‘Politically correct’ Prevent focused on far-right over Islamist terror
‘Prevent has a double standard when dealing with the extreme Right wing and Islamism’
BRITAIN’S “politically correct” deradicalisation programme focused on Right-wing extremism while failing to tackle Islamist terror, the Home Secretary has said after a review.
William Shawcross, the review’s author, said that Prevent had failed to do enough to counter the dangers from “non-violent Islamist extremism” and had instead broadened the definition of Right-wing extremism to include mainstream politicians. He said that terrorist attacks had “too often” been committed by Islamist extremists previously referred to the programme because Prevent officials had “failed to understand the danger” they posed and not dealt “effectively with the lethal risks we actually face”.
Announcing “major reform” of the programme, Suella Braverman told MPS that Prevent had shown “timidity and an institutional hesitancy to tackle Islamism, for fear of the charge of Islamophobia”. She said that the Government would accept all the review’s 34 recommendations to refocus it on its “core mission” of protecting the public. “Prevent’s focus must solely be on security, not political correctness,” she said.
“Prevent is a security service, not a social service. Too often, the role of ideology in terrorism is minimised with violence attributed [to] vulnerabilities such as mental health or poverty.” MI5 and counter-terror police are to be given a bigger role in Prevent through joint committees and shared intelligence as well as the introduction of a “security threat check” to underpin Prevent decisions.
Mr Shawcross said that it was “particularly disappointing” that mistakes continued to be made when assessing the risk from Islamic extremists and warned of further terror attacks unless Prevent was overhauled to end the “culture of timidity”.
“If left as it is, potentially fatal blind sports will emerge and grow,” he said.
Seven of the 13 terror attacks in the past six years, including the murder of MP David Amess, the stabbing of three friends in a Reading park and the bombing at Liverpool women’s hospital, have been carried out by Islamist extremists who had been referred to Prevent.
“Prevent has a double standard when dealing with the extreme Right-wing and Islamism,” said Mr Shawcross, a former chair of the Charity Commission.
“Prevent takes an expansive approach to the extreme Right wing, capturing a variety of influences that has been so broad it has included mildly controversial or provocative forms of mainstream, Right-wing leaning commentary that have no meaningful connection to terrorism or radicalisation.”
One document prepared by Prevent’s research unit listed a prominent Conservative politician and former member of the Government as being among figures “associated with far-right sympathetic audiences and Brexit”. By contrast, Mr Shawcross said: “With
Islamism, Prevent tends to take a much narrower approach centred around proscribed organisations, ignoring the con- tribution of non-violent Islamist narratives and networks to terrorism.”
It meant that Prevent was “out of kilter” with the rest of the counter-terrorism system, where 80 per cent of live police investigations involved Islamist plots and 10 per cent were extreme Right-wing. By contrast, 22 per cent of referrals to Prevent concerned Islamism, which suggested a “loss of focus and failure to identify warning signs”.
“The failure by frontline Prevent practitioners to understand fully the nature of ideology as the primary driver in Islamist radicalisation risks several potentially serious consequences,” he said. “Recent attacks, inquests and inquiries have highlighted the dreadful dangers of underestimating the motivating force of ideology.
“Treating terrorism as a mental illness, or a social deficiency that can be placated by social services, might make acts of extreme violence seem more intelligible to some – yet [this] approach fails to grasp the inherently ideological nature of radicalisation and terrorism.”
Mr Shawcross blamed the low number of Islamist referrals to Prevent on officials’ “fear of being accused of being racist, anti-muslim or culturally insensitive” and “anti-prevent advocacy” by domestic Islamist groups. “There is a concerted campaign by [some] to undermine and delegitimise Prevent through the spread of disinformation, misinformation and half-truths.”