. It means standing up and being counted. It means Muslim communities joining the fight against forced marriages and “honour” inspired acts of vengeance, or outing extremist clerics.

It means other communities helping root out racist or sectarian behaviour, signalling to its victims that an attack on them is an attack on our communal society. In 10 days’ time we’ll be celebrating the 21st birthday of the Glasgow Mela, expanded to two days to celebrate the mingled cultures of Scotland’s biggest city.

Come up to the UK curry capital, Mr Cameron. Live a little. Bring that Theresa May with you. We’ll find her a pair of shoes fit for a park.