I first called for an independent review of Prevent in 2016 because I wanted people to see the importance of the counter-terrorism strategy and support it – especially the project’s author and owner, the government.
Now it’s here, the review, led by William Shawcross, is voluminous: but that does not always mean thorough. I would support much of it; but I do have some concerns.
I am concerned about how we got to this point. The government’s choice of Shawcross alienated groups who were vital to the consultation. As a result, their voices will have been lost and their response now may be defensive, and cynical. It’s an important document, but will it be widely read among these essential stakeholders? I suspect not.
Indeed, the government has to take its full share of responsibility for the current parlous state of Prevent. It ceded ground to self-interested critics who demonised the policy for their own political and ideological reasons. Ministers should have defended it. After all, it was their policy.
Prevent’s practitioners and advocates are criticised in the report for lacking focus and clear guidelines, training, boundaries and standards, but whose fault is that? Many were unsupported volunteers in badly affected communities. Shawcross, to his credit, recognises some of their isolation, pain and fear.
It’s a policy this country should and must be proud of it, he says. He’s right. But consider this.
In nearly seven years in counter-terrorism, I briefed three prime ministers, four home secretaries, five security ministers and one mayor of London: and with the exception of Sajid Javid at the Home Office and the late, rather brilliant, James Brokenshire, who excelled as communities minister, no one publicly supported Prevent.
It was left to us, to senior police officers to fly the flag for the government’s policy. The fact that all to the fore were very senior police officers can’t have helped Prevent’s image or its effectiveness. We needed help.
But much to our chagrin, no home secretary regularly chaired the strategic Prevent co-ordination meeting designed to elicit a cross-governmental response. Where, backing this policy, were the politicians and civil service senior leaders in charge of health, education, and communities and local government? Nowhere to be seen.
There is the expression beloved by senior police officers: “We can’t arrest ourselves out of this problem.” It applies to everyday crime but also to counter-terrorism. Prevent should be the proof of that, preventing the criminalisation of those vulnerable to terrorist ideology.
But this has to start early and Shawcross seems to misunderstand what that means. In 30 years of professional experience, 20 of which involved dealing with gangsters, organised criminals and terrorists, I saw the age at which they committed major offences getting lower and lower.
Lots of Prevent work is safeguarding and rightly so. Unless you get in early with an individual and identify and deal with the aggravating factors making them susceptible to radicalisers, you will not be able to divert them. Yet Shawcross laments “an emphasis on protecting those referred into Prevent from harm and addressing their personal vulnerabilities”. He says the “focus must shift to protecting the public from those inclined to pose a security threat”. But isn’t that what safeguarding does?
Consider the exposure of young people to the ubiquitous harmful extremist content so poorly policed by social media content providers. Prevent providers need tools to tackle the lure of vicious ideology. But they also need assistance to help guide individuals away from the wrong path and into employment, education, training, mental health support, housing and better friendship groups. The home secretary, Suella Braverman, unveiling the report, said: “Prevent is a security service, not a social service.” Isn’t that shortsighted?
This isn’t to focus on “victimhood”, as Shawcross puts it. It is recognising that for some, the only people who help them find value and meaning are the charismatic and throughly evil radicalisers who target them young. If we set the bar for Prevent so high that it can only deal with those already radicalised, we’ll have more terrorists not fewer.
There is the risk from Islamist terror and from extreme rightwing terrorism , and our politicians and intelligence services were slow to see the threat of the latter, despite the murder of Jo Cox MP and the subsequent banning of the extreme right group, National Action.
It is clear that Islamist terrorism is still the bigger danger – and Shawcross seems keen to emphasise that – but we must be careful not to downplay the danger from rightwing terrorism just because it’s not the greatest danger. Both require constant vigilance.
So how we move forward now will spark much debate, but still the Shawcross review confirms what I have always known – that this policy is vital.
We live in a remarkably tolerant, generally peaceful, liberal democracy; and only such a country could have invented a caring, proactive, pre-emptive policy like Prevent – born of the hope that we can stop the next generation of terrorists, not just before they act, but before the idea even takes hold.
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Neil Basu was assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police. He was head of counter terrorism policing between 2015 and 2021 and was Met assistant commissioner of specialist operations from 2018 to 2021
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