Memorandum from the Institute of Race
Relations (PVE 10)
SUMMARY
Our research has shown that there are strong
concerns among community organisations that the Preventing Violent
Extremism programme may be seen as:
— constructing the whole Muslim population
as a "suspect community";
— lacking transparency and local accountability;
— fostering social divisions;
— inducing corruption and tokenism;
— facilitating violations of privacy and
undermining professional norms of confidentiality;
— degrading local democracy;
— potentially counter-productive in reducing
the risk of violent extremism.
We recommend a radical rethink of the government's
"communities-led" approach to preventing violent extremism
towards one that focuses on democratic engagement across communities.
MAIN TEXT
1. The Institute of Race Relations (IRR)
was established as an independent educational charity in 1958 to
carry out research, publish and collect resources on race relations
throughout the world. Today, the IRR is at the cutting edge of
research and analysis on issues such as community cohesion, multiculturalism,
the impact of anti-terrorist legislation on human rights, deaths
in the custody of the police and prisons, racial violence and
the human rights of those detained or removed under immigration
laws. Its work covers Britain, Europe and race relations internationally.
2. Over the last six months, the IRR has
been carrying out a research project on the government's Preventing
Violent Extremism programme (hereafter "Prevent"). The
research project draws on existing policy and academic work, freedom
of information requests, a programme of interviews and a roundtable
discussion. During the course of the project, thirty-two interviews
were conducted with Prevent programme managers in local authorities,
members of local Prevent boards, local authority workers working
on Prevent-funded projects, voluntary sector workers engaged in
Prevent work and community workers familiar with local Prevent
work. Half of these interviews were conducted face to face, with
the rest done over the telephone. Respondents were guaranteed
confidentiality in order to encourage a frank expression of views.
The interviewees were spread across the following towns, cities
and areas of England: Birmingham, Bradford, Brent, Enfield, Islington,
Leicester, Newcastle, Oldham, Preston, Reading, Rochdale, Walsall,
Wakefield, Wellingborough and Wycombe. In July, a roundtable discussion
event with twenty-four participants was held in Bradford to explore
in more detail some of the issues that had been raised in the
interviews. This submission is informed by the material collected
in the course of this research project. It focuses solely on the
Prevent programme in England. The IRR will be publishing a major
report based on its research on Prevent in October 2009.
3. The largest funding stream which the
Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has made
available to carry out Prevent work is its area-based grants,
totalling £45 million over three years. The IRR has
correlated the allocation of Prevent funding through these grants
with data from the 2001 Census. This shows that funding has
been allocated to every local authority area with more than 2,000 Muslim
residents. Moreover, the size of the grant is closely proportional
to the numbers of Muslims in the area. This indicates that, rather
than targeting Prevent funding on areas according to identifiable
risks, it has simply been imposed in direct proportion to the
numbers of Muslims in an area. Moreover, it implies that the allocation
of Prevent funding has not been driven by a local decision-making
process in which local agencies identify their own needs and access
central government funds accordingly. This blanket approach to
funding creates an impression that the Muslim population as a
whole needs to be the focus of work to prevent violent extremism,
rather than specific groups or localities, and irrespective of
the views of local stakeholders.
4. In our research, a number of interviewees
noted that, far from being "communities-led", as the
government claims, Prevent decision-making lacks transparency
and accountability. It is likely to be driven by the demands of
the police and central government rather than the views of local
people. Decisions were seen as taking place "behind closed
doors" rather than in consultation with the voluntary and
community sector. Despite the statutory "duty to involve"
local people in the setting of priorities for Local Area Agreements,
many of our interviewees felt that NI35, the national indicator
on "building communities resilient to violent extremism",
had been imposed on communities without a proper discussion or
awareness of the issues involved. Rather than engaging local people
democratically, many local authorities seem to take the view that
decisions over Prevent are best made away from public scrutiny.
Some local authorities were reluctant to share with us details
of what their Prevent programme involved. A number of youth workers
on Prevent-funded projects are reluctant to let the young people
they work with know that their project is Prevent-funded.
5. Our research into what work local authorities
are actually carrying out with Prevent funding suggests that,
in its early stages, most of it has been "targeted capacity
building of Muslim communities", focusing particularly on
young people, women and mosques. There is no doubt that the need
for community development among Muslim populations is great. But
serious problems arise when deprived communities with many needs
are told that their voluntary sector organisations can only access
the resources to meet these needs if they are willing to sign
up to a counter-terrorism policing agenda. Moreover, if organisations
are forced to accept Prevent money to survive, in spite of the
concerns of the communities they work with, then there is a danger
of alienating the very people that need to be won over and the
whole exercise may become counter-productive.
6. Community cohesion has had a number of
meanings since it was introduced as a policy programme following
the riots in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in the summer of 2001.
The government rhetoric with which it was associated at birth
indicated that it was a declaration of the end of multiculturalism
and an assertion that Asians, Muslims in particular, would have
to develop "a greater acceptance of the principal national
institutions" and assimilate to "core British values".
At a local level, however, the language of community cohesion
has occasionally been used for more progressive projects that
united across communities to address shared issues of deprivation.
7. Prevent has undermined any progressive
element within community cohesion and absorbed from the cohesion
agenda those parts which are most problematic. Initially, Prevent
funding allowed some projects to continue doing progressive cross-community
work. But, more recently, Prevent, with its focus on a single
group, has undermined this aspect of the cohesion agenda. Often
the relationship between a local authority and its Muslim citizens
is conducted through the very same structures of 'community gatekeepers'
which the community cohesion agenda had identified as being problematic
and divisive. The developmental needs of Muslim communities are,
it appears, being trumped by the need for "reliable"
partners in relation to Prevent. While cross-community work in
the name of cohesion has suffered, the ideas of "shared values"
and Britishness—a powerful strand within the cohesion agenda—have
been strengthened by Prevent. This has been especially the case
since the publication in March 2009 of the government's revised
counter-terrorism strategy, Contest 2. This aspect of the community
cohesion agenda, which is seen as a one-sided demand to assimilate
to ill-defined values of Britishness, has alienated many Muslims.
8. Many of our interviewees asked why there
was not a wider programme of preventing extremism across all communities.
In our research, we have been unable to document any evidence
of practical Prevent work at community level that is not directed
at Muslims. In August 2009, updated guidance for local Prevent
partners was published by the government which seemed to signal
a recognition that "violent far right groups" should
also be taken seriously. It remains unclear what form this shift
in emphasis will take in practice. In a bid to gain acceptance,
some local authorities already present their Prevent programmes
as working across communities to create "cohesion".
One local authority, for example, has rebranded its Prevent programme
as "Building a stronger and united West London: working with
Muslim communities". Whatever the wording, so long as the
projects funded are actually directed at Muslims, with other communities
involved only insofar as it is necessary to support the core objective
of a "hearts and minds" campaign among Muslims, the
fundamental problem of a discriminatory agenda will remain.
9. There is strong evidence that Prevent-funded
services are being used for information gathering by the police
and that the line between the Prevent strand and the investigative
"Pursue" strand of the government's Contest counter-terrorism
strategy is being blurred in a way that is counter-productive.
In practice, a major part of the Prevent programme is the embedding
of counter-terrorism police officers within the delivery of other
local services. The primary motive for this is to facilitate the
gathering of intelligence on Muslim communities, to identify areas,
groups and individuals that are "at risk", as well as
more general police engagement with the Muslim community to manage
perceptions of grievances. The extent to which counter-terrorism
police officers are now embedded in local government is illustrated
by the fact that a West Midlands Police counter-terrorism officer
has been permanently seconded to the equalities department of
Birmingham City Council to manage its Prevent work.
10. Prevent-funded voluntary sector organisations
and workers in local authorities are becoming increasingly wary
of the expectations on them to act as providers of information
to the police. Many of our interviewees were unclear as to who
had access to the data they collected in their Prevent work. A
youth project manager we spoke to said: "If there are specific
individuals at risk you would support them anyway out of a duty
of care. But the local Prevent Board is asking for a more general
map of Muslim communities. I make confidentiality promises to
young people, which I shouldn't break unless it is a matter of
child protection or a criminal act." As a number of interviewees
pointed out, the imposition of information sharing requirements
on teachers and youth, community and cultural workers undercuts
professional norms of confidentiality. Moreover, it will be impossible
to generate the trust that the government sees as one of the aims
of Prevent if there is any suspicion that local services have
a hidden agenda.
11. A key aspect of Prevent is the cultivation
of "moderate Muslims" through "targeted capacity
building" and government backing. The aim is to elevate "moderate
Muslims" to becoming the strongest voices in Muslim communities,
able to lead a campaign of promoting "shared values"
and isolating the "extremists". For Muslim organisations
that are able to present themselves as "moderate", significant
financial and symbolic resources are being offered by central
and local government. The danger is that the distinction between
"moderate" and "extremist" is flexible enough
to be exploited, either by government, to castigate anyone who
is critical of its policies, or by voluntary sector organisations,
to access resources. In the former case, government, by designating
critics of Prevent as themselves "extremists", ends
up counter-productively creating "extremists" where
previously there were none. In the latter case, opportunities
for corruption and tokenism become rife. We found many examples
of both problems in our research.
12. An additional problem arises from the
perception that the government is sponsoring Muslim organisations
on the basis of theological criteria—for example, holding
Sufis to be intrinsically more moderate than Salafis. Such an
approach violates the secular separation of "church"
and state, even though such a separation is itself upheld by the
government as a marker of "moderation" which Muslims
should aspire to. The use of government funding to promote a "correct
interpretation" of religious texts is fraught with dangers,
irrespective of the theological merits of any such interpretation.
As Asma Jahangir, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Freedom
of Religion or Belief, pointed out in her 2008 report on
the UK, "it is not the Government's role to look for the
"true voices of Islam" or of any other religion or belief. … The
contents of a religion or belief should be defined by the worshippers
themselves."
13. The government has failed to adequately
consider analyses of radicalisation which downplay the role of
religion. For example, the leading French scholar of Islamism,
Olivier Roy, has argued that violent radicalisation has little
to do with religious practice, while radical theology does not
of itself lead to violence. It is more productive, he says, to
understand al Qaida in Europe as a modern youth movement that
radicalises through a narrative of heroic violence and anti-imperialist
politics rather than a religious ideology. On this view, it is
irrelevant to counter radicalisation by providing an ideological
or theological alternative. To promote a "moderate"
Islam against al Qaida's "bad Islam" would be counter-productive
as it elevates al Qaida's narrative to a religious phenomenon.
14. The Prevent agenda is tightly integrated
with a policing agenda and so the allocation of the DCLG area-based
grants to every area with more than 2,000 Muslims amounts
to a form of religious profiling that is inconsistent with commitments
to racial and religious equality. In focusing on all areas with
more than 2,000 Muslims, because it wants to mobilise all
these persons against "extremism", the government is
constructing the Muslim population as a "suspect community".
The failure of Muslim individuals or organisations to comply with
this mobilisation makes them suspicious in the eyes of the counter-terrorist
system. In fact, Muslims may want to avoid participating in the
government's Prevent programme for a number of reasons which have
nothing to do with support for extremism—for example, concerns
about surveillance, transparency, accountability or local democracy.
15. The atmosphere promoted by Prevent is
one in which to make radical criticisms of the government is to
risk losing funding and facing isolation as an "extremist",
while those organisations which echo back the government's own
political line are rewarded with large sums of public money. A
number of our interviewees argued that the problem with this state
of affairs is that it undermines exactly the kind of radical discussions
of political issues that would need to occur if young people are
to be won over and support for illegitimate political violence
diminished. The current emphasis of Prevent on depoliticising
young people and restricting radical dissent is actually counter-productive
because it strengthens the hands of the extremists who say democracy
is pointless. What needs to happen is that young people feel that
there are democratic spaces where radical criticisms can be productively
made.
RECOMMENDATIONS
16. "Extremism" is a vague concept
that is easily exploited to demonise anyone whose opinions are
radically different. The real issue is support for, or use of,
illegitimate violence to achieve political ends. As a first step,
there needs to be a recognition that this is a problem across
all communities that takes many forms, including white racist
violence.
17. Teachers, social, youth and cultural
workers must have the integrity of their professional norms protected
against the expectation that they become the ears and eyes of
the counter-terrorist police. It is wholly counter-productive
to turn public services into instruments of surveillance. Such
an approach only serves to alienate young people from institutional
settings that would otherwise be well-placed to give them a sense
of trust and belonging.
18. The specific needs of different communities
for local services and community development should be recognised
as valid in their own right and met on their own terms. Muslim
citizens should not be forced into accepting a discriminatory
and divisive counter-terrorist programme as a condition for enjoying
their rights to access basic services.
19. The government should refrain from any
attempt to promote one particular interpretation of Islam. The
interpretation of Islam is a matter for Muslims themselves and
government should not promote particular sectarian or theological
interests over any other through "targeted capacity building".
20. The focus of Prevent work on all areas
with over 2,000 Muslims is discriminatory and counter-productive.
Instead central government funding should be available to any
local area which, through a genuine process of local decision-making,
independently identifies a need to win individuals away from support
for illegitimate political violence.
21. Al Qaida-type violence should not be
arbitrarily separated from other problems of violence among young
people. Solutions to the problem of youth violence/extremism will
be most effective and fair if they meet the following conditions:
(a) Young people need to be empowered to engage
politically and contribute to society, not made to feel that their
opinions have to meet with official approval. The creation of
spaces for genuinely open discussion about difficult political
issues is crucial.
(b) The impact of racism, Islamophobia, social
exclusion and everyday violence on the well-being of young people
needs to be recognised. The terrors that young people experience
in their everyday lives involve bullying, taunting, victimisation
and harassment from peers at school, local gangs, police, community
support workers, the media and, in some cases, members of their
own families. The threat of "international terrorism"
is real. But to reduce terror and extremism to al Qaida alone,
and to skew the whole status of Muslims in Britain into responding
to it, is likely to be seen as an unwarranted and arbitrary choice
of central government, rather than something that is democratically
rooted, let alone "community-led".
(c) The minutes of all decision-making meetings
in the local authority, local strategic partnership or Prevent
Board should be published along with exact details of what has
been funded, which organisations are carrying out the work, what
funds they have been allocated and how it will be evaluated.
22. The credibility of empowerment work
with young people can only be ensured if there is a separation
of activities of this kind from the police, including obligations
to share information beyond the basic requirements of child protection
and prevention of specific criminal acts.
September 2009
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