Government’s counter-terror scheme targets anti-vaxxers and eco protesters
The Home Office’s Prevent duty training has been updated to include “left-wing, anarchist and single-issue” ideologies to target anti-vaxxers and eco protesters.
Prevent aims to enable professionals working in sectors including education and health to safeguard individuals from becoming terrorists, mostly through an online course.
But academics have raised concerns that the decision to include the new category aimed at targeting activity such as environmentalism, anti-abortion and anti-vaccine movements may have been politically motivated.
Dr Natalie James of the University of York has conducted research on counter-terrorism policy, examining how different threats can become blurred within educational institutions due to limitations in Prevent training.
Dr James told i: “With the previous home secretary [Suella Braverman], we did see moments where she explicitly saw some [protesting action] as a challenge against Government.”
She said that a new Prevent reference to eco-terrorism “rings with comments made around oil protests,” but added that this “context” is not the only explanation.
Ms Braverman has described groups such as Just Stop Oil as “militant eco-zealots,” pushing through the Public Order Act, which cracks down on such protests by making it a criminal offence to “lock on”, when activists attach themselves to a building, object or fence.
University and College Union (UCU) spokesperson Jenny Sherrard said: “The Government seems to be taking an increasingly authoritarian bent, and the inclusion of [the new] categories is, I think symptomatic of that.”
The new Prevent guidance states that the “left-wing, anarchist and single-issue” category – referred to by MI5 as Lasit – “represents a significantly smaller terrorist threat to the UK than Islamist or extreme right-wing terrorism […] although there has been some activity that has met a terrorism threshold in recent years.”
There have been no successful UK Lasit attacks to date, but this category would include activity such as environmentalism, anti-abortion and anti-vaccine movements if they were to cross that threshold.
Professor Paul Thomas of the University of Huddersfield and Dr James said that the new Lasit category is primarily linked to a review of Prevent which found that while Islamist extremism is the most serious threat facing the UK, accounting for 80 per cent of investigations, only 22 per cent of Prevent referrals cited it.
This was compared to 51 per cent for a “mixed, unstable or unclear” (MUU) category. The review recommended that “referrals should have an identifiable ideological element,” and that that the MUU and “other” strands be removed.
Professor Thomas sees the inclusion of Lasit as positive, but warned of an “issue” surrounding “how well frontline professionals are being trained”.
He cited the problem of “incorrect or inappropriate examples”, describing an instance where the logo of Greenpeace – a nonviolent organisation – was shown in a session about violent extremism.
Sabrina Ahmed-Qureshi, director in an further education college, said she thought Prevent was “an ineffective programme that targets minorities and already stigmatised groups to make them feel further under scrutiny”.
“The application of this training is awkward, conflicted, dangerous, and very damaging before it is helpful to the general public,” she said.
A secondary school teacher based in London, who asked not to be named, said that she sees Prevent training in its current form as a “tick-box exercise rather than something that is actually meaningful”.
But another teacher told i: “Any training that provides a wider range of perspectives and challenges stereotypes […] is likely to be helpful.
“It signposts teachers to look in their ‘blind spots’. However, [this] does not guarantee that all teachers will hold on to all of that new information.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Prevent deals with all forms of radicalisation and it is important that this is effectively communicated within our training products so that frontline professionals are equipped to take the appropriate action.”
In the year ending March 2022, the Home Office recorded 100 Prevent referrals (2 per cent) regarding “Other2 types of radicalisation. This related to international radicalisation groups, left-wing radicalisation and Northern Ireland-related extremism.
How has Prevent changed?
Prevent training has historically concentrated on two categories: Islamist extremism and extreme right-wing extremism, but they have now been joined by “left-wing, anarchist and single-issue ideologies” (Lasit).
The left-wing category is defined as being split into “two broad ideologies: socialism and communism,” while anarchism is described as seeking “the abolition of the state,” and single issue narratives are linked to people who “seek to change a specific policy or practice,” such as in relation to animal rights, abortion or environmental issues.
In January 2023, a 38-year-old man was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison for preparing terrorist acts, having been accused of carrying out reconnaissance of potential targets, purchasing equipment and seeking to recruit others to target transmitter masts in the Midlands.
