 What is Prevent? Prevent is part of the UK government's counter-terrorism strategy and it came around after the tragic 777 London bombings. But a significant change came about in 2015 when it was made a statutory duty for all public sector employees. So, you know, basically we brought in social workers, teachers, doctors, university, etc. So suddenly their workplaces became potential areas for identifying people and children as well, because don't forget, the strategy bizarrely starts from nursery school onwards. So basically the government says we need to kind of find these people before they become violent, yes, essentially. So who are the people expressing extremism? So the problem with that, obviously you can see straight away, is that the very wide spectrum. So I'm Rania Hafiz. I'm Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Greenwich. I've been a teacher all my life, past 28 years now. I think Prevent when it came to the fore. We started worrying quite a few of us teachers and certainly my union, which is UCU, is quite concerned about the implications of Prevent. I have thought in higher education now for 15 years, but before that I spent quite a number of years in further education. I've also been a governor at schools and in further education colleges. And increasingly I started becoming aware of how Prevent was, it's fair to say, poisoning the relationship between tutors and students. But also it was targeting particular groups of students, namely Muslim students. So that kind of concerned me as an educationalist and also as a practitioner and a governor in colleges and schools. We spoke to a family with experience of Prevent. We've ensured we protected their anonymity by working with an actress to provide a voiceover for this section. My son was 11 when he joined this particular secondary school. It wasn't a school that I had put down as an option for him. It's well known in my locality for being an incredibly strict school that's almost modelled on the Victorian era, where children walk in single file in silence. They have corrections for getting things wrong. There's no three strikes and then a detention. It's an immediate half an hour detention after school. It's an incredibly strict school. The family broke down when he was four and he had trouble, lots of emotional difficulty. He developed separation anxiety. He's had therapy, private therapy and then support and therapy from his primary school. And I just knew, knowing my son's emotional makeup and what he's gone through, that this was not the right school for him. They're not known for being a nurturing, supportive school. Their focus is on behaviour and educational attainment. And I mean, I'm a teacher in a secondary school and I'm all for educational attainment and enforced, you know, discipline in schools to some degree because we need that. However, you have to look at the makeup and the background of that particular child and not every child will thrive in a school like that. So I knew that but we didn't have any options. And off he went, got through the day, came home and we had tears that first night. He just couldn't cope with their demands. He was just so unhappy. And the school just ignored that. They ignored it saying, give him time, he'll settle, he'll settle and just ignored what I was saying that he, you know, he has childhood trauma. He struggles in certain settings and he's not settling. So it was a Tuesday and I picked my son up from school. He got into the car, really quite upset and worried. He said, I'm in trouble. The teachers took me out of lunch and questioned me and made me sign something. That just rung alarm bells. He don't question students and certainly don't take statements without at least having a parent informed and be invited in to support their child. The policy categorizes radicalization, signs of radicalization as showing either vocal or active opposition to British values, the fundamental British values. Two of these British values are democracy and the rule of law. How these are interpreted, so if you actually question democracy and you're a Muslim, are you showing a sign of being radicalized? The fact is democracy is something we can debate and discuss and write lots of books about and it's not one thing or the other. The same thing with the rule of law. I was a governor at a sixth form college and this particular sixth form college in East London has a majority Muslim student body, also derives unannounced and proceeds to do a prevent inspection and finds the college lacking. And so when the college is trying to respond to that one of the things that some of the tutors wanted to do was to put up posters about the rule of law saying that the law teaches us right from wrong. And I had to point out as a governor that it wasn't that long ago when we had laws saying it was illegal to be gay. So the law is not something that teaches morality. The law is an outcome of current debates and values in society and the law can be an ass. And as we know 100 years ago women were fighting and losing their lives to break the law which is the law that said they couldn't actually have a vote and they wanted to change the law. So what I'm trying to say is that these so-called fundamental British values are not uncontested and to actually then define radicalization as anyone who even gives vocal opposition to these is also in one fell swoop denying freedom of speech and freedom of thought. And as an educationalist I am completely wedded to freedom of thought and speech. This is the vocation of my life. So there are many, many aspects of prevent that are problematic. The next day I didn't send my son in. I sent them an email saying you need to call me urgently. My son's really, really worried, he's really anxious. Clearly something's happened at school but I have no idea what's going on. The truth is there was a fire alarm practice and in the context of this fire alarm my son has said to his friend I hope it burns down. But that comment you know was passed on to one person and another person. Then it's picked up by a teacher later on that same day. It kind of changed from I hate this school so much I hope it burns down to I hate it so much I'm going to blow it up. The school were aware of these two different versions. They'd heard both from two different people. When they pulled him out of lunch that Tuesday they started the interview with a very leading question. My son's scared an 11 year old boy with three adults. He just went along with the narrative and signed what they asked him to sign at the end of that supposed interview. So I got a phone call and it was towards the end of that phone call when I could hear my own bell go in my school and I was trying to wrap the conversation up. They said oh by the way we've made a prevent referral for what your son had supposedly said. The school missed my son's need he needed support and the school failed to give him that support. In fact they failed to even recognise that need because there was so held bent on this is a brown Muslim boy My son is now seen as a potential terrorist. Any police officer could go look up his record and is going to be there. He'll be prejudiced forever and that's something that I have no control over. That's something I did not give permission for. My son hasn't committed a crime you know it was a cry for help and the school handled it completely the wrong way. I work in a school I know the procedure and there is a clear issue with training in schools. This last year our training was a 15 minute YouTube video it was ridiculous. When you've got this limited basic almost nonexistent training given that something like this has such a significant impact on a child and a family's life what does an individual fall back on? Well they fall back on their own prejudices and views and interpretation of their world and in the case of my son they saw a young brown Muslim boy and made the referral on that. So I think the problem with prevent is not just the impact it has on the classroom or in schools and colleges and universities the problem is for everyone. It's not just for Muslims to actually stand up and say this policy is problematic. This policy is problematic for all of us as citizens because it is actually creating them and us binary. It's also restricting freedom of speech and thought for everybody. It starts now with people of the Muslim faith but that extends. So the evidence shows this is government's own figures and other people have analysed them as well that a British Muslim is eight times more likely to be referred to the channel programme under prevent. Now you might say well that's a big deal about that but that shows it's clearly discriminatory. Channel is a practical component of the prevent strategy which the government claim provides early support to vulnerable people who are at risk of being drawn into terrorism before they get involved in terrorist related activity. The most recent data up till 2019 showed that 90% of referrals to channel were unwarranted i.e. basically they were assessed and they were found that they didn't have to go through the de-radicalisation programme essentially. There were other issues going on with its health, education whatever. Now 90% is a hell of a lot. If you had a drug licensed in the UK that only had a 10% success rate what would you think about it? If the political will was there the actual research could be done to identify what are the risk factors that lead someone to committing a terrorist act. How can we better hone in on picking these people out rather than simply having this scattergun approach where you refer essentially anyone you're a bit worried about and that's what's happening. There have been many criticisms and anxieties around prevent with many charities and organisations calling for it to be reviewed. In 2019 the government appointed Lord Alex Carlile a vocal advocate for the prevent strategy to conduct a review of it. Several of the human rights organisations that had originally called for the review argued that his appointment was unlawful due to his public support of the strategy. Later that year he was relieved of his role on the review. In 2021 the government announced the appointment of Sir William Shawcross to lead a new review of prevent. If Alex Carlile was bad William Shawcross is quite frankly ridiculous appointment. William Shawcross himself has a long history of Islamophobic comments said things like Europe and Islam is one of the greatest terrifying problems of our future. He also basically then became chair of the Charity Commission and waged a campaign of various attacks on various Muslim charities as that. He wrote a book where he made comments supporting torture contaminate of Contamina Bay and so there's lots of concerns about it. So basically the bottom line is that really when you are serious about doing the review which disproportionately the evidence shows impacts on certain communities it is imperative on the government ensure that those communities have confidence in the review. So Mend along with 16 other organizations have signed a statement expressing concern at Shawcross's appointment into leading this independent review because we believe his appointment shows us the government isn't serious about such a review and his appointment really doesn't command the confidence of various communities including Muslim community and therefore he's not going to be able to do a robust independent review that has any meaning whatsoever. The preference strategy puts at risk the right some reasons of people, particularly Muslims across the UK. Innocent people like Fatima and her son get swept up in the system and potentially tarred for life because of poor training and ill-defined policies. It does need reviewing but only by someone truly independent. Unless that happens it seems clear that hundreds of faith and civil society organizations representing tens of thousands of people across the UK will have confidence in neither the government strategy nor the process set up to review it.