This article is the subject of a legal complaint from MEND
Few people can be more qualified to describe the obstacles facing the government’s efforts to prevent young people from becoming radicalised than Nazir Afzal, the first Muslim to serve as chief crown prosecutor for the northwest of England. As life for most Mancunians starts to return to normal nearly two weeks after the Manchester Arena bomb, Mr Afzal’s analysis is dispiriting.
He points to a cottage industry dedicated to undermining Prevent, the flagship deradicalisation programme; to Islamists masquerading as civil libertarians among Prevent’s detractors; to self-appointed Muslim leaders claiming to speak for their whole faith community when they do nothing of the sort; and to a “lazy state” that works with these leaders for want of a more imaginative strategy and has failed to communicate Prevent’s true purpose where it matters most.
Since the Manchester attack Mr Afzal has become part of the story for precisely the wrong reason. In order to take part in a BBC Question Time debate he had to resign from his role as chief executive of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, which had tried to muzzle him because of pre-election purdah rules. In his absence, as he notes in a Times interview today, Manchester police have been talking about their investigation but “nobody else was talking publicly about Prevent [and] deradicalisation”.
It appears that no one was talking to Salman Abedi, the suicide bomber, about deradicalisation either. Police said this week that contrary to initial reports from Didsbury mosque, Abedi was not referred to Prevent. This is a grave cause for concern. If it turns out to have been a result of a lack of resources or resolve on Prevent’s part, that will strengthen the case for more of both. If it emerges that anti-Prevent groups have been actively sabotaging its work in ways that might have helped Abedi to slip through the net, they will have blood on their hands.
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Prevent is not a spying operation, as its critics claim. Its task is to safeguard young people from a poisonous ideology. As such it is comparable to safeguarding against gangs, crime and sexual predators, areas in which no one questions the state’s vital role. But deradicalisation is also a matter of national security, since no strategy for foiling the next terrorist attack would be complete without it. For both these reasons, preventing Prevent from doing its work should be considered criminal, and those academics who have joined attacks on it as somehow Islamophobic should be examining their consciences.
The tempo of anti-Prevent activity picked up two years ago when informal reporting guidelines for carers, teachers and the NHS were put on a statutory basis in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015. This was seized on by students, lecturers and groups such as Cage, Mend and Prevent Watch as a threat to free expression. It is nothing of the sort. These groups have consistently misrepresented Prevent’s methods, for instance with the false claim that it informs MI5 of everyone referred to its counsellors. Meanwhile, they have contributed little of substance to the urgent debate on how to combat extremism at its roots.
Prevent is not beyond reproach. It has allowed itself to be drawn into a public relations battle with hardline ideologues. While its need to protect the confidence of those it helps is clear, it may also have been too secretive about its methods, and in particular about the criteria it uses to assess young people’s vulnerabilities. The government has so far refused to publish these criteria and should reconsider. Yet there is no doubt that Prevent is on the side of the public and of safety. Its enemies are accomplices to extremism.