Preventing Prevent: 10 Years On
To think that the Prevent Duty has been entrenched in law for ten years can feel like a difficult fact to comprehend. As one strand of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy ‘contest’, Prevent concerns itself with preventing the ‘radicalisation’ of individuals towards ‘extremism’. Armed with a one-hour workshop, public servants from teachers, GPs, and carers, are expected to spot signs that someone will become an ‘extremist’. Prevent has long been criticised as fundamentally racist and Islamophobic, targeting the Muslim community whilst eroding civil liberties for all as part of a clampdown on political dissent and undermining the space for critical discussion in our universities, colleges and schools.
Figures capturing the number of referrals over the last decade are not made available by the Home Office. Despite calls for greater transparency, they have not published any data on the duty since 2017. Instead, Prevent Watch has been on the frontlines of providing casework support to individuals who have been referred to the scheme - a recent case concerned a four-year-old boy who was referred to Prevent after talking about the popular Fortnite video game at his after-school club, (he was one of 624 children under the age of six referred to Prevent between 2016 and 2019).
Even in the last few weeks, we have seen a crackdown on students expressing solidarity with Palestine in the wake of Israel’s forced expulsions in Sheikh Jarrah, demonstrating Prevent’s function as a tool to quash debate and dissent. Civil society groups have recorded more than a hundred cases of students being reprimanded, suspended, and excluded by their teachers for speaking up about Palestine or showing their support for Palestine by, for example, displaying the Palestinian flag. There have been reports of schools prohibiting discussions of Palestine in classrooms, with threats that Prevent will be used to ‘handle’ incidents.
And of course, Prevent’s harms extend much further and run much deeper than such high-profile cases. The policy has created a ‘chilling effect’ which is strongly felt in homes and in spaces of learning such as classrooms and lecture halls. Jokes about “MI5 listening” are commonplace among Muslims and within organising circles. Such lighthearted humour demonstrates the insidious nature of Prevent by reflecting the frightening everyday reality for those living on the sharp edge of state surveillance. In 2018, a survey conducted by the NUS found one in three respondents felt negatively affected by Prevent and almost a half of those affected felt unable to express their views or disengaged from political debate altogether.
Prevent has co-opted the language of safeguarding vulnerable people to surveil and monitor activists and Muslims on campus, ushering in a climate of fear and suspicion. It has turned academics into informants and students into suspects. And as the latest Medact report shows, the merger of counter-terrorism with support services has damaged the relations of trust on which they depend, worsening outcomes for patients from ethnic minority backgrounds.
And with the decade-long passage of time comes some feeling of hopelessness. Prevent is just one layer in the layers of repressions being entrenched in law. It does not work alone and instead works alongside other forms of policing and surveillance - from border control to “everyday policing” - the three pillars of policing. This year, we also saw the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill come to light, attempting to, in effect, ban protests and public forms of dissent.
And yet, there has been resistance - sustained and continued - spreading from communities into academia and the health-care sector. It is important to remember this fact as we continue to resist the notion that the only way we can be kept safe is through policing. We continue to dissent and we continue to organise.
Preventing Prevent in Higher Education
The problems with Prevent have been widely criticised within academia. In 2015, 280 academics and NUS members signed a statement to argue the Prevent's expansion into a statutory duty would have a "chilling effect on free and open debate and political dissent", adding that "it shifts attention away from grievances that drive individuals towards an ideology that legitimises political violence." Again in 2016, over 140 academics from across the world signed an open letter expressing concerns around the implementation of the Prevent Strategy. Over the last few years, a range of organisations have condemned the strategy, including the University and College Union, the National Union of Teachers, Rights Watch UK, and the Open Society Justice Initiative.
While these widespread condemnations from every sector of society have been ignored by the government, they are an important tool in showing the collective resistance of those who are expected to then implement the duty.
Alongside this, students and academics came together to organise. ‘Students Not Suspects’ is a student-led campaign which called for the abolition of the Prevent strategy since the passage of the 2015 Counter-Terrorism and Security Act (CTSA). Since becoming official NUS policy in 2015, Students Not Suspects has received support from academics, student unions, trade unions and a range of civil society organisations. From 2015 to 2017, three national Students not Suspects tours were organised - spanning fifteen cities. They educated attendees on the impact of Prevent and how to organise against it. The demand was unequivocally clear - we must not engage with Prevent, and we must demand its abolition.
However, it has not always been an easy path forward. Being a legal duty, staff and students often find they need to tread carefully to ensure their careers are not put in risk. In the 2019 UCU industrial action, several teach-ins were organised around Prevent, reinvigorating the need to continue Preventing Prevent.
The Future of Prevent
The government is currently conducting what they claim is an ‘independent’ review of the Prevent Duty. The government’s decision to select William Shawcross, who once described Islam as a “terrifying problem”, as the chair of the review has confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt that the review is a cynical PR stunt which serves to rubber-stamp the duty and further entrench the policy in law.
In March 2021, 550 Muslim scholars, community leaders, civil society organisations, mosque councils and national and regional bodies signed a statement condemning Prevent and the government’s appointment of Shawcross, and pledged to boycott the review. 17 leading human rights groups ranging from Amnesty to Liberty have also declared their plans to boycott the review. In a joint statement, they announced that they would instead be conducting a parallel, civil society-led review that “properly considers the harms of Prevent”.
Event: Resisting Prevent in Higher Education: 10 Years On
Whilst the harms caused by Prevent are important to capture, groups continue to organise to abolish the duty altogether. Student and staff coalitions continue to be created, building links with educators and workers in other sectors such as healthcare practitioners, rejecting suspicion and building and practicing solidarity both in our movements and in our everyday lives.
These groups see Prevent as one part of the wider security apparatus developed with the general objective of crushing dissent and perpetuating an atomised and divided society, aims it carries out in collaboration with the marketisation and privatisation of higher education. Abolishing Prevent must be part of campaigning against surveillance and policing more generally, as one manifestation of the wider logics through which they operate. One way campaigners seek to do this is by strengthening the university community and challenging the everyday logics that Prevent operates on. Prevent is a carceral response which, rather than addressing the root causes of violence and harm, enforces atomisation, alienation and stigmatisation, destroying relationships of trust and community. Countering this requires us to think about how we relate to one another and build systems of support that challenge the logics of securitisation and marketisation, as two sides of the same coin.
Four such coalitions have organised a discussion and resistance workshop to be held on Tuesday 15th June. The workshop marks a decade of struggles against Prevent and marketisation in higher education, and considers lessons from campaigners on the frontline to inform attendees how they can work towards the abolition of the Prevent duty. Find out more and book your ticket here.
Further readings/resources