"It was a complete change of language," said Baker Atyani, a Palestinian journalist and militancy expert, speaking of the latest video.
Does this all mean that Islamist militancy will simply die away?
Yet ministers are being urged on by Boris Johnson, who is irritated by flea-bite militancy in London's transport system – the impact of which diminishes with every misuse of Tube drivers' power.
Their convenor, Bernie Passingham, a genial, clever communist (played by Bob Hoskins) liked and believed in them and facilitated their militancy.
Though it helped Harold Wilson defeat Edward Heath it fed industrial militancy and led to the winter of discontent and the Labour government's defeat in 1979.
Islamist militancy is a phenomenon going back much further than the foundation of the group al-Qaida by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden in 1988.
But one of the biggest cheers of the day was for Raheel Sharif, the army chief who has developed a reputation as a scourge of militancy, having bounced Pakistan's unwilling government into launching a major military operation last June against Taliban sanctuaries in North Waziristan, a long-festering trouble spot bordering Afghanistan.
I wasn't a student and I wasn't on strike, but one May weekend a group of communist women – we weren't yet feminists – sent off a missive congratulating the dancers for their militancy.
Even militancy is more complicated than it was.
There are other reasons to be cautious, including Ebola's impact on healthcare systems in west Africa and Islamist militancy in Nigeria and Somalia, making some areas insecure and hard to reach.
This is where someone appears to be swayed by extremist opinion or thought – which can be far-right politics or other fringe views, as well as Islamist militancy – but is not deemed immediately at risk of criminal behaviour.
