The Home Secretary has ordered a “thorough review” of the Southport killer’s referrals to the Prevent anti-terror programme “to identify what changes are needed to make sure serious cases are not missed”.

Yvette Cooper told MPs on Tuesday she had appointed Lord David Anderson KC as interim Prevent commissioner because “independent oversight” of the programme was needed.

A litany of concerns have been raised over the years about how the deradicalisation programme works after several terror attacks were carried out by extremists who had been referred to Prevent.

Ms Cooper’s comments come nearly two years after then-home secretary Suella Braverman said the scheme – which aims to stop people turning to terrorism – needed “major reform” and should focus on security and “not political correctness”.

Axel Rudakubana was reported to Prevent three times between 2019 and 2021 but the Home Office established each referral “should not have been closed”, the Home Secretary said as she branded him responsible for “one of the most barbaric crimes in our country’s history”.

Speaking in the Commons, Ms Cooper said Lord Anderson will start work “immediately”, adding: “His first task will be to conduct a thorough review of the Prevent history in this case to identify what changes are needed to make sure serious cases are not missed, particularly when there is mixed and unclear ideology.”

Meanwhile, the Home Office will look at the thresholds used for Prevent referrals to see how violent behaviour can be “urgently” addressed.

It comes after officials in the department spent the summer investigating Rudakubana’s Prevent referrals and found, “given his age and complex needs”, they should not have been closed.

Ms Cooper said the referrals took place “between three and four years before the Southport attack, including following evidence that he was expressing interest in school shootings, in the London Bridge attack, the IRA, MI5 and the Middle East”, adding that on each occasion Rudakubana’s case was assessed by counter-terror police but not then sent for specialist support.

The findings are due to be published after he is sentenced.

The review “concludes that too much weight was placed on the absence of ideology without considering the vulnerabilities to radicalisation or taking account of whether he was obsessed with massacre or extreme violence, and the cumulative significance of those three repeat referrals was not properly considered”, Ms Cooper told MPs.

The Home Secretary also set out more detail on the public inquiry into the July atrocity which triggered riots around the country.

Highlighting how several public bodies had contact with Rudakubana but “completely failed to identify the terrible danger that he posed”, she said it was “just unbearable to think that something more could and should have been done” as she asked how he fell through so many “gaps”.

“There are grave questions about how this network of agencies failed to identify and act on the risks. There were so many signs of how dangerous he had become, yet the action against him was far too weak. So, families need the truth about why the system failed to tackle his violence for so many years,” Ms Cooper told the Commons.

The public inquiry will begin work “initially on a non-statutory basis, so that it can move quickly into action”, she said, but stressed statutory powers – which would mean witnesses could be ordered to attend and give evidence – would be added later “as required”.

Earlier, the Prime Minister said of the inquiry: “I will not let any institution of the state deflect from their failure.”

Speaking from Downing Street, Sir Keir Starmer said he was under “no illusions that until the wider state shows the country it can change not just what it delivers for people, but also its culture, then this atmosphere of mistrust will remain”, adding: “So I want to be crystal clear, in front of the British people today – we will leave no stone unturned.”

Describing himself as the “prosecutor who first spotted failures in grooming cases” at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) 14 years ago and the prosecutor who “first did something about it, by bringing the rape gangs in Rochdale to justice”, he insisted his approach as Prime Minister will be “no different”.

“If any shortcomings are now holding back the ability of this country to keep its citizens and its children safe, I will find them and I will root them out,” he said.

In 2023, Ms Braverman said Prevent needs to “better understand the threats we face and the ideology underpinning them” after a long-awaited report which had been ordered by former home secretary Priti Patel in 2019 made 34 recommendations for an overhaul of Prevent.

At the time Ms Braverman vowed to “swiftly implement all of the review’s recommendations” but in February last year – nearly 12 months since she made this promise – ex-Charity Commission chairman Sir William Shawcross, who led the assessment, claimed the public were being put at risk because his key recommendations had been “ignored” by ministers.

Homegrown terrorist Ali Harbi Ali, who murdered veteran MP Sir David Amess in 2021; Reading terror attacker Khairi Saadallah, who killed three men in a park, and Sudesh Amman, responsible for stabbings in Streatham, south London, both in 2020; Usman Khan, who murdered two people in the Fishmongers’ Hall attack in November 2019; and the 2017 Parsons Green Tube train attacker Iraqi asylum seeker Ahmed Hassan were all referred to Prevent.

We have been documenting the rising influence of the violent extremist group, Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP), in the United Kingdom and in Europe. The work of Faith Matters on highlighting the pernicious and extremist basis of this group can be found here, here and here.

In a recent tweet made on the 2nd of December 2024, the flag of the extremist group was raised at a graduation ceremony in the London Metropolitan University.

The tweet can be found HERE.

What is clear is that the individual in the tweet hoisted the TLP flag in a London University, which should have alarmed officers at the institution. At the very least, safeguarding officers at the University should have identified the flag, which was waived at the graduation ceremony and hauled in the student and referred the matter to Prevent and the counter-extremism programme of the Government.

TLP is a violent Islamist extremist group that has been used as a motivating factor in the murder of people in the U.K and attempted murder of people in France, deemed to be heretics or against Islam. It has also targeted minority groups in Pakistan such as Christians and Ahmadis.

Faith Matters has been speaking on this issue since 2017, and has raised this matter repeatedly with senior civil servants in successive British Governments. Very little has been done on this and surely, now is the time to realise that such violent extremist groups could take hold in our institutions.

Now is the time to act for the safety of U.K nationals and in the defence of our democratic values. Failure to do so verges on the criminally negligent.

Read More: Inspired by blasphemy killer, new Pakistani party eyes 2018 vote

A teenage Islamic State fanatic has been jailed for life for plotting a terror attack on British police officers or soldiers after being radicalised online in the pandemic.

Muslim convert Matthew King, 19, expressed a desire to kill military personnel as he prepared to stake out a British Army barracks in Stratford, east London.

He discussed his plans and shared a “gory fantasy” with an online girlfriend with whom he struck up an adolescent flirtation, the Old Bailey heard.

His desires to launch an attack in Britain or travel to Syria to join so-called Islamic State were thwarted when his mother reported him to the Prevent counter-terrorism programme.

Authorities were also tipped off through an anti-terrorist hotline after he posted a video on a WhatsApp group on April 13 last year.

While in custody, King had made a violent threats to “behead an imam” and “kill and chop up staff”, the Old Bailey was told.

In January, King, from Wickford in Essex, pleaded guilty to preparation of terrorist acts between December 22 2021 and May 17 2022.

On Friday, he was handed a discretionary life sentence with a minimum term of six years in the first terrorism sentencing in England and Wales to be televised.

Judge Mark Lucraft KC praised King’s mother, saying: “She took the very bold step of alerting Prevent when she had concerns for her son. That cannot have been an easy thing to do in the first place and in my view she absolutely the right thing.”

Judge Lucraft found King was a dangerous offender and carried a risk of future harm to the public, despite claims by his barrister the defendant was on the path to deradicalisation.

In mitigation, Hossein Zahir KC said King was “immature” and the prospect he would carrying out either of his terrorist plans were “remote”.

The defence barrister argued that despite incidents of “offensive and abusive” behaviour in custody, King was “slowly and steadily” disengaging from the excesses of extremism.

After the sentencing, Scotland Yard described King as a “committed, self-initiated terrorist” who was “self-radicalised” online during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Commander Dominic Murphy, who leads the Met’s counter terrorism command, said: “We had seen an escalation in Matthew King’s behaviour, in his reconnaissance, in his online activity.

“I genuinely believe this was an imminent terrorist attack. Without the public’s help and without the efficient investigation of my officers, officers from the eastern region and members of the intelligence community, we wouldn’t have been able to disrupt what, for me, was an imminent attack.”

Setting out the facts at a previous hearing, prosecutor Paul Jarvis had described how King had developed an “entrenched Islamist extremist mindset”.

In his early teens, King “dabbled with drugs” and was expelled from school after becoming aggressive, eventually leaving education entirely at the age of 16.

Around 2020, he became interested in Islam, began to attend mosques and watched Muslim videos on YouTube.

By May 2021, his family noticed he had become more extreme and his mother became concerned he was watching material online promoting hatred, Mr Jarvis said.

He had developed a friendship with a girl – identified in court only as Miss A – who he met online.

He spoke of wanting to get his hands on an American or British Marine and told the girl: “I just wanna die a martyr.”

When Miss A appeared to support and encourage him, King responded: “I guess jihadi love is powerful. I just want to kill people.”

In further graphic chat, Miss A talked about torturing, mutilating and beheading a soldier and then cutting up the body parts.

As part of his terror attack planning, King had set up an online account with the retailer Knife Warehouse, searched for IS tactical training videos in the use of knives and bought “tactical gloves” and goggles.

On one occasion, he went into his sister’s bedroom dressed up in his combat outfit and asked if she liked his clothes.

King made videos as he checked out potential targets including Stratford army barracks, police officers outside Stratford Magistrates’ Court and at the railway station.

Some of his hostile reconnaissance videos were overlaid with nasheeds – Islamic chants – and he posted on Snapchat: “Target acquired”.

Meanwhile, King had searched the internet for terrorist killers including the Manchester Arena bomber and Jihadi John.

While planning acts of terrorism in Britain, King had also expressed a desire to join Islamic State in Syria and sought advice on a WhatsApp group about the best way to get there.

Authorities were alerted after King posted on WhatsApp an image of a male holding a knife with the words: “Those who said that there is no jihad and no battle. They are lying!”

King was arrested at his home on May 18 last year by officers from the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command.

He described his former Islamic name as “Abdul Kalashnikov” and told police: “The only thing which is black and white is the sharia, the law of Allah.”

King’s barrister told the court that more recent conversations with his supportive family showed signs the defendant was turning away from his radical beliefs.

And in a prison phone call, King told his mother: “I’m not extreme anymore.”

The number of people flagged up to authorities for concerns over extremism rose 10% last year, with the first increase in Islamist radicalisation referrals since 2016, figures show.

There were a total of 6,287 referrals to the Government’s Prevent programme between April 2019 and March 2020 – up 10% from a record low of 5,737 the previous year.

Of these, 1,487 were for concerns over Islamist extremism – a 6% rise from 1,404 in the year to March 2019 and the first increase since the year ending March 2016.

The number of Prevent referrals for concerns over right-wing extremism dropped slightly in the latest year, to 1,387 from 1,388 in the 12 months to March 2019.

A further 3,203 people were flagged over a “mixed, unstable or unclear ideology”, while 210 were referred over other concerns like international and left-wing radicalisation.

With an annual budget of around £40 million, the Prevent scheme aims to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism.

It was launched after public bodies were placed under a statutory duty in 2015 to stop people being drawn into terrorism.

Anyone concerned that someone they know might be at risk can refer them.

When authorities decide there is a risk that the person referred to Prevent could be drawn into terrorism, they are then assessed as part of a scheme known as Channel and potentially taken on as a case. Engagement with the scheme is voluntary and it is not a criminal sanction.

Of the 1,424 cases examined by Channel last year, 697 were taken on as a case – the highest recorded.

Some 43% (302) of the cases taken on by Channel were cases referred over concerns relating to right-wing extremism, with 30% (210) for Islamist radicalisation.

The figures show most referrals came from the police and education bodies.

More than half of all those flagged up to authorities – 3,423 or 54% – were aged 20 or under.

Read More: French militant group and mosque to close after teacher’s killing

A small area of south Manchester has been home to more than 20 terrorists and terror suspects all within a three-mile radius of Salman Abedi’s home.

In recent years, at least 24 people have been tracked by the PA news agency living close to the neighbourhood in Fallowfield the Abedis called home.

They have included at least two other suicide bombers, a leading IS recruiter and twin “poster girls” for the jihadi cause.

Before that, al Qaida commander Anas al-Libi lived in south Manchester.

Salman Abedi, born, raised and educated in the city, left school with few qualifications, had poor English and his only educational achievements were studying Arabic.

He joined the same violent few from an area centred around Moss Side and Whalley Range that has seen a now well-worn path to radicalisation.

Abedi’s own family came to the UK in 1992 from Libya, among the 430% increase since 1991 in people of African origin living in Manchester, according to figures from the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity at Manchester University.

On the first anniversary of the Manchester Arena bombing, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) Chief Constable Ian Hopkins maintained radicalisation was a national problem, not one specific to Manchester.

He told PA that people being drawn into extremism was a problem the whole of the UK must face.

Just 18 months before the bombing, a report titled Rethinking Radicalisation was commissioned by Manchester City Council to “assess the current state of community relations and radicalisation in Manchester”.

It noted widespread criticism of the Government’s deradicalisation programme titled Prevent.

Another persistent theme in the report was the issue of radicalisation, which was “undeniable” in Manchester, according to some youngsters cited by the report, with particular concern over extremism among teenagers and young adults.

The report also spoke of “parallel communities” living side by side but barely integrating.

After the arena bombing, Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham commissioned a report, A Shared Future, on tackling extremism and promoting social cohesion.

It concluded radicalisation had no single driver with no single solution and repeated the fears of persecution amongst Muslims of the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy.

It also noted a 130% increase in hate crimes and 500% increase in anti-Muslim hate crime in the weeks following the bombing.

In October last year, Manchester’s myriad of counter-extremism initiatives and projects were joined in the city by Coin, the Cohesion and Integration Network, a new national charity to strengthen good community relations.

In the same month, GCHQ, an intelligence and security organisation working with MI5 and MI6, also announced it would open offices in the city.

At the Old Bailey trial of Hashem Abedi, one witness from the Midlands described how the defendant asked him to buy acid, which can be used to manufacture explosives.

He was warned not to do it.

When he asked why, his father told him because Hashem was “from Manchester”.

The man tasked with reviewing the Government’s anti-radicalisation programme Prevent has said “everything is up for discussion” including scrapping the scheme.

Lord Carlile was appointed by the Government earlier this month to conduct a review into Prevent.

Part of the Government’s wider counter-terrorism strategy, Prevent seeks to stop people at risk of being radicalised from being drawn into terrorist ideologies.

In an interview with the BBC’s Newsnight programme, Lord Carlile said if it is to continue “it should be seen as fair by all communities”.

Lord Carlile acknowledged his advice might be that police take “even less of a role than they have now”.

He said: “It will involve talking to those who have described Prevent as toxic, and I hope they will cooperate strongly with my review, and it will involve a set of empirical judgments.”

The review was welcomed by the Muslim Council of Great Britain when it was announced in January.

Harun Khan, the organisation’s secretary-general, said: “For far too long, the Prevent strategy has affected the lives of innocent families, been criticised for mainstreaming discrimination and lost the trust of communities around the UK.”

Teachers’ unions have also called for the statutory duty placed on teachers and social workers to report those who they think are at risk of radicalisation to be scrapped.

Lord Carlile added: “I will be scrutinising the performance up to now of the Prevent strand of counter-terrorism policy, with a view to advising as to what should happen to Prevent, what kind of policy of this kind, if any, there should be in the future.

“Everything is up for discussion, including scrapping it, replacing it with something different, continuing with it, modifying it, perfecting it, introduction new streams of thought into it, this is a completely open book, it’s blue-sky thinking.”

The Government said the review will focus on the current delivery of the Prevent programme and make recommendations for the future and is expected to report to Parliament by August 2020.

A former Liberal Democrat MP, Lord Carlile was the UK’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation from 2001 to 2011.

A Muslim convert has told how he was ordered by an Islamic State jihadi to launch a ram or bomb attack on Oxford Street to “make them pay in blood”.

Lewis Ludlow, 27, from Rochester in Kent, researched and scouted for targets around London and wrote down plans before his arrest last April.

The defendant, who called himself the Ghost and Eagle, also recorded a pledge of allegiance to IS, saying he had nothing but “animosity and hatred”.

He plotted the attack after being stopped from travelling to the Philippines, the Old Bailey heard.

The former Royal Mail worker has pleaded guilty to preparing acts of terrorism in the UK and funding terrorism abroad.

Giving evidence, he told how he had rejected an MI5 advance in March 2017 but agreed to engage with the Prevent programme.

Ludlow said he wanted to travel to the Philippines in February last year to find a wife and start a “new life” but kept his plans a secret from his Prevent mentor.

When he was stopped at the airport, he felt “bitter” and “heartbroken”, he said, adding: “I felt that I was trapped like an animal unable to escape its cage.”

On learning he would not be travelling, his IS-supporting friend in the Philippines Abu Yaqeen first asked him to send money to help pay for bullets and medical supplies, Ludlow said.

The defendant, who has autism, went on to describe how Yaqeen gradually talked him into plotting an attack in Britain.

He claimed he went to London to print off a picture of the black IS flag and research “busy shopping centre” on the orders of Yaqeen.

“On this plot, it was a bit like wheeling in very slowly. I thought to myself, I don’t think he will try to make me do something stupid like try to harm someone,” Ludlow said.

Later, Yaqeen told him he had to “kill” people during a chat on an encrypted app, he said.

Ludlow said: “He said to me, ‘The reason I asked you to research busy shopping centres is because you need to do something against these kuffar in the land of the crusader’.

“I said, ‘What do you mean’. He said, ‘You have to kill them’ and then he tried to encourage me to prepare to get involved in an act.

“I said no at first, I did not want to because I felt this was a bit scary and then he said, ‘You have to do it. You have to kill them, make them pay in blood, you must get revenge. They are not innocent. They deserve to die’.

“He said the best way to do so was using a ram attack. He said in order to achieve such a spectacular attack we should use a truck bomb attack to achieve the necessary effect.

“He said to me, ‘Don’t you want to die a martyr? They deserve it’.”

Ludlow said Yaqeen mentioned targets including Oxford Street, St Paul’s Cathedral and Shia temples.

The defendant said he was told to go to London to “scout”, take pictures, make notes and prepare an oath.

He told the court he photographed various potential targets including Madame Tussauds and around Oxford Street.

Ludlow said he wrote notes about killing up to 100 people in a ram attack or using an improvised explosive device to “maximise” casualties.

Asked if he had anywhere in mind, Ludlow said: “He just said Oxford Street. There was no particular building mentioned.”

Rebecca Trowler QC, defending, asked: “Do you accept at that time you intended that the kind of attack described in these notes would at some point in the future be carried out?”

Ludlow said: “At that particular time yes but there was no date set.”

He claimed Yaqeen was persistent and put pressure on him, so he “went along with it and followed his instructions”.

In the end, Ludlow said he decided to stop and ripped up his notes because he felt “guilty at what I had done”.

The defendant told the court he suffered from anxiety attacks like “whispers from the devil”.

Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC will conclude the sentencing at a later date.

Dame Louise Casey’s long awaited report has highlighted a number of alarming areas and with one predominant feature. That at the heart of Government, a more robust and focussed approach needs to be taken on integration policies which have been previously ticked off by successive Governments by sponsoring interfaith work, as though the ‘tea and samosa’ or photoshoot interfaithers really had any major pull in a fast moving and challenging electronic environment.

So let us look at the core findings of the Casey Review. Having met with 800 members of the public, community groups, front-line workers, academics and politicians, Casey also took over 200 submissions for the Review that had been set up under the Premiership of the Rt. Hon David Cameron MP. This has not been an easy process for her and her team, with a change in the premiership and a new leadership that has probaby wanted to distance itself from the past.

Core Findings

Clustering of Communities

The core findings of the Casey Review are going to make for uncomfortable reading for some. She cites that whilst Britain is becoming more diverse, there are a number of local areas where minority and faith communities are increasing in both segregation and concentration, both at a neighbourhood and at a school level. The report cites that,

“Between 2001 and 2011 in England – the number of wards in which more than 40% of the population were of Pakistani ethnicity grew from 12 to 24 and that the number of wards in which more than 40% of the population were of Indian ethnicity grew from 16 to 20…….In 2011, Blackburn, Birmingham, Burnley and Bradford included wards with between 70% and 85% Muslim populations.”

The report goes onto state that,

“Segregation and ethnic concentrations in schools followed different patterns. In 2015, there were 511 schools acros 43 local authority areas with 50% or more pupils from Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic backgrounds….No other single ethnic or faith group has residential concentrations as high as Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi ethnic or Muslim faith groups.”

Immigration

Casey’s whole ethos has been that if communities do not talk about sensitive matters, then extreme groups and those looking to create divides in society will. She is absolutely right on this and whilst immigration is an area that needs to be tackled sensitively and appropriately, Casey highlights the failure in integration policies over successive Governments. She stresses that this Government must take action by supporting greater integration and dialogue and through approaches which are not based on soft interfaith sessions which speak to the ‘converted.’

She talks about “the impact of the unprecedented pace and scale of recent immigration on communities.” With annual net migration figures being over 300,000 and with a ‘churn’ of 1 million people who enter and leave the UK, local perceptions are impacted by the scale of change, Casey argues. She suggests that a ‘level-headed’ discussion has to be had on immigration and recommends that Central Government should support a new programme to help improve community cohesion through local authority area based plans and projects.

Targeted Assistance & Challenging Cultural Practices that Hold Back Women

Casey eloquently makes the case for targeted assistance to ensure that Pakistani and Bangladeshi women have access to English language skills so that they can access the Labour market. Allied to this, she calls on the Government to further re-enforce and bolster core values and that people need to confront misogynistic and patriarchal views, which hold women back. She states that “regressive or harmful practices justified in the name of culture or religion”, must not be tolerated.

She also goes onto state that Hindu and Muslim women are twice more likely than Hindu and Muslim men to not speak English and this creates a strong barrier to the workforce, further holding back these women for the rest of their lives.

Strong on issues of equality, Casey advocates for cultural practices to be challenged where they hold back equality and that both the Government and society need to be more confident and determined in challenging such practices where they come across them.

Perceptions Within Communities and Prevent

Casey’s findings will also challenge some within Muslim communities. She iterates that British Muslims are increasingly identifying with a ‘global Muslim Ummah’ and that regressive, intolerant, less integrated and sometimes more conservative versions of Islam strengthen the intolerant and extreme far right, when events take place. For example, statements on women and LGBT groups given by some imams, have been pounced upon by extremist far right groups as evidence that Muslims are a threat to society, whilst deflecting the fact that both Islamism and far right extremism have strains of intolerance and autocracy about them.

Casey goes onto state that there needs to be honest conversations about these matters which are to be welcome, though detail in this area seems to be missing as to what Government, civil society and other actors can do. Furthermore, such issues have led to rises in anti-Muslim hatred and hate incidents and Casey’s suggestion that British laws and values are the anti-dote to such issues, seem vague and blunt.

What was needed was a more specific detailed framework through which local authorities could build stronger local action plans including this core area of work within them. In fact, this area is one of the key areas that has led to polarisation as extreme far right groups have promoted web-site and social media texts around speeches made by imams and other individuals within Muslim communities.

Safeguards

Casey rightly makes the point that the growth of unregistered schools and home schooling, put the safeguarding of young people at risk and also exposes them to poor education opportunities. She suggests stronger safeguards need to be in place and also supports the continued delivery of the Prevent, (Preventing Extremism), agenda that has been implemented within statutory authorities as part of the Government’s safeguarding agenda.

Casey goes onto vocally support Prevent and suggests that it needs to be more strongly promoted and defended in communities. What Casey does not mention, has been that successive Governments since the Coalition Government, took a laissez-faire approach in defending the Prevent programme and for years left Prevent open to attacks from groups whose sole purpose was to highlight potential flaws, promote a post-factual world around Prevent and state that Prevent was a ‘mass-spying exercise against Muslims’.

For years these narratives were targeted towards Muslims by groups who had no alternative and who rarely talked about the need for the country to be protected by some form of a community based counter-extremism strategy. The latter was never mentioned in debates apart from consistant attacks on Prevent.

Additionally, the slow tortoise like approach from the Government in admitting, acting upon and highighting actions regarding Channel referrals on far right extremists re-enforced for some, the bizarre belief that Prevent was a ‘mass spying exercise against Muslims’. So whilst Casey makes the case for Prevent, some responsibility needs to be taken by the last two Governments in their monumental failure to defend the Prevent and counter-extremism strategy, to the point that within many in Muslim communities, it is seen through an overwhelmingly negative lens.

Summary

Casey’s report highlights structural employment related inequalities, the need to challenge views that undermine equality, greater advocacy for safeguarding measures and the need to build in greater mixing at local community levels through activities and better urban landscaping. She talks about the need to get women trained in English and the need to break down inter-cultural barriers through targeted assistance and classes. She also introduces an ‘Oath of Integration’ with British Values for those who arrive in the UK, as a means of signing up and adhering to a set of British principles.

The real proof of change will be in the desire of this Government to resource, upskill and stand up to challenges against its programmes which support women from Black and Minority Ethnic communities. For far too long, successive Government’s have also been passive in defending their policies and have wavered when supporters from political fringes within them have lobbied and harried the Government. If we are to truly strengthen core values and principles, then there is a time to stand firm, defend good integration projects and make the case for investment within them. Saying this, the Government must stop funding projects that show faith leaders smiling at cameras and where there are no tangible outcomes apart from people of the same views meeting and self-promoting themselves. It must also have clear impact indicators that measure each and every integration project which the Government supports and which are in line with this national review.

Overall, the Casey report is to be welcomed and Casey undertook the work tirelessly and diligently, meeting with over 800 people in this task of work. She was open, probing, highly informed and clear that something needed to be done to kickstart integration work. Integration she felt, had been left to develop a life of its own and had never really happened in parts of our country, a view that we fully subscribe to. Furthermore, Casey felt that core values needed to be protected and defended, something that we wholly agree with. For far too long, we have allowed views that reduce the human rights of people, to be passively and actively promoted without challenge. For far too long, we assumed that the momentum of ‘good’ triumphing over evil, would naturally happen. Sadly, life and the dynamics of life do not work that way. Maintaing integration and cohesion needs solid hard work on an hourly, daily, monthly and annual basis. Without this consistent energy, we open ourselves to the forces of separation, hatred and extremism.

To his detractors, including the British government, Salman Butt is an extremist whose views on Islam fly in the face of Britain’s values and help foster an atmosphere where young Muslims can be radicalised by militants.

Even though he is not accused of supporting militant groups or violence, the British authorities believe it is only by cracking down on activists like Butt and denying a forum for their ideas to be widely heard that the threat posed by jihadis and groups such as Islamic State can be countered.

But critics, ranging from civil rights groups to leading academics and lawmakers, say what the government is trying to do amounts to a curb on free speech which could drive a wedge between the authorities and Britain’s 2.8 million Muslims

They argue if anything such plans will only make the problem worse and amount to an attack on the fundamental liberties the government wants to protect.

“Over the last few years the circle of who and what is considered extreme has been expanding slowly,” said Butt, 30, who is taking the British government to court over its counter-extremism strategy.

“Before it was just somebody committing crimes or calling for violence and then they expanded more and more to everyday people who happen to maybe criticise certain aspects of the government policy or hold certain conservative Islamic views,” he told Reuters.

The problem facing Britain and other Western governments is the same one with which they have wrestled since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States: how to stop their young citizens being radicalised without been seen to censor critics.

Thousands of Muslims, including more than 800 Britons, have left Europe for Iraq and Syria, many to join Islamic State (IS), while the recent deadly attacks seen in Paris, Brussels and Nice are a graphic illustration of the risk posed by some lured to a violent Islamist cause at home.

The revelation on Tuesday that Anjem Choudary, Britain’s most high-profile Islamist preacher, has been convicted for inviting his followers to support Islamic State has again brought the issue to the fore.

Choudary was convicted last month although this could not be reported until Tuesday to avoid prejudicing the jury in a separate case. It ended a streak of many years during which he served as the leader of banned organisations but dodged prosecution by carefully managing his public remarks.

Critics questioned why it had taken so long to act against someone who had been a leading radical Islamist figure for two decades and whose followers had been involved in militant plots and acts of violence across the world.

“There should be zero tolerance towards any cleric – Muslim or otherwise – who advocates extremist views and rejects British values,” Britain’s top-selling Sun newspaper said. “Britain has been tolerant of men like Choudary for too long.”

WHO IS AN EXTREMIST?

For those such as new British Prime Minister Theresa May, tackling extremism means no longer tolerating those who reject the country’s values: democracy, free speech, equality and the rule of law.

“Where non-violent extremism goes unchallenged, the values that bind our society together fragment,” May, who had been interior minister for six years before taking over the Downing Street reins, said in a speech in February.

“So while by no means all extremism leads to violence, it creates an environment in which those who seek to divide us can flourish.”

May, in her former guise as interior minister, was responsible for drawing up a proposed Counter-Extremism bill with bans for individuals or groups deemed extremist and closures of places where radicals thrive, including mosques.

However, there is still no sign of the legislation, with the Home Office (interior ministry) saying it would come in “due course”. One main obstacle is who decides who or what is extremist.

“Providing a clear definition of extremism is a difficult task and the government has yet to succeed in doing it,” said senior opposition Labour lawmaker Harriet Harman, head of the UK parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights which produced a critical report on the government plans in July.

Even Finance Minister Philip Hammond admitted in May the issue was “a minefield”: “The line between acceptable and non-acceptable behaviour is fine and fraught with dangers,” he said.

“HATE SPEAKER”

Last September, Butt, 30, who runs a discussion website Islam21c, was one of the first to fall foul of the moves to clampdown on non-violent extremists after being identified by a secretive cross-government Extremism Analysis Unit, established to pick out groups or individuals of concern.

The activist, who has a biochemistry doctorate, was named in a Downing Street press release on “hate speakers” as one of six figures who gave talks at university campuses and were “on record as expressing views contrary to British values”.

A later explanation given by the government to parliament said he had appeared to compare homosexuality to paedophilia and had spoken alongside figures from CAGE, a campaign group that gained attention for contacts with Mohammed Emwazi, the now-dead British militant known as “Jihadi John” who appeared in Islamic State videos beheading foreign captives.

Butt said the accusations against him were “complete rubbish”, and is now taking legal action to challenge the government’s way of identifying extremists and its “Prevent” strategy, its much-criticised policy to stop radicalisation.

“What has happened over the last 10 years of counter-terrorism policy is it’s completely going about it in a very destructive way,” he said.

“The government need to do a job to keep people safe but the way it’s being done, especially recently, not only are they looking in the wrong place … but they are completely ignoring the negative effects it’s having on community relations.”

It is not just those like Butt who are targeted that are concerned. In January, Professor Louise Richardson, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, said it was better to let extremists speak on campuses and challenge their views than to simply ban them.

David Anderson, Britain’s terrorism law watchdog, has warned that plans to clamp down on individuals and organisations accused of extremism could backfire by playing into the hands of militant recruiters.

“FREE PASS”

But those who back the government’s intent say allowing extremists free rein in public forums or at universities exposes vulnerable people to their messages. They point out that graduates or students at British universities have been involved in numerous militant plots including Emwazi and Nigerian “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Rupert Sutton, director of Student Rights, an organisation that campaigns against extremism on university campuses, said people with controversial views were often given a platform where their opinions were not questioned.

“They’re too often given a free pass,” he told Reuters. “If you put it as a dichotomy between either freedom of expression or ban them from speaking that is too binary. What we need to think about is how we are going to make it so that when they do come to speak they face challenge rather than being banned.”

He said the focus should be on using existing legislation to tackle people like Choudary, even if he had long proved adept at ensuring he did not break the law.

“When someone is as effective at it as Choudary is, you are going to get people saying: ‘How is he allowed to go around on the street doing this?'” he said.