DEMOCRACY, TOLERANCE, LIBERTY: WHO COULD HAVE A

PROBLEM WITH THESE VALUES? Gerald Warner

SINCE 2011, fundamental British values have been defined in the UK Government’s Prevent strategy documents as ‘including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs’.

Could anyone say fairer than that? Is that not a blueprint for civilised life in a wellintegrated community? Does anyone have a problem with that? Well, actually, yes.

‘This is problematic language because the concept of “British values” can cause offence and could play into the hands of groups who seek to assert that there is an inherent conflict between being British and being Muslim.’

So claims the ‘language and terminology guidance’ drafted on behalf of Education Scotland and the Scottish Government to assist those involved in implementing the Prevent programme.

The document advises that, instead of ‘terrorists’, the term ‘criminals’ should be used.

‘Radical and extreme are adjectives that should not be used to describe groups, activities or individuals in this context,’ the guidance goes on to recommend.

But where this verbal whitewash declines into incomprehensible gobbledegook is its section on ‘domestic extremism’. It states that ‘although this is the correct and widely used phrase to describe the threat from a range of groups, including the extreme Right-wing or Left-wing, it is problematic because the use of “domestic” to describe British nationals engaging in such activity suggests British nationals involved in other causes are somehow foreign’. Come again?

Also, ‘jihad’ and ‘jihadist’, which ‘can cause offence’, are off-limits. Instead, the recommended term is ‘AQIVE’, meaning ‘Al Qaeda-Inspired Violent Extremists’.

To get the full flavour of this PC nonsense, one has to remind oneself that this opaque vocabulary is designed for conversing mainly with teenagers.

Imagine if you were tasked with educating children in road safety but were prohibited from using ‘road’, ‘car’, ‘crossing’ or ‘traffic light’.

How do the authors of this dictionary of euphemisms expect teachers or social workers to engage with youngsters? (‘I was just wondering if you had been approached by any, er, criminals? No, not burglars, I was thinking more of non-radical, not at all extreme and definitely not domestic AQIVEs? I’ll take that as a no, then...’)

This politically correct gagging of those in the public services trying to implement Prevent is not the only indicator that the strategy in Scotland is something less than a roaring success.

Anecdotally it was claimed, by Leftist opponents, that between 2011 and 2013 only three people, all of them ‘white Scottish’, were referred under Prevent for de-radicalisation.

Police Scotland have since 2015 adopted a policy of publishing the Prevent referral statistics. In 2016-17, the latest figures available, 59 people in Scotland were referred under the Prevent programme. Of those, 15 were defined as ‘extreme Right-wing’ and 13 referred under ‘international extremism’. There were no extreme Left-wing referrals. The main age group involved was 15 to 20 (23 referrals).

Those statistics are extremely modest when compared with the UK as a whole.

In 2015-16, 7,631 people in the UK were referred under Prevent – 4,997 (65 per cent) on suspicion of Islamist extremism, including 1,504 children under the age of 15. The Scottish total that year was 81.

HOW are we to explain the discrepancy? It could be argued that Scotland has a far smaller Muslim community, that the limited scale of immigration has made assimilation easier and these statistics reflect a more integrated society than in crowded cities south of the Border.

Or, alternatively, is the Scottish Government dragging its feet on Prevent?

It is no reflection on the Muslim community to point out that there is nothing to prevent jihadists, either online or in person, attempting to recruit youngsters living in Scotland.

In this context it is important to remember that Prevent is primarily a vehicle for protecting vulnerable people from being exploited by extremists. Intervening to prevent that is not an act of oppression but a duty of care. Responsible families will recognise that and co-operate willingly with the Prevent initiative. Friends and family were the source of seven of last year’s 59 referrals.

Such interventions are not ‘shopping’ one’s children to the authorities: they are equivalent to sending them to a doctor for diagnosis and treatment.

When the alternative could, ultimately, involve recruitment by ISIL or some similar militia and violent death in a distant war or terrorist activity at home, Prevent could be a crucial holistic agency.

You would not think so, however, if you lent credence to the abuse being hurled at the programme by the usual suspects on the Scottish Left who routinely denounce it as fuelling ‘Islamophobia’.

In 2016, the council of the teachers’ union, the Educational Institute of Scotland, passed a motion calling for a campaign of resistance against Prevent on grounds of ‘Islamophobia’.

The Scottish Trades Union Congress has also demonised Prevent, with a Unison representative describing it as ‘the biggest spying programme in Britain in modern times’ and, more obscurely, as ‘a potential disaster waiting to happen’.

The doctrinaire attitude of the Scottish Left interprets any attempt to block jihadism as ‘Islamophobia’. That is absurd and irresponsible.

Prevent is not an impressive initiative but at present it is our front line in the struggle to help youngsters escape the lure of jihadism and embrace British values.

The Scottish Government has a duty to promote those values and to assist, not hinder, public servants trying to implement the Prevent strategy, which may save the lives both of vulnerable youngsters and potential victims of terrorism.

Politically correct gagging of those in public services