The Blood Rep: To Prevent or Not to Prevent?

The dilemmas of CVE and its implications

At the time my boy must have been six. We were spending Christmas in Italy and my brother-in-law asked him who I worked for.

“My dad works for ISIS,” he replied.

“Auguri!” My brother-in-law said, suggesting that I would have problems if that question was asked at the airport on the way back. We laughed, my son laughed along thinking it was funny. I had covered this brief for a long time so perhaps that response was inevitable in a six year old child.

“Son,” I said, “I don’t work for ISIS. I work with ITV News.”

My bookshelf though was full of books on Jihadi John to Bin Laden to ‘ISIS: The Army of Terror’. You name it, the book is there on that shelf somewhere. At the time I was also researching Afghanistan in preparation for writing ‘To the Mountains: My Life in Jihad, from Algeria to Afghanistan’.

I don’t know if it was my son leafing through ‘The Osama Bin Laden I Know’ or the bit about my son knowing way too much about suicide bombers that made me suspect that he was turning into a proper rompicazzo. Then it dawned on me, the little weasel was black mailing me. He talked about jihadism every time I asked him to do something he didn’t want to do.

I began covering up my books on jihadism on the bookshelf. I censored my boy unconsciously on the dinner table explaining how such topics may be perceived in school. I behaved like a protagonist in an Arthur Koestler novel. That’s when I realised what had to be done.

I had to write a letter to the head teacher explaining my job in order that she didn’t have to act on her legal duty to report any form of radicalisation in her school; my son would appear a perfect candidate. The Prevent duty to stop radicalisation falls on everyone working in the public sector including health workers, teachers and coaches. Prevent is part of British anti-terrorism legislation, CONTEST, brought in by Tony Blair’s Labour government following 9/11. It is one part of the security architecture designed to reduce the risk of terrorism. Prevent seeks to nip radicalisation in the bud countering, whether Islamist or Far-Right ideology, by using mentors who works with those seen as vulnerable in the Channel program. Despite criticism from civil liberties groups Prevent has shown surprising resilience and survived several prime ministers. It has even been exported as a model under Countering Violent Extremism, CVE, for other countries to emulate.

I wrote the letter in order to preempt any concern the school may have if my son mentioned Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi or anything else for that matter. But whilst I am in the process of tempering my boy’s subject knowledge, the incident disturbed me. If John Smiths’ son mentioned Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi would he be referred I asked myself? In my friend circle, there had been several incidents that reminded me of this question. A friend’s autistic child had been reported and taken away following a series of drawings he did in the lead up to Guy Fawkes night. He had drawn something to do with bonfires and explosions. The autistic six year old was traumatised by the incident. The event had also made the mother suspicious of the police and government when previously she was not. Another incident involved a boy who was reported for explaining, admittedly crudely, that Eid al-Adha is when you “behead a goat” (his words not mine). I’d probably call animal welfare but in that instance the teacher assistant reported him to the safeguarding officer.

In fairness, the Prevent officers, police officers assigned to assess their state of mind, understood exactly the situation and no further action was taken. As someone who has been trained and undergone this prevent duty, I found the course woefully inadequate and vague. How does one identify radical behaviour? Is it being pro-Palestine, if a Muslim kid talks about bombs? Or white kid about Hitler or a Jewish kid about Menachem Begin or a Hindu kid expressing his love for the Hindutva movement etc etc. It is a total minefield of subjectivity. It requires subjective value judgements that are often difficult for teacher assistants and maths teachers to make when all they want to do is just to teach the educational syllabus. So in order to protect themselves from accusations of negligence; if they hear something that sounds extreme or not aligned with their views, they refer the child to Prevent.

Now, that is not to say that there aren’t markers, I, as someone who has covered the security brief for a decade, can say that most jihadists I have met, will have an affection for Awlaki (tick), Bin Laden (tick) Azzam (tick) etc etc. But I am a specialist; to expect such diligence from average people across society seems problematic, counter productive and contrary to a healthy civil society. There doesn’t seem to be any objectivity in the project.

Now I understand the reasoning behind it, I don’t think it is necessarily an illiberal idea. I can rationalise it from a policy wonk perspective. When an attack like Manchester happens, inquiries will inevitably look to government for answers: what did they do? How could the government prevent it? And government in turn, could use Prevent as a get out of jail card: We can’t prevent every terror attack but at least we have something in place to minimise it. It probably explains why Prevent has been so resilient. Could you imagine the political outrage if nothing was in place?

But those who are older can of course, because they lived through the Irish Republican Army bombing campaign in the 80s and 90s. None of these programs were in place apart from the farcical censorship of Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams’ voice. In other words, the security architecture at the time, did not bleed into civil society. But post 9/11 maybe that’s not possible anymore.

I can also see why you might need a policy that tries to nip something in the bud. Why shouldn’t citizens who have jihadists or Far Right activists, albeit small, in their midst not help their country? But I wonder what price we pay for that? And whether such programs are poor substitutes for our schools teaching critical thinking and not putting enough value on the liberal arts whose fundamental role is to explore human nature. This is why some British universities getting rid of English literature degrees disturbs me.

I challenge anyone to read Mohsin Ahmed’s ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ and not understand the often conflicted Muslim sentiment around 9/11 or Richard Wright’s ‘Native Son’ for insights on BLM, Brian Friel’s ‘Translations’ to understand occupation or Tayyib Salih even ‘Othello’ to understand the issues surrounding race and identity. They are all to be found in the literature around us to discuss, absorb and understand. Do you want to understand jihad and the martial ethic? Read Tolstoy’s Hadji Murat and the list goes on. Perhaps the problem is that we have turned school in to an efficient factory that only concerns itself with churning out five A-C graders when we should really be thinking about producing sentient citizenry. Perhaps we should be brave enough and willing to explore uncomfortable and challenging ideas without being reported by the teaching assistant afraid of losing her job because it means hardship for her own children.

I must admit, I don’t have the answer with regards of To Prevent or Not to Prevent. But I do remember my English teacher once challenging a tall, blue eyed, blonde student, the perfect Aryan, when he quite innocently asked whether Hitler might be considered successful since he created the autobahns and gave Germans jobs and so on. The English teacher sat her young pupil down and talked to him about the other aspects of the dictator’s achievements and by the end of it, I’m pretty sure she succeeded in getting him to come round to her way of thinking. The young man had erred in judgement. Can you imagine if she had referred him to Prevent? If there was a capable safeguarding person, good might come out of it. If not, then perhaps he’d be alienated.

Now, I am not going to be prescriptive about Prevent and advocate that it be abolished. I leave such considerations for the agora of public debate; it is for the policy makers, politicians, activists, lobbyists and its citizenry to decide between the uncomfortable balance of civil liberties and the country’s collective security. But what I would suggest is that we try at least to abandon the sloganeering, the politicking, the mud slinging and consider its implications deeply. Those concerned about it chilling public life are not ‘leftists’, ‘crypto-jihadists’ etc but have compelling arguments for their position and so to do those who advocate for Prevent. No position need be the cross that one dies on. It seems to me that in order to go forward there has to be dialogue and engagement on these issues.