Criminalising Britain's PREVENT Strategy
Criminalising Britain's PREVENT Strategy
How securitisation in schooling points to the criminalisation of minority communities by the nation-state.
The PREVENT strategy in the UK was introduced in 2015 and places a legal responsibility on schools and teachers to implement anti-terrorist legislation, specifically to prevent young people being drawn into extremism or radicalisation. The strategy is an example of how securitisation has been combined with wider civil society programmes, such as education, in the UK, creating an authoritarian, surveillance system. The main tenet of public education in the UK, and one you must prove to fulfil as a school, is to promotion of Fundamental British Values. Although implemented as a safeguarding measure, it works with security principles and tools of regulation. PREVENT conflates British Values with whiteness and heteropatriarchal concepts of homogeny and hegemony. PREVENT uses the War on Terror discourse to criminalise muslim communities by introducing surveillance into schooling. Further light was shed on how this subtle criminalisation through the combining of PREVENT with safeguarding duties after the widely publicised and questionable Trojan Horse Affair (Jerome et al., 2019), as well as the development of a violent discourse of ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ (Faure-Walker, 2019). In this article, I will consider the ways in which the Trojan Horse Affair targeted Muslim communities (Holmwood, 2020), and the racist implications of Fundamental British Values (FBVs) (Jerome et al. 2019) included in the PREVENT strategy. I will elaborate on how the PREVENT strategy may have led to the restriction of critical dialogic discussion in classrooms which has the potential to cause more violence in excluding minority communities and students and forcing restricted discussion in the fear of being reported to security services. I will also apply this as a framework to understand how the Government and Media are misrepresenting the Israel’s Genocide on the Palestinian people.
WHAT IS PREVENT?
Under the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy PREVENT, children who are considered at risk of being ‘radicalised’ are subject to interventions. Between 2012 and 2015 as many as 1839 children ages 15 and under were subject to interventions, at least one was three years old (Rights Watch UK, 2020). Despite denial that PREVENT is directed towards Muslims, the context of the policy change proves otherwise. Following a collection of unsolved disputes in East Birmingham starting in early 2014 over a collection of possibly forged resignation letters at Adderley primary school (Syed & Coz, 2022) was followed by another anonymous and most probably forged letter referred to as the Trojan Horse Letter which appeared on a city councillor’s desk. The letter outlined a ‘plot to islamicise schools’ in the area, particularly Park View schools which was a predominantly Muslim group of schools.
John Holmwood was an expert witness for the defence in the professional misconduct case brought against senior teachers at Park View Education Trust and outlined the contemporary political landscape that led to PREVENT. This context involved responses to the Parekh report (2000) which had prompted a growing criticism of multiculturalism, setting out new policies for the integration of British ethnic minorities. During this time, right wing think tanks such as Henry Jackson Society (UK) and Policy Exchange (US) began a program of criticising multiculturalism and the reality of Islamophobia which is systemic and systematic in the Conservative government, prompting David Cameron to speak on how ‘state multiculturalism has failed’ describing an unacceptable toleration of ‘segregated communities behaving in ways that ran completely counter to our values’ (Cameron, Feb 2011) consolidating the now less covert characterisation of British Muslim communities as counter to ‘our’ fundamental british values.
Trojan Horse Affair
Acceleration of ‘Big Society’ ideas of the early 2000s led to the promotion of academy school programmes in the UK under direct authority of Michael Gove, the contemporaneous Secretary of State for Education. The Government claimed they were trying to ‘devolve more power to local government' and ‘open up public services, make them less monolithic, say to people: if you want to start up a new school, you can” (Cameron, 2011) while also pushing for ‘Big Society’ which sought to integrate free market economics with conservative patriarchy and nationalist conceptions of the social contract of civic conservatism. By 31 July 2014, 55% of secondary schools and 12% of primary schools were academies and were no longer the responsibility of Local Education Authorities (Holmwood, 2020). Giving local communities control over schools meant in effect, giving that control to multi-academy trusts outside Local Education Authorities. They were allowed to apply to the Department of Education to change the religious status of the school if the majority of the student body were not Christian - there being no division between Church and State, all public schools are Christian by default. By the time the Trojan Horse Affair was publicised in the media, Park View Trust, a predominantly Muslim group of schools in Birmingham, was an academy trust registered as muslim under the direction of Michael Gove. This produced a particular and confusing mix of emphasis on communities taking control over local schools while also making Muslim minority ethnic communities ‘enemies of the state’ (Mbembe, 2019).
The Case
After the Trojan Horse Letter hit the media, 21 Ofsted reports, 200 education funding agency reports on Academy Trusts within Birmingham, a report for Birmingham City Council (Kershaw) and a report for Parliament (Clarke Report) were enacted between March and June 2014. This led to twelve misconduct cases against teachers, all associated to Park View school and Park View Educational Trust with the premise that they were involved in a ‘plot’ promoting extremism. The media claimed that ‘successful teachers’ were being undermined by Muslim governors and Muslim parent groups (Holmwood, 2020) using the contentious resignation letters at Adderley Primary School as evidence, despite the case being ongoing. The once failing school of Park View which rose to the top 14% in the country through its tailoring of education to the realities and identities of its students, was suddenly labelled ‘at risk’ of being a breeding ground of Islamic violent extremists. These overinflated allegations of extremism disappeared as the investigation went on, with the only charges brought being ‘undue religious influence’. The case resolved by May 2017 due to ‘impropriety’ of government lawyers which the media referred to as ‘a technicality’. Evidence was redundant. This did not stop the cases being used to promote unfounded policy introductions like the PREVENT strategy which had a new emphasis on safeguarding children from non-violent extremism combined with a controversial requirement to teach ‘Fundamental British Values’ (FBVs) (Holmwood, 2020).
Church AND State
The later reduced claim of the case from a ‘plot to islamicise schools’ to ‘undue religious influence’ was based on this contention that schools, especially academies, are meant to be secular. This is not the case. In the UK, the church and state are not separated, and all publicly funded schools are required to have an act of collective worship (assembly) and teach religious studies. Some schools don’t bother, but most do follow a Christian ethos in line with the state. Nonetheless, schools are allowed to have a different religious character if that is required as a consequence of the identities of the pupil intake (Holmwood, 2020) as long as they go through an application process. Park View had applied in 1996 to have an Islamic ethos. When the school became an academy, the local authority and the local SACRE (Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education) were no longer responsible for the school, the DfE were. Nonetheless, it was Gove who appointed the Clarke inquiry into the trust, along with all reporting agencies answering to DfE. Clarke’s assertion of “undue religious influence” in Park View is untethered to statutory guidelines. The report essentially espouses an opinion with lack of evidence, context, footnotes, or figures. The obfuscation at the heart of the report’s findings was Clarke's refusal to admit whether he uncovered a plot or not. The report "spun a web of legitimacy" (Syed and Reed, 2022) around the general assumptions that this undue Islamic influence was leading to extremism and radicalism.
Islamaphobia inside Downing Street
It is important to note the context at this point of the close relationships between Policy Exchange and ministers and advisors within the Home Office, DfE, and journalists reporting on the ‘plot’. This meant Islamaphobia was built into the advisory process and organisation of government ministers. This had consequences including a push forward on the policies that the Policy Exchange and Henry Jackson Society were advocating, including more stringent PREVENT strategy directed towards, and now also including, nonviolent extremism. The only serious evidence used to temporarily support this was the Clarke Report and the later collapsed court cases of the teachers being prosecuted because of the Trojan Horse Affair. Nonetheless, the radical shift in policy has far reaching effects with particular consequences for British Muslim communities. This meant that religious conservatism, or discussion of it, became an indication of vulnerability to radicalisation. FBVs have become defined in contrast to some of the values of ethnic minorities, particularly associated to Islamic religious belief due to undue emphasis, in the government and the media, of the Trojan Horse Affair.
Holmwood (2020) contends that the Trojan Horse Affairs has now led to a representation of ethnic minorities as second-class citizens within the UK, that their values are at odds with British Values and their religious commitments are problematic. Although ‘British Values’ are meant to include the rule of law and tolerance for religious difference under the Equalities Act (2010), there is an increasing secular intolerance of religious expression from white liberals which has led to changes in the securitisation efforts and the law that remove the protections of religious freedom from ethnic minority citizens. FBVs are open to misinterpretation in the way which can ‘other’ minority students who don’t feel represented by narrow ideas of ‘Britishness’. The FBVs being incorporated into PREVENT makes teaching of British values statutory and places the topic in the context of preventing violent extremism with the justification being that to “safeguard tolerance, we occasionally have to be intolerant of those who wish to impose their intolerance on us.” (Gove quote by Holmwood, 2020)
This political project to create a shared sense of British identity is now embedded within politicians’ responses to security concerns (Jerome et al. 2019) that aee fabricated and racist and specifically discriminate and exclude Muslim communities by deeming their identities as security concerns.
Palestine and PREVENT
This Islamaphobia is crucial for the government in its colonial genocides across the world. Authoritarian politics thrives off and strengthens the practice of the ‘nation-state’ due to its notion of legitimate citizenship against which ‘Others’ are deemed abject. The ongoing siege of Palestine and ethnic cleansing by Israel is directly part of the economic, political and academic project that is aligned with Authoritarian ideology and neoliberal configuration of power that shapes our own contemporary political landscape in the West. Policing and surveillance is crucial to Western imperialism and is born in Downing Street and Washington and murders in Palestine, Yemen, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Syria and Sudan. The surveillance techniques of our governments and military are sold and bolstered for their murderers.
Critical Learning: Dialogue and Free speech
Since PREVENT has been implemented as a safeguarding duty, many students have reported being scared to practice religion or openly talk to adults about concerns or curiosities (Rights Watch UK 2020; Faure-Walker, 2020). Faure-Walker (2020) argues that the PREVENT duty on schools to report extremism concerns in their pupils works against all the aims of education. He describes how it stifles free speech and debate and limits students talking to their teachers in moments of crises due to fear they may be reported to security services. Faure-Walker (2019) took a critical realist stance to analyse his experiences as a teacher and conversations he had with students that have raised concern about the PREVENT strategy and its effectiveness. Quoting Crawford’s description of PREVENT as a symptom of ‘routine but devastating racism that saturates the everyday world of ‘business-as-usual’ in nations such as the US, UK, and Australia’ (Crawford, 2017, 198), Faure-Walker outlines his main concerns and first-hand experience of the PREVENT strategy. First, through conversation with a pupil who had found that he was not necessarily a supporter of the strategy, he discovered that rather than PREVENT counteracting the development of potential radicalism, it had actually prevented his student from seeking support for a friend who he was concerned was being convinced by Islamic State propaganda. Instead, the students dealt with it between themselves and achieved the same aim using a more inclusive and kind method. Secondly, Faure-Walker discovered that PREVENT was preventing students from challenging one another, and silencing debate in the classroom in fear that they may be associated with extremism and reported due to their Muslim identities.
It should be that a classroom is full of authentic dialogic debate (Alexander, 2008) by which students should be able to learn from their peers and teachers without fear of being reported to security services. The most critical and important point from Faure-Walker as pertaining to how the nation state can imply criminalisation of minority communities through education policy, is his consideration of the development of a violent discourse of ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ (RadEx). Using critical realism as a lens which attempts to reveal or understand “the ontology of generative mechanisms” (Faure-Walker, 2019), it becomes clear that the use of the terms ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’ in government policy and texts have become increasingly synonymous with violence. This removes the important difference between being vulnerable to radicalisation and a violent threat.
PREVENT restricts democratic and dialogic debate in schools and ‘it is undeniable that it [violence] tends to flourish in circumstances in which there are no legitimate political channels for the expression of grievances’ (Mouffe, 2005, 22). PREVENT ‘let[s] death in’ (ibid.) by preventing critical discussion and resorting to unconsidered and politically motivated representations of groups of people, criminalising minority Muslim communities. The effect does not contribute to safeguarding or national security, it only excludes and criminalises minority Muslim communities.
This grammar is extended in the media to apply to all conflicts that involves the oppression and villainisation of Muslims. It restricts democratic and dialogic debate in public forums and ‘it is undeniable that it [violence] tends to flourish in circumstances in which there are no legitimate political channels for the expression of grievances’ (Mouffe, 2005, 22). The way that Western media is characterising the way Hamas is positioned against Israel’s regime ‘let[s] death in’ (ibid.) by preventing critical discussion and resorting to unconsidered and politically motivated representations of groups of people, criminalising minority Muslim communities. This is to say that Islamaphobia is systemic and systematic and must always be considered with critical perspectives that accesses the reality of authoritarian racism that is Global Racial Capitalism.
Bibliography:
Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (2018) The Parekh Report: The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, Runneymede Trust.
Crawford, C. 2017. “Promoting ‘Fundamental British Values’ in Schools: A Critical Race Perspective | SpringerLink.” Curriculum Perspectives 37 (2): 197–204. doi:10.1007/s41297- 017-0029-3.
Faure-Walker, R. (2019). Teachers as informants: Countering extremism and promoting violence. Journal of Beliefs & Values, 40(3), 368–380. DOI 10.1080/13617672.2019.1600321
Jerome, L., Elwick, A., & Kazim, R. (2019). The impact of the Prevent duty on schools: A review of the evidence. British Educational Research Journal, berj.3527. DOI: 10.1002/berj.3527
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Mouffe, C. 2005. On the Political (Thinking in Action). Abingdon: Routledge.
Rights Watch (UK). 2016. “Preventing Education.” www.rwuk.org
Rights Watch UK, 2020. Rights Watch UK Preventing Education – End Prevent in Schools. YouTube Video accessed 30 April 2022.
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-speech-on-big-society