Openness should nip extremism in the bud

What this actually means is that the government will review the Prevent Strategy, the education-based programme to stop young people holding extremist views. It involves targeted local work to support the people most vulnerable to radicalisation.

Prevent, which started under Labour in the wake of the July 2005 London bombings, was reviewed and revised by the coalition only two years ago. While pledging to continue the preventative work in areas identified as extremism hotspots, the government said it wanted improvement in the evaluation of projects, and to ensure no funding ended up in the hands of religious extremist groups, which it claimed had been the case.

So where does Prevent go from here? Paul Thomas, reader in youth and education at the University of Huddersfield, has researched how the Prevent Strategy has worked thus far in practice and provides us with a clear and striking analysis of its shortcomings. The problem has been that, on the whole, projects have taken place within (usually Muslim) communities rather than between communities, involving young people from different backgrounds and faiths. That only risks deepening division and feelings of alienation. Many of the priority areas for the Prevent Strategy are ethnically segregated places with little social mixing. Bradford YMCA volunteer co-ordinator Amy Tutin, for example, recalls it had to act on a situation where, “in one of our clubs, we noticed the Asian lads were upstairs and the white lads were downstairs”.

Projects should be striving to bring young people from different backgrounds together, so that difference is looked at in the face and listened to. It is ignorance that breeds suspicion and intolerance. The best way to prevent extremist views on all sides from taking hold is to have a generation of young people at ease with themselves and each other. As Tutin puts it: “Why do you wear a headscarf? What is halal food? Sometimes we’re too afraid about offending people, so we don’t ask and don’t understand.” Openness and dialogue is key. Many local areas that come under the Prevent Strategy declined to speak to CYP Now, which is perhaps telling in itself.

It is crucial then for youth workers, community leaders, teachers that run citizenship classes, and others, to have the skills to facilitate these conversations between young people, openly and matter-of-factly. They also need to be confident in challenging any extremist views. So any update of Prevent must put cross-community work and practitioner skills at its heart.

Prevent is targeted at areas deemed potential breeding grounds for extremism. But elsewhere across the land, youth workers and educationalists do important work to bring different groups of young people together. Although under constant pressure to cut spending, local authorities must be alert to this vital work and careful not to dispense with it.

ravi.chandiramani@markallengroup.com