The Prevent Strategy and Right-wing Extremism

A Case Study of the English Defence League

Craig J.J. McCann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429755644
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Ideologies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In 2011 the U.K. Government reviewed its counter terrorism Prevent Strategy to include "all forms of extremism" with an emphasis on right-wing extremism. This book - written by the former Head of Strategy and Policy at the Office of the National Coordinator for Prevent - provides the most detailed assessment yet of this shift in emphasis.

It explores how the inclusion of right-wing extremism within the counter terrorism Prevent Strategy impacted local responses to the English Defence League. This is explored through numerous interviews and several case studies which were carried out by the author while he was serving as a senior police officer within the Counter Terrorism Command of the Metropolitan Police Service. The book balances empirical research with practical recommendations for policymakers and practitioners from a unique "insider" perspective.

This book will be of appeal to an array of audiences including scholars and students of Terrorism Studies, professionals working in the areas of counter terrorism, public order policing and the promotion of community cohesion, and to those who have an interest in wider non-political responses to right-wing extremism.

1 The right response?

When we consider the international research, it is evident that the emphasis for the last 30 years has been on better understanding and responding to right-wing extremism through its various political manifestations, particularly in relation to political parties and the ideology that underpins them.¹ There is comparatively very little material in relation to movements such as the EDL, who do not seek legitimacy through the ballot box. Latterly there has been a growing body of research into PEGIDA (“Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes” (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident)), a street-based movement that was founded in Dresden in 2014 but this has tended to follow the same pattern, with little thinking about how state actors should respond to non-political manifestations of right-wing extremism.² Although political responses are not the subject of this book, it is important to note their significance, especially in relation to issues that have become synonymous with RWE such as immigration and social cohesion when considering how statutory and non-statutory services respond to this form of extremism, especially as Ford highlights that “the British public is more negative about immigration than that of the other countries surveyed by Transatlantic Trends Immigration”.³ Research by McLaren suggests that “concern about immigration may be having potentially devastating consequences for the British political system as a whole by undermining trust in British politics”.⁴ Indeed, concerns regarding high levels of uncontrolled immigration were a significant factor in the U.K.’s decision to leave the European Union in 2016.⁵ It is within this context that we turn now briefly in this chapter to political responses to RWE in addressing the prevailing political discourse on issues such as immigration, integration and social cohesion, and the backdrop against which frontline practitioners implementing responses to RWE are operating.

There are numerous studies that explore the ways in which political parties respond to RWE as manifested by groups who seek legitimacy at the ballot box,⁶ covering an array of methods by which mainstream parties can respond to this perceived threat to the status quo and the strengths and weaknesses of each, ranging from outright exclusionary approaches such as Cordon Sanitaire through to direct engagement with the issues or even adoption of populist standpoints to safeguard votes from non-mainstream parties. Rydgren explores through case studies in France and Sweden the impact of “radical right populist parties” on not only mainstream political parties but the wider public, presenting the theory that the very presence of such parties may “lift the latent popular xenophobia to a manifest level”.⁷ This is an interesting theory, presenting the possibility that the existence of RWE groups within politics do not simply act as a vent for “latent” xenophobia, therefore negating the demand for non-political bodies, but actually build a critical mass which fuels the creation of groups such as the EDL and PEGIDA. Links between political and non-political forms of RWE may in fact be more inter-dependent than has thus far been established.

What has been the focus of research into right-wing extremism in the U.K. thus far?

Even against the backdrop of this being an under-developed area of study, in reviewing the existing literature in respect of the U.K. response to RWE, it is apparent that the focus has thus far been very much on attempting to understand the causal factors underpinning the extreme right-wing,⁸ the composition of extreme right-wing groups⁹ and how they compare with similar groups throughout Europe.¹⁰ However, it is striking that there is very little material available which provides a platform for debate as to how statutory and non-statutory services should respond to RWE. We know the players, we know the groups, we know the issues that act as drivers to membership, but what do we do about it? How do those bodies mandated to safeguard the public respond to an issue as nebulous as RWE, which manifests itself in a broad spectrum of ways, ranging from street-based protest as part of the EDL, to voting for radical right and/or extreme right-wing parties? It is these very questions that form the conceptual basis for me venturing on this book and which I intend to answer with the assistance of my actor-orientated research.

Specifically, in relation to the EDL the literature has focussed on the drivers to participation and composition of extreme right-wing groups.¹¹ Building on this work, there are a range of ethnographic studies that have pursued these themes further by directly observing EDL activists conducting street protests.¹² Against the backdrop of developing a better understanding of the movement, some studies have gone further still and challenged commonly held stereotypes of the movement.¹³ There has been much in the way of highlighting the movement’s impact upon Muslim communities,¹⁴ and more recently how the EDL may not be a symptom of Islamic extremism, but of the increasingly socially acceptable discourse of “problematic Muslims”.¹⁵ There is very limited research on the way in which the EDL has been policed, with the notable exceptions of those that have focussed on its street activism and how the police service has responded using public order tactics.¹⁶ However, research on viable response strategies remains critically under-developed, particularly in relation to the EDL being perceived as an “extremism” issue, requiring a more holistic set of responses than a reactive public order policing strategy would allow. It is within this context that there has yet been no research on the applicability of the Prevent Strategy on the EDL since the strategy was broadened in its scope to explicitly include right-wing extremism in 2011.

What do we know about how the state currently responds to right-wing extremism?

The academic discourse in this area is extremely under-developed. There is little by way of a body of research into the basis for policies in respect of how they can be used to respond to RWE, which is a rather nebulous and wide-ranging expression. This is evident in the way in which responses to issues such as racism, hate crime and extremism are articulated in several different policy documents belonging to separate disciplines. It is important to note that state responses are hugely dependent upon local dynamics. As noted by others who have sought to identify, assess and evaluate state responses to RWE, this is an extremely complex undertaking, further compounded by local politics and relevant legal frameworks.¹⁷ There are however, broad trends that can be identified from reviewing responses in both Western Europe and the United States that provide a useful framework for exploring U.K. responses to RWE.

Prevention

These responses comprise measures which seek “to prevent radicalisation and extremism by reducing vulnerability among specific groups and increasing community resilience”.¹⁸ In the U.K. context, these “preventative measures” are delivered primarily under the auspices of the Prevent Strategy as part of the overarching counter terrorism strategy, “Contest”. Given that the strategy has only very recently been expanded to explicitly encompass forms of extremism other than Islamist extremism, there is very little research on its applicability and therefore its effectiveness in countering right-wing narratives that could be considered “extreme”. There was concern about how under-developed this understanding and therefore response would prove to be.¹⁹ Indeed, it was even explicitly acknowledged in the Prevent Review (2011) that “our understanding of how people become involved in extreme right-wing terrorism is inevitably less developed than it is for terrorism associated with Al Qaida”.²⁰ There is some limited discussion on the use of the Prevent Strategy to counter RWE, most notably Gable and Jackson in their work on “Lone Wolves” point out that;

What is noticeable with the historical development in tandem of Prevent and Connecting Communities policies is a trend towards tackling far-right threats separately from issues of violent extremism found within Muslim communities. Such an approach can augment the assumption that these are more dissimilar than related phenomena.²¹

They instead point to “striking structural similarities between the push and pull factors found in Al-Qaeda inspired and far right violent extremism”.²² Eatwell and Goodwin also highlight how the public policy response to RWE has been different to that for Islamist extremism due to the different nature of the threat, and that “it has largely been seen in terms of ‘lone wolves’, such as David Copeland”.²³ The perceived different nature of the RWE threat is echoed in the Prevent Strategy;

extreme right-wing plots have predominantly been undertaken by people acting on their own or with one or two associates … people involved in extreme right-wing terrorism have not received the same training, guidance or support as many of those who have engaged with Al Qa’ida or Al Qa’idainfluenced organisations. Nor have they ever aspired or planned to conduct operations on the scale of those planned by their Al Qa’ida counterparts.²⁴

What is clear is that when the government made the decision to expand the mandate of the Prevent Strategy to encompass RWE, it did so on the basis of very little empirical evidence as to what the threat consisted of and indeed how best to respond to it.

At a broad societal level, work with the far right, and preventative work with fragile white communities, had been conducted as part of CLG’s²⁵ Connecting Communities programme, which was launched with £12 million funding in October 2009 but later discontinued by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in June 2010.²⁶ The annual review of the policy stated;

The absence of clear and active leadership which addresses local grievances can be exploited by those who promote community divi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The right response?
• 2 Putting the Prevent in preventing right-wing extremism
• 3 Luton: “where it all began”
• 4 Newcastle: rolling out the welcome mat
• 5 Waltham Forest: into “the lion’s den”
• 6 The policy muddle
• 7 Back to basics
• Appendix: Methodology
• Index