The UK education system has, since the statutorisation of Prevent, been legally obliged to both nurture ‘resilient’ students and refer those whose resilience has been or is at risk of being eroded. Resilience being understood as the ability to ‘bounce back from adversity’, or in other words, being able to both reject and remove oneself… Continue reading “A Case for Making Students Resilient to the Far-Right?”
Anti-fascist action has been an inherent part of the British society. Macklin and Busher (2015), who looked at the interactions between far right movements and counter-movements in the period after World War II, referred, for instance, to the activities of the 43 Group in the 1940s, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the 1970s, Anti-Fascist… Continue reading “The Battle of Cable Street: ‘they shall not pass’”
As recently published Prevent data shows, radical right extremism presents a very real threat to the UK’s domestic security. That to date, Prevent – the UK Government’s counter-extremism strategy – has been almost exclusively deployed in response to Islamist-inspired extremism, ensuring it is effective and appropriate for the newly emergent radical right threat presents a… Continue reading “The Counter-Extremism Response to the Radical Right: The Need for New Thinking”
Unless we start to resolve the systemic challenges in our communities, we are doing nothing to mitigate the racist stereotyping articulated by Neeson. A few weeks ago, Liam Neeson, the actor best known for his role as a protective father in the Taken movies and as Obi-Wan Kenobi’s mentor, sparked controversy due to comments he… Continue reading “Liam Neeson And The Prevalence Of Racial Stereotyping”
British values are often comically referred to as the need for orderly queues, a respect for the Queen and cucumber sandwiches with pots of tea, or for one of my participants in my forthcoming PhD thesis, “I’d think of someone getting drunk like on their summer holidays in Ibiza or something”. However, for Government officials,… Continue reading “Mapping the Malleability of British Values”
“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” These fourteen words have been seared into white supremacist folklore. Coined by David Laine, a member of the white supremacist group The Order, they summarise his 88 Manifesto, itself a redaction of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and present an inevitable extinction of… Continue reading “Taking our Children – Why Radical Right Extremists Prey on Our Deepest Human Fears”
As a practitioner working in Prevent I am always grateful for the opportunity to engage with and learn from academia. Whilst I cannot profess to have any theoretical or conceptual expertise in areas such as “cumulative or reciprocal radicalisation” or “interactive escalation,” I do feel that my personal experiences of working in counter terrorism can… Continue reading “Reciprocal Radicalisation – Practical Examples of Prevent Support”
“Schools should be safe spaces in which children and young people can understand and discuss sensitive topics, including terrorism and the extremist ideas that are part of terrorist ideology, and learn how to challenge these ideas. The Prevent Duty is not intended to limit discussion of these issues.” (Prevent Duty Guidance for England and… Continue reading “UK Prevent: Building Resilience to Radicalisation through Critical Thinking”
Since the events of 9/11 in the USA and 7/7 in the UK, considerable public attention has been paid to issues relating to terrorism, radicalisation, and extremism. As the threats posed by Islamist terrorists have been visible and dramatic, counter-terrorism measures have tended to focus on Muslim communities. In the process of this almost single-minded emphasis,… Continue reading “When Are We Going To Take The Threat of The Radical Right Seriously?”
I’m currently (slowly) converting my PhD thesis into a book which will explore how the addition of “right wing extremism” to the scope of the Prevent Strategy impacted on local responses to the English Defence League. A few fellow researchers have asked why I’m bothering to write a book about the anti-Islam street protest movement.… Continue reading “The UK’s anti-Islam English Defence League – Still Yesterday’s news on the UK’s radical right scene?”