THE UK Government’s review into its deeply controversial Prevent strategy has “no legitimacy” because it was led by someone with outspoken views on immigration and multiculturalism, a human rights group has said.
William Shawcross’s review into the Government’s anti-extremism strategy was published on Wednesday and found that it was not doing enough to tackle “non-violent Islamist extremism”.
But Amnesty International said the review could not be trusted – accusing Shawcross of making “bigoted comments on Muslims and Islam” in the past.
Ilyas Nagdee, Amnesty International UK’s racial justice director, said: “This review is riddled with biased thinking, errors, and plain anti-Muslim prejudice - frankly, the review has no legitimacy.
“William Shawcross’s history of bigoted comments on Muslims and Islam should have precluded his involvement in this ill-starred review in the first place.
“There’s mounting evidence that Prevent has specifically targeted Muslim communities and activists fighting for social justice and a host of crucial international issues – including topics like the climate crisis and the oppression of Palestinians.
“There is growing evidence that Prevent is having disastrous consequences for many people; eroding freedom of expression, clamping down on activism, creating a compliant generation and impacting on individual rights enshrined in law.
“A proper independent review of Prevent should have looked at the host of human rights violations that the programme has led to - but these have largely been passed over in silence.”
'Fifth column of Islamists'
Shawcross (below) has a history of being outspoken on Islamism and immigration. Writing in the Jerusalem Post in 2006, he warned Europe was threatened by a "vast fifth column" of Islamist extremists who "who wish to destroy us".
He added: “Wherever they were born, the men who want to blow up airliners, who want to destroy Israel…are Islamo-fascists who are united in hatred of us.
"The sooner we in Europe understand that, and that they must be defeated, the safer everyone - Christians, Jews, Muslims, and non-believers - will be."
And in a 2010 article in the National Review, an American conservative magazine, he wrote: “Labour’s bullying 'multicultural' ideology has been a catastrophe.
“The government has cosseted extremist Islamist preachers of hatred to a shocking degree. No wonder French security officials talk of 'Londonistan.'"
In his Prevent review, Shawcross said the programme – which opponents have criticised as authoritarian and anti-Islam – had failed to adequately police extremist Islamist thought.
He wrote: “Prevent takes an expansive approach to the extreme right-wing, capturing a variety of influences that, at times, has been so broad it has included mildly controversial or provocative forms of mainstream, right-wing leaning commentary that have no meaningful connection to terrorism or radicalisation.
“However, with Islamism, Prevent tends to take a much narrower approach centred around proscribed organisations, ignoring the contribution of non-violent Islamist narratives and networks to terrorism.
“Prevent must ensure a consistent and evidence-based approach to setting its threshold and criteria, and ensure it does not overlook key non-violent radicalising influences.”
'Caricature of Prevent is untrue'
The Government has accepted all 34 recommendations made in the 188-page report, with Home Secretary Suella Braverman strongly rejecting opponents’ characterisation of the Prevent programme.
Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday afternoon, Braverman said: “The caricature… of Prevent as an authoritarian and thinly-veiled means of persecuting British Muslims is not only untrue, it is a grotesque insult to all of those who work in the Prevent network, within communities doing such diligent work to stop terrorism, and we all as a community need to be much more muscular in defending them.”
Kirsten Oswald, the SNP’s equalities spokesperson, said the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy must remain focused on tackling “ideologies such as right-wing extremism and antisemitism as well as Islamic extremism”.
The Home Office said it would “overhaul” Prevent in the fight against radicalisation and that the Home Secretary had “committed to delivering wholesale and rapid change” across the programme.
Last year former home secretary Priti Patel hinted at reforms amid a litany of concerns about how the deradicalisation programme was working after it emerged several terror attacks were carried out by extremists who had been referred to Prevent.
They include: homegrown terrorist Ali Harbi Ali who murdered veteran MP Sir David Amess in 2021; Reading terror attacker Khairi Saadallah who murdered three men in a park and Sudesh Amman, responsible for stabbings in Streatham, both in 2020; and the 2017 Parsons Green Tube train attacker Iraqi asylum seeker Ahmed Hassan.
