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The Home Office should abolish the £60m 'Preventing Violent Extremism' programme to make the UK safer argues Demos.

In a report published on Wednesday 21 July 2010, the independent think tank calls for Preventing Violent Extremism measures – which focus on community engagement and cohesion – to be dismantled. Prevention work should instead be solely focused on stopping people with the intent to act or who are being targeted by recruiters.

It also argues that the Coalition Government must make good on its pledge to restore civil liberties by fighting non-violent extremism with argument, not legislation.

Jamie Bartlett, Head of the Violence and Extremism Programme at Demos, said:
"'Preventing Violent Extremism' could actually be provoking it by increasing disillusionment within Muslim communities. Building strong communities shouldn't fall under the counter-terrorism brief.

"The Coalition's vision of protecting civil liberties and creating the 'big society' is a powerful one. It can work for preventing terrorism too.

"Teresa May has opened a unique opportunity to re-set the relationship with Muslim communities. The move to review Prevent is absolutely right. The Government must continue to show that Muslims are not a community under suspicion and deal with them as citizens, not suspects."


The report From Suspects to Citizens recommends that:
- Prevention work should be limited to people believed to have the intention to act, or those targeted by recruiters.

- Dismantle the Preventing Violent Extremism programme and other long-term prevention work that seeks to address 'vulnerabilities' or 'risk factors'.

- Fight extreme and radical views that are non-violent through openness and argument rather than bans or legislation.

- A 'big society' of active, powerful citizens will be an effective way to indirectly prevent terrorism, but it must not be co-opted by counter-terrorism.


The report argues that:
By targeting prevention work only against those who have the intention to commit crimes, the Government would remove the idea that Muslims are a community under suspicion. Allowing extreme and radical views to be heard would enable the government to send out a powerful signal to both our friends and enemies that the UK is committed to the principles of freedom of expression and conscience.

This approach would not make the country any less safe. Extremist and terrorist ideology is contradictory and vacuous. Exposing them as such is a more effective and sustainable strategy than banning them, providing undeserved publicity and feeding the 'taboo' appeal. In the long-term, encouraging more active citizenship can create a sense of belonging, and shared purpose.

The Home Office announced a review of the 'prevent' strand of the counter-terrorism strategy in it's Structural Reform Plan published on 14 July.


Ends.


Notes to editors

Examples of Preventing Violent Extremism:

• Newcastle has received £437,000 from the DCLG over three years to do Prevent work. It has used the money on awareness training sessions on Islam and to produce a DVD resource for schools on Islamophobia, among other work.

• Enfield has received £310,000 from DCLG over two years. The major projects it has commissioned are a mentoring scheme in schools (£156,606), youth training and engagement (£130,000), English-language teaching and lectures at the Jalalia Jamme Mosque (£54,557), support for the Edmonton Islamic Centre (£40,000), interfaith workshops run by Faith Matters (£30,074), the Shoot a Ball Not a Gun basketball project (£25,983), a programme empowering women against extremism and a multi-faith workshop run by the Bangladesh Welfare Association of Enfield (£23,531), the Edmonton Eagles Boxing Club (£16,340), mosque improvements and an intergenerational project run by the Muslim Cultural Society of Enfield (£12,000), an 'Enfield Speaks' film project (£12,000) and a mentoring scheme run by Somali Young People Against Crime (£10,000).

• Wakefield spent its £90,000 PVEPF money on women's empowerment, youth work, developing mosque governance and a DVD project on celebrating diversity in schools. Its Prevent work continues with football, cricket and music events designed to bring young people together, information sessions for young people on Islam and a theatre project on extremism.

 • Islington, which has been allocated £513,000 from the DCLG over three years, has, among other work, funded training for Imams, youth work with Muslims who have been in prison, youth work with the Somali community and outreach work through an Arab community organisation.

 • Walsall has also been allocated £513,000 from the DCLG over three years. Its action plan includes Imam training, capacity building for mosques, a drama programme for young people to discuss extremism, and training for local authority workers on Islam and cultural awareness.

• Dudley council has passed £277,000, which amounts to all of its current DCLG Prevent funding with the exception of £27,000 to cover commissioning costs, to the British Muslim Forum (BMF). The BMF is a national Muslim organization chaired by Khurshid Ahmed, a Labour councilor in Dudley and chair of the LSP. The BMF is, in turn, commissioning a number of Prevent projects locally. The BMF has also received £48,023 to work with mosques in Sandwell and Wolverhampton.This has involved training thirty-six Imams on 'Britishness' through fact-finding missions to the British Museum and Whitehall.

• Bradford, which has not designated NI35 as a target, has been allocated £1.425 million over three years by the DCLG Prevent programme. Its key projects include the Future Leaders project – based at the Islamic Cultural and Educational Association at Madni Jamia Masjid, which is training 500 young people on leadership skills – and work with the Bradford Council of Mosques to build the capacity of Imams, increase safety in buildings and engage in interfaith work. Local authority managers in Bradford consider the Prevent tag an unfortunate label and prefer to see their approach as based on 'engaging communities to build capacity and cohesion'.

• In Tower Hamlets, which has designated NI35 as a target and has a £1.3 million Prevent budget from DCLG over three years, twenty-eight projects have been selected for funding. The ones with the largest sums are: work with Somali exoffenders and community leaders run by the Ocean Somali Community Association, Tower Hamlets Somali Organisation Network and Al Huda Mosque (£100,000), detached youth work with the Brick Lane Youth Development Agency (£95,000), interfaith and empowerment work with the Council of Mosques (£75,000), schools work run by Ebrahim College (£60,000), development of an internet-based de-radicalisation programme by Bold Creative (£60,000) and building capacity of Muslim families to resist violent extremism (£50,000).

 • In Birmingham, which is the largest recipient of Prevent money and has also designated NI35 as a target, work has been undertaken across five key themes: reclaiming Islam, media, women, young people and cross-cutting projects. The £525,000 Birmingham received through the PVEPF was used to fund eleven mosque projects on young people, women, the media, teaching Imams English and developing management structures in mosques, as well as funding criminal records checks on all staff at madrassahs. The £2.4 million which Birmingham has been allocated from DCLG over 2008/9–2010/11 is being used for ten new projects, including extending the governance work with a further thirty mosques, incorporating citizenship studies as part of the curriculum in madrassahs, youth inclusion work, media workshops, a Muslim women's forum, mentoring with young people, youth work with Somalis and an Archives and Heritage project which seeks to inform young Muslims about the intertwining of British and Muslim history.


Money allocated directly to voluntary sector organizations rather than via local authorities. In 2008/9, £8.5 million was provided in this form, of which the largest part was the Community Leadership Fund (CLF). The first round of CLF money, amounting to £650,000, was distributed to nineteen organisations in 2007/8. The largest beneficiaries were the British Muslim Forum (£150,000 to improve governance in mosques and capacity building), Common Purpose (£65,000 for training 'young leaders') and the Sufi Muslim Council (£53,000 for training Imams and capacity building). The following year, the CLF budget increased to £5.1 million over three years. Thirty-two projects were funded nationally to complement the work being funded through local authorities. The projects were in five categories: building capacity of Muslim organizations and communities, supporting Muslim building capacity of Muslim religious leaders and supporting local forums against extremism and Islamophobia.

Source: Arun Kundani, "Spooked! How Not to Prevent Violent Extremism", Institute of Race Relations, 2009.


Money/support going to the wrong people:
*Metropolitan Police selecting an advisor who is subject of Interpol "red notice".

*Authorities in Lambeth engaging in Prevent activity in partnership with a hard-line Salafist from Brixton Mosque in the belief that this constituted the best antidote to violent extremism.


Comments on Preventing Violent Extremism:
Source: Arun Kundrani, Institute of Race Relations (2009)



Lack of Communication of Risk / Problem of determining risk according to size of Muslim population

'The voluntary sector has not been consulted and does not have the resources or experience to respond to these issues.' - Local authority worker.

'When the Prevent agenda first started, people asked why this city was being targeted. Basically, it was not seen as a local issue but an issue put on the agenda by national government. I spoke to a city council official working in community cohesion and he told me: "We didn't have a choice. We were just told that we had to do work on Prevent. We don't want to make a problem around this. We have the money and we should use it."' – Resident in the north of England.


Stigmitising projects
'The work we do would be discredited, doors would be shut in our face, if people knew that we were Prevent-funded. If asked, we make no secret of it, but we don't mention it otherwise, as people will then misinterpret what our intentions are.' - Youth project manager.

'A lot of people are having to hide the Prevent name because of perceptions of young people – we kept it hidden for some time.' 


Lack of clarity / Inability to demonstrate effectiveness
'What we are getting is touchy-feely community cohesion projects. They merely give the illusion that some kind of work is going on to prevent violent extremism.'

'You could argue any project could be to do with preventing violent extremism, including local leisure activities.' - Someone involved in Prevent in the Midlands.

A point made by a number of people in the voluntary sector was that important work was becoming increasingly reliant on Prevent funding, despite counter-terrorism being an inappropriate label to attach to it. The manager of a youth work project in the north told us that previously his organisation used to be 'funded through charitable trusts but we were forced to use Prevent money, even though we didn't want to, when other sources dried up. As youth workers, we believe in soft outcomes, such as empowerment, rather than something like preventing extremism. We would prefer to fund this work through charitable trust funding rather than Prevent.' The manager of a women's project in the Midlands said: 'All the doors to obtaining funding for work with Muslim women were shutting and all the signposts were pointing to Prevent.'


Findings from a House of Commons Select Committee Report questioned the appropriateness of the Department of Communities and Local Government—a Government department which has responsibility for promoting cohesive communities—taking a leading role in counter-terrorism initiatives. It warned Prevent risks undermining positive cross-cultural work on cohesion and capacity building to combat exclusion and alienation in many communities.


Letter to Government from an-Nisa Society, extracts:
No requirement that the strategy be scrutinised by council committees. In Birmingham, for example, Salma Yaqoob, an elected councillor, told a Guardian online programme that she did not know how over £2 million allocated to Birmingham is to be spent. At a Council meeting she said "many projects have taken place in wards without the consultation and participation of ward members and without accountability to the local communities through the ward structures." She wanted to know "how will the existing structures which bring transparency and accountability ... be utilised in any planning for this programme?"


The report From Suspects to Citizens by Jamie Bartlett and Jonathan Birdwell is published by Demos (www.demos.co.uk)


Demos is an independent think tank focused on power and politics. We develop and spread ideas to give people more power over their own lives. Our vision is of a democracy of powerful citizens, with an equal stake in society.


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