Kenneth John Bigley (22 April 1942 – 7 October 2004) was a British civil engineer who was kidnapped by Islamic extremists in the al-Mansour district of Baghdad, Iraq, on 16 September 2004, along with his colleagues, U.S. citizens Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong.

The men knew their home was being watched and realised they were in great danger when their Iraqi house guard informed them he was leaving due to threats by militias for protecting American and British workers.

The British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and the Prime Minister Tony Blair personally contacted the Bigley family several times to assure them that everything possible was being done, short of direct negotiation with the kidnappers.

In his home town of Liverpool, Christian and Muslim religious and civic leaders held joint prayer sessions for his safe return.

The Muslim Council of Britain condemned the kidnapping, saying it was contrary to the teachings of the Qur'an and sent a senior two-man delegation to Iraq on 26 September to negotiate on Bigley's behalf.

A third video was released on 29 September, showing Bigley chained inside a small chicken-wire cage, wearing an orange boiler suit apparently intended to be reminiscent of those worn by inmates at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

His body has not been recovered, although an alleged al-Qaeda terrorist awaiting trial for the 2003 Istanbul bombings has claimed he is "buried in a ditch at the entrance to Fallujah".

[4] The kidnappers made a film apparently showing Bigley's murder, and the tape was subsequently posted on Islamist websites and on one shock site.

According to reporters who watched the film, Bigley was wearing an orange jumpsuit, and read out a statement, before one of the kidnappers stepped forward and cut off his head with a knife.

A combination of economic misfortune — its docks were, fundamentally, on the wrong side of England when Britain entered what is now the European Union — and an excessive predilection for welfarism have created a peculiar, and deeply unattractive, psyche among many Liverpudlians.

Part of this flawed psychological state is that they cannot accept that they might have made any contribution to their misfortunes, but seek rather to blame someone else for it, thereby deepening their sense of shared tribal grievance against the rest of society.