Memorandum from JUST (PVE 50)
SUMMARY OF
JUST'S
EVIDENCE TO
THE CLG INQUIRY
JUST has long been highlighting the adverse
impact of the government's Prevent agenda (which is part of The
UK's CONTEST 2 Strategy for Countering International Terrorism)
on community and social life.
JUST's concerns about the Prevent programme
are based on the following grounds:
— It has led to the disproportionate criminalisation
of BME and particularly Muslim communities
— It locates the burden for fighting terrorism
on the Muslim community despite the fact that the majority are
peace-loving citizens of the UK
— It has led to the curtailment of civil
liberties in society as a whole
— It has drawn statutory bodies into the
"securitisation" agenda thereby dismantling the traditional
relationships of trust and confidence between public bodies and
service users
— It has led to the abandonment of funding
for traditional community development, capacity building and empowerment
work with BME communities, replacing it instead with community
cohesion, anti-extremism and anti-terrorism approaches which have
put Muslim communities under the intense spotlight of the far
right and the press and media.
JUST therefore calls on the Preventing Violent
Extremism programme to be withdrawn as a matter of priority.
JUST has long been campaigning against the government's
Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) agenda which is part of The
UK's "CONTEST 2" strategy for Combating International
Terrorism.
JUST's objections to the Prevent programme are
based on the following grounds:
— It has led to the disproportionate criminalisation
of BME and particularly Muslim communities
— It locates the burden for fighting terrorism
on the Muslim community despite the fact that the majority are
peace-loving citizens of the UK.
— The current usage of the terminology
of violent extremism is discriminatory as it ignores the very
real threats from far-right and other forms of extremism.
— It has drawn statutory bodies into the
"securitisation" agenda thereby dismantling the traditional
relationships of trust and confidence between public bodies and
service users.
— It has led to the abandonment of funding
for traditional community development, capacity building and empowerment
work with BME communities, replacing it instead with community
cohesion, anti-extremism and anti-terrorism approaches which have
put Muslim communities under the intense spotlight of the far
right and the press and media.
— It reinforces negative stereotypes and
associations of Islam with terrorism and views the British Muslim
community through the single issue of terrorism.
1. JUST condemns the London bombings that
led to the death of 58 innocent civilians and the injury
of many more. The attack on the London transport system was a
heinous crime and JUST echoes the widespread public calls, including
those from the families of the victims of 7/7 for a full
and comprehensive independent public Inquiry; we feel this will
go a long way to identifying the causal factors and preventing
any such further occurrence.
2. Although it is estimated that there are
2000 potential terrorist targets (Head of M15 reporting
to the intelligence and Security Committee in May 2009), JUST
believes that efforts to combat terrorism should be kept within
the strict purview of the security and intelligence agencies.
Recent attempts to conflate the Prevent element within the CONTEST
2 Strategy, alongside the Protect, Pursue and Prepare strands
is counter-productive. It has resulted in the securitisation of
public services and community and voluntary organisations and
undermined civil society, civil liberties and human rights.
2.1 The Crown Prosecution Service's definition
of violent extremism is:
The demonstration of unacceptable behaviour by
using any means or medium to express views which:
1. forment, justify or glorify terrorist violence
in furtherance of particular beliefs;
2. seek to provoke others to terrorist acts;
3. foment other serious criminal activity or seek
to provoke others to serious criminal acts; or
4. foster hatred which might lead to inter-community
violence in the UK.
(http://www.cps.gov.uk/Publications/prosecution/violent)
3. The presumption within the Prevent section
of the CONTEST 2 strategy is that combating violent extremism
is contingent on taking a grassroots-led approach, or in other
words using intelligence-gathering, neighbourhood policing and
information from front-line public servants, community and religious
leaders to identify potential violent extremists.
4. The complaint from the police and MI5 intelligence
officers that their efforts to eradicate radicalisation have been
compromised because they are not trusted by Muslim communities,
implies overt collusion with violent extremists. This assessment
is deeply flawed as it tars the entire Muslim community with the
same brush of extremism.
5. Likewise, the framework posited by the
CLG in relation to the Inquiry on the PVE, calling for respondents
to comment on the effectiveness of the programme's reach, presumes
that efforts to combat extremism have been circumscribed due to
ineffective targeting. JUST's stance is that this position is
erroneous and is replete with assumptions that violent extremism
within Muslim communities is pervasive.
6. JUST believes that the problem of Muslim
extremism has been overstated and "extreme" assumptions
have been made about the levels of radicalisation within the Muslim
community. This is further exacerbated in an environment where
repeated negative media representations of Muslims in the UK and
globally adds to a sense of victimisation, demonisation and creates
social exclusion as well as fuelling mainstream public suspicion
and mistrust of Muslim communities.
7. The figures released by the Home Office
suggest that as of March 2008, 75 of the 125 currently
in prison in England and Wales were British and the rate of charging
and of convictions has remained broadly stable now for each of
the seven years since 9/11 covered by the Home Office figures.
The figures clearly highlight that the overwhelming majority of
Muslims are peaceful law-abiding citizens. (http://www guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/may/13/terrorism-suspects-britain-uk).
8. Despite the investment of nearly a £100 million
of public monies into PVE initiatives, the reconfiguring of statutory
services as extensions of the security arm of the state together
with the development of performance management frameworks (NI
35, 36, PSA 26, APACS 63 and Comprehensive Area Assessment)
there is little evidence that violent extremism or radicalism
has been eliminated or minimised. JUST calls for an open and transparent
demonstration of how funded activities and programmes have resulted
in the reduction of violent extremism in the Muslim community
from a clearly identified baseline and how funded agencies are
competent in achieving these changes.
9. The government's failure to make a case
for the PVE programme owes to the lack of robust evidence about
its efficacy in tackling extremism. Auditing arrangements continue
to be weak and the failure of the government's own watchdog—the
Audit Commission—to scrutinise the programme represents
a stark omission that ought to be reversed in the interest of
openness, transparency and accountability.
10. Likewise the government's failure to
subject the programme to rigorous value for money yardsticks—normally
applied in relation to other investments in public monies—in
terms of assessing the de-radicalisation dividend against the
investment, suggests that the pursuit of the PVE policy is driven
by rhetoric rather than reality.
11. Furthermore there are major concerns
related to the transparency and fairness with which funds were
allocated to particular organisations and the assessment and procurement
arrangements made in relation to these allocations. In particular
we echo concerns about the substantial funding directed to handpicked
organisations despite widespread opposition expressed by many
sections of the UK Muslim community as well as other civil society
organisations.
12. The consensus among the global security
community is that terrorism will continue to be a modern-day scourge—however
the presumption that extremism leads to terrorism and that violent
extremism pertains only to the Muslim or Al-Qaeda version of terrorism
(as defined by the government) ought to be debunked outright in
view of recent evidence of violent far-right activity and the
burgeoning of far-right support both within the UK and across
Europe.
13. The evidence of the bias and disproportionality
in relation to the application of the PVE programme is particularly
evident when comparing the government's response to Irish terrorism
and far-right extremism. Neither threats were accompanied by the
overwhelming securitisation of public services, the burgeoning
of the state security apparatus, the doubling in the number of
intelligence officers and the attribution for the blame for extremism—presumed
to be the penultimate step in the journey towards active terrorism—on
all Irish or all White people in the way that Muslim communities
have been maligned. If as the government contends, the battle
is truly for Muslim (and BME) hearts and minds then the government
is advised to return to those paradigms of public policy which
effectively built trust and confidence between BME communities
and the State.
— Community cohesion alongside PVE approaches
represent sledgehammer approaches to preventing violent radicalisation.
Instead capacity building, community development, anti-poverty,
anti-discrimination and social justice responses—paradigms
that have been effectively abandoned—offer more plausible
alternatives to tackling the marginalisation, disengagement and
disenfranchisement of BME and especially young people.
— In a context where BME and particularly
third-generation Muslim communities, continue to be disproportionately
represented in poverty, exclusion and deprivation indicators,
the goals of common citizenship are best achieved through tackling
systemic and structural discrimination. The restitution of Race
measures within funding, policy, strategy, service delivery and
performance management frameworks such as the LAA and inspection
regimes offer constructive pathways to achieving equity in life-chances
between BME and White communities.
— The move towards an Equalities approach
to public service delivery following the demise of the Commission
for Racial Equality and the controversy around single-identity
group funding have led to the effective dismantling of the BME
Third sector that used to be a critical inter-face between minority
ethnic communities and government and statutory agencies. The
pursuit of an Equalities agenda at the expense of Race is already
relegating larger numbers of disaffected BME communities and particularly
young people to the margins. A sustained investment in BME 3rd
sector and community-based organisations is critical to re-engage
them and bring them into the ambit of mainstream service provision.
14. The concern of government that the programme
has achieved only limited results because it may not be talking
to the right people is an erroneous analysis of the problem. In
its relationship with Muslim organisations, the government has
chosen a pick and mix approach in terms of which organisation
it chooses to speak to and which it marginalises. This approach
has been unhelpful as it has divided the Muslim community and
created a partisan stance on the issue. JUST demands that any
approach to Muslim community engagement is broad, representative
and multi-layered and engages Muslims both as a faith community
and as secular civil society organisations. We also demand that
it truly engages women and young people in particular those who
are most vulnerable to disaffection and are systematically disenfranchised.
15. Likewise the formulation of the PVE
policy along religious lines has created both inter and intra-ethnic
fractures that have undermined the politics of collective action,
solidarity politics and social justice approaches that have only
served to exacerbate the politics of "Us and Them."
16. It is not the business of government
to speak to the right people—it is the business of government
to develop equitable, fair and anti-discriminatory policies and
practice. The interface between communities and government should
be facilitated by the statutory and Third sector. The loss of
race equality officers within local authorities and the lack of
sustained funding to grassroots and BME Third sector organisations
have effectively stripped away a critical layer of communications
between government and communities.
17 Likewise the downgrading of the RRAA
and the legal duties incumbent on public bodies for an Equalities
approach to public service delivery has meant that the BME community
consultation frameworks that were an integral part of the Race
Equality Impact Assessments and Race Equality Schemes have effectively
been lost.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
JUST calls for the PVE programme in its current
form to be urgently withdrawn for the following reasons:
— The execution of the programme has had
a disproportionately adverse impact on Muslim communities.
— It is discriminatory in its application
as it disregards far-right and other forms of extremism.
— It has failed to present robust verifiable
evidence that the programme has resulted in combating Muslim extremism.
— It does not offer value for money as
there is little evidence that the investment in public monies
has yielded commensurate dividends.
— It has exacerbated inter and intra-community
divides and thereby undermined a central tenet of the Race Relations
Amendment Act that places a clear legal duty on the government
and public bodies to promote good race relations.
— It has led to the attrition of our civil
liberties which has profound implications for civil society and
BME disengagement and disenfranchisement from politics and democratic
processes.
In the interest of openness, transparency and
accountability JUST calls on the government to undertake the following:
— an independent audit to measure the effectiveness
of the PVE programme;
— a rigorous qualitative and quantitative
research study measuring the extent to which the PVE programme
have in fact led to a reduction in extremism and de-radicalisation;
and
— a series of round-table focus groups
across the UK measuring the extent to which the PVE agenda has
led to the breakdown in confidence and trust between BME communities
and the State.
JUST's position is that tackling extremism and
terrorism should be under the sole jurisdiction of the security,
police and intelligence services. The securitisation of the public
services agenda should be stripped away and public bodies should
revert to their traditional role as service providers.
JUST believes that the problem of Muslim extremism
has been overstated. It supports the observations—made by
a number of leading leading security commentators—that climate
change, pandemic flu, flooding and cyber attack are likely to
have a more profound impact on society than terrorism. The sooner
the government stops raising the bogeyman of the Muslim extremists
the sooner the government can start bridging the breakdown in
trust and confidence that the government's PVE policy has engendered
with Muslim (and BME) communities across the UK.
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