Podcast: An interview with Paul Thomas on 'Responding to the Threat of Violent Extremism: Failing to Prevent'

[Narrator] Hello and welcome to the podcast, Terrorism and Political Violence (TPV), produced by the Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence in collaboration with Utrecht University. This podcast is comprised of two types of episodes; in issues up close, editors of the TPV Journal will discuss a range of subjects from prominent issues, covered by the journal, such as the history of terrorism, its causes and consequences, questions concerning political violence and major global trends, threats. In our Book Talk episodes, editors will host conversations with experts from across the field to discuss their current work.

Today’s episode is hosted by TPV associate editor, Michele Grossman. She had the pleasure of interviewing professor Paul Thomas about his early work, ‘Responding to the Threat of Violent Extremism: Failing to Prevent' from 2012, and how this book helps you understand today’s extremist landscape in the UK. We hope you enjoy this episode.

[Grossman] Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Terrorism and Political Violence podcast. I’m Michele Grossman, an associate editor of the Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence and a research professor in terrorism and violent extremism studies at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.

Today it’s my great pleasure to be speaking with Paul Thomas, who is professor of youth and policy at the University of Huddersfield, in the UK, were he also serves as associate dean for research, innovation and knowledge exchange in the school of business and education.

Paul’s research focuses primarily on state policies, concerning young people and ethnic racial community cohesion, and also on the prevention of violent extremism. In the field of preventing and countering violent extremism, or PCVE, Paul has co-led a range of high impact projects, both in the UK and internationally, including a suite of international studies on community reporting threshold on violent extremism by social intimates in the UK, Canada and the USA, on terrorist recruitment in Australia and the UK, and on how the Prevent duty has been taken up, mediated, and enacted within English schools and colleges.

Paul’s interest in the field of PCVE, began with the publication of his groundbreaking book, ‘Responding to the Threat of Violent Extremism: Failing to Prevent.' First published at the end of 2012, in this book, Paul offered a trenchant critique of the ways in which Prevent and the broader CONTEST counter terrorism strategy, in which it was embedded, served to alienate and disenfranchise British Muslim communities, rather than engaging them in ways that encourage social cohesion and participation.

Paul linked this to decisive and unsettling shifts in British policy attitudes towards multiculturalism, and the impact of these shifts on the State’s relationship with ethnic minority communities. Just over a decade later, these issues have now been reinvigorated in the UK by current political debates around multiculturalism, ethnic diversity and strategies for countering terrorism, including the recent Shawcross review of the Prevent strategy.

So today will be revisiting some of Paul’s analyses his early work, and exploring how they stood the test of time in helping us understand what’s happening today in the UK, in light of a dynamic and diversified violent extremist landscape, for both terrorist actors and policymakers.

Paul we’re absolutely delighted to have you with us as a guest today.

[Thomas] Hello Michele, it’s good to be with you.

[Grossman] So look Paul, let me begin by asking what initially motivated you to analyse the Prevent strategy, and to take that analysis into consideration of broader preventing and countering violent extremism measures?

[Thomas] I think like many terrorism study scholars, I didn’t originally plan to research in this area. I’m originally a sociologist of race and ethnicity, and I was already researching youth racial tensions and violence in the North of England, where I’m based, and researching the preventive responses to it, particularly Youth and Community work, when the Prevent strategy came into that space. Originally, the UK’s Prevent strategy was all about work in youth and community groups, only in Muslim communities. So local government research partners asked me both to research it’s ground-level implementation, but also to develop actionable research to supports it’s effective implementation. So that led me to research Prevent’s purpose and impact nationally, more generally, and from there that's taken me on a really sixteen years (and counting) journey on researching policy approaches on prevention of violent extremism nationally and internationally.

[Grossman] Terrific, thank you. I’m also wondering about this significance of the timing of the publication of your book in 2012. There is quite a bit going on in that period, in terms of some policy shifts in the UK, and I’m wondering if you can help give us some background on what the timing of the book actually meant>

[Thomas] Absolutely. The book was written during 2011, just as the Prevent strategy was being reviewed and subsequently, significantly all about the new coalition Government, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government, had come in previous to that. And this meant the book offered the story of a critical analysis of the development of, and the controversy around, of which I previously termed ‘the Prevent One Phase’ of this ongoing strategy. Because in 2011, that phase one really came to an end and Prevent went in quite a significantly different direction.

[Grossman] So, the Prevent strategy, like that of a number of other countries (I’m thinking here particularly of Canada, the United States, Australia, throughout Europe), in the wake of 911, we see a burgeoning rise in the develop of new approaches to counterterrorism, new definitions emerging, for example, around radicalisation and the meanings of violent extremism and terrorism. What were some of the key features that really stood out realised stood out, through the Prevent strategy in particular?, and how did the aims and methods, and overall approach of Prevent sit alongside those of other countries, in relation to preventing terrorism?

[Thomas] In the Prevent One Phase, Prevent was explicitly only about British Muslim communities, and it was enacted in all the significant scale local areas of Muslim residents across England. So on a large scale, largely delivered by community-based work with young people and through efforts to strengthen Muslim civil society and its relationship with local government. So it’s a large-scale program, but done through communities. This was supported by enhanced police engagement as well. And also through national-level efforts to develop a more polyphonic community representation and leadership. So at that stage, schools and colleges for instance had no role in Prevent, it was very much done through communities. But explicitly, only about Muslim communities. I think Britain was an early PCVE policy adopter, certainly as a national strategy, and Prevent certainly influenced the emerging European union policy strategies. Although, European policies very much been for national states, and Prevent also influenced the approaches developing and individual European states, such as the Netherlands I think, but also as well as the early development of the US CVE strategy, which in 2011 was starting to emerge, and starting to take some shape. I think Prevent has been - was - very influential on community-based PCV work, but was explicitly only about Muslims, which was obviously highly controversial.

[Grossman] Certainly I know in the Australian context, from which I am working, Prevent was absolutely seen as a form of forward guidance, particularly around engaging with communities. That approach was also very reflected, for example, in the Australian counterterrorism white paper of 2010.

The aim of working with communities is bringing communities and the state together to counter a common harm and a common challenge, I think certainly resonated initially with many people, but you go on in the book to offer a series of critiques of the Prevent strategy. What was some of the key areas in which you felt, in addition to the exclusive focus on Muslim communities, rendered Prevent problematic?

[Thomas] There is a number of sort of key interrelated critiques that I’d highlight. Firstly, to expand on that explicit focus on Muslims; the fact that Prevent explicitly focused only on Muslims in its early documentation talked about the need for demonstrative changes in attitudes to the Muslim communities, so very much a very interventive program, and it was done on a very large scale.

And that had two impacts in itself. First, it deepened an already existing sense amongst British Muslims, a sense of stigmatisation that was already there because of media and public criticism and labelling of Muslims in the wake of the 7/7 terror attack. So Prevent’s focus only on Muslim’s deepened that Muslim community sense of being targeted and stigmatised.

And it also gave the wider general public, non-Muslims, the sense that there must be a genuine problem of extremism within Muslim communities, through the shear scale of the program. Alongside that, sources went into Muslim communities and there was a certain amount, of what I’m termed ‘resource envy’ for instance, in poor, white communities saying, “are Muslim communities being rewarded for their extremism by having resources going in?”

So that monocultural focus is the first real critique that I identified. And so, interrelatedly, the second point is; by focusing so blatantly and solely on that Muslim identity and community-faith identity, rather than the narrower focus on, for instance, ideological beliefs around extremism and jihadism, it flatly contradicted what we can call ‘community cohesion’ which was the new direction of British multiculturalist policy. I was already researching community cohesion and its implementation- in fact I’d written a book previously around cohesion implementation - and cohesion was really concerned with rebalancing British multiculturalism that focus more on strengthening shared identities and values, and really prioritise forms of cross-community partnership and contact.

So, there was a contradiction there, but at the same time, my research and others were showing that within this Prevent program focusing only on Muslims, there is actually very little evidence of meaningful preventive work around ideology or political education, it was quite an empty program. So, I termed it in an earlier article as it being “between two stools.” It wasn’t cohesion, it wasn’t working on shared identities, and it wasn’t also having much genuine preventative political education content, and that was mirroring previous mistakes made in previous anti-racist extremism work that had been done with young people in previous times in Britian, that I had also been involved in, both as a youth work practitioner and also a researcher.

[Grossman]I’m just wondering on the point that you make about the falling “between two stools” between counterterrorism (proper if you like) and community cohesion. There were critiques of Prevent at the time, that also said that it was functioning in ways that used the community cohesion paradigm as a kind of mask or camouflage for what were in fact highly-securitised programs of intervention that involve the securitisation and surveillance of Muslims.

I think that’s an argument that is familiar to many of our listeners, as well as to you and I. But I’m wondering where your critique sits alongside a range of other criticisms that were being made of Prevent around the same time?

[Thomas] Firstly, I would say that that is a very common critique. In fact UK parliament itself made that critique in 2009 that it was confusing community cohesion. But I think there is a distinction there, or a definitional distinction, which is that community cohesion really means cross-community work, whereas that wasn’t happening in Prevent. Prevent was solely focused on one faith community. It was actually community development work that was – whether you see that as being securitised, there is a good argument that it was actually trying to create resilience within Muslim communities and develop new forms of representation. But certainly, there was that perception. But I think that there were a lot of criticisms — I was far from the only critic — of that early Phase One of Prevent. And those criticisms focused partly on that monocultural focus on Muslims, and that hardened in the perception that British Muslims were being turned into a so-called ‘suspect community.’ So a reinterpretation of that concept that originally applied to the Irish and Britain during the Northern Ireland concept Paddy Hillyard’s sort of concept. And that charge, or that term, still endures in some of the literature

There was, in the early stages, some examples of avert police surveillance within this community-based program. And that really drove the very famous report and critique by Arun Kundnani, and that this was actually a spying program and there was some subterfuge involved. That attracted a lot of media attention, and it directly prompted a parliamentary select committee inquiry. There are two elements of the British program: one was through the policing-based Home Office, but one was the department communities and local government, and they were very concerned that community work was being securitised. But also, that confusion that you mentioned between cohesion and Prevent was problematic. So the select committee inquiry in 2009-10, got a great deal of attention, I went to parliament and gave evidence to it, and their criticism of the program as it was we’re very trenchant. 

[Grossman] So, it’s really helpful to have some of this background, thinking back to that earlier phase of British countering violent extremism and preventing violent extremism efforts. Let's jump to the present now. So we are a couple of years past a decade’s worth of Prevent, arguably the strategy has evolved, potentially your critique of this strategy has also evolved during that time. How do you, looking back over a decade (a bit more than a decade), of the way that Prevent developed, how you see the critiques that you offered back in 2012 now? Do you standby them, or have you change the view of the strategy, in part because the strategy itself has changed?

[Thomas] Well in that Parliamentary inquiry in 2009, I suggested Prevent should be ended, and I described it in an article at the time as ‘failed and friendless.’ I don’t feel that now, and as the famous economist John Maynard Keynes said, “when the facts change, I change my mind” and Prevent has changed, and I feel quite differently about it now. I’m not going to turn myself into a supporter of Prevent, but I have a very different view of Prevent’s legitimacy or its efficacy of broader counterterrorism strategies.

What Prevent is now. What it involves, what is does is fundamentally different from the Prevent one phase that we’ve just discussed, which I analyse in the book. Since 2011,  Prevent two phases has developed. Arguably we’re in a Prevent two-plus phase now. and since 2011, first its focused on all forms of extremism, and that rebalancing to all forms of extremism has strengthened over the past decade. It’s progressively downsized the scale of the community-based work. That community-based element, and we may want to talk now that role, that Place where the international strategies. And there is a further decrease in that community element now coming from the Shawcross review from last year, which you mentioned.

The main component of Prevent now is actually our national system of frontline professionals, and increasingly community members, throughout our work together on community reporting, through professionals identifying and referring individuals that seem to be at risk of radicalisation to prevent a potential channel counter-radicalisation mentoring and counselling.

That is overwhelmingly the main activity of Prevent now. and you can see that is a total contrast to a decade ago when the main focus was community-based work, only in the one community. Som in other work since the book was published, I’ve described this as moving from Muslim communities being responsiblised for terrorism prevention, to largely frontline practitioners, people who work in education, health, welfare etc. being responsiblised.

Now, for instance, research that I’ve conducted with colleagues, such as Joel Busher, shows that British teachers have largely accepted this Prevent reporting legal duty that they now have. It’s been consistent with pre-existing safeguarding mechanisms around other forms of social harm, whether that’s youth violence, sexual exploitation, child abuse etc. And the work of other colleagues has shown that this legal duty has not led to over reporting and is not out of kilter with teachers in other countries, such as Denmark where there isn’t a legal duty.

Muslims are still over-represented in these UK Prevent referrals, but the idea that they are over represented is fiercely contested within British politics, and we can maybe talk more about that. But that over representation is steadily declining, as the individuals from Extreme Right-Wing, and other forms of extremists ideology, motivations, are being referred in increasingly large proportions.

[Grossman] So, I’m just wondering in terms of the point that you make about the continuing over representation of British Muslims, in reporting and referrals through Prevent and the Channel Program that represents a step beyond that.

The Shawcross review has basically said that there hasn’t been enough emphasis on radicalisation to violence across British Muslim communities; that there needs to be a re-emphasis on those trajectories, that in some sense the broadening of the remit to encompass quite a wide range of ideologies and ideological narratives around extremism and violent extremism has hindered rather than helped counterterrorism efforts in the UK. How do you respond to that critique from Shawcross?

[Thomas] The contention around over representation has been a long-running one. The fact that British Muslims are overrepresented in the referrals is why the continued charge that it is really an Islamophobic policy stigmatising policy, still exists. Because even though it’s not focused on Muslims, critiques say it really is about Muslims because of that over representation

But lobbyists, such as the right of centre policy exchange, Think Tank, for example who have done a lot of work around countering violent extremism, argues that there is an under-representation because the vast bulk of actual Terrorist attacks in the UK in the last few years, or late-stage plots that have been foiled. And as we’re speaking there has just been a plot foiled to attack Jewish communities in Manchester, by what seems to be by people from Muslim backgrounds.

Those late-stage plots are all inspired by violent jihadism, so really, British Muslims are under-represented. And this has been fiercely contested. Shawcross seems to go with that latter review, and actually suggested that these frontline professionals, who enact the Prevent duty, are actually not referring Muslims at risk, because of what he terms as ‘political correctness’ – he says largely white professional are afraid of being politically incorrect, are afraid that Prevent has been pulled into wider political culture wars that are increasingly happening in Britain.

I’ve previously worked for the UK’s government commission for racial quality, so I’ve a long background in race equality, research, and policy work, and I think that’s an absolute unfortunate slur on professionals. I think they refer what they see in front of them in their daily practice. The research I’ve done with Joel Busher and colleagues shows that the largely white, educated workforce, are very aware that they don’t always fully understand things about Islam and Islamic politics, but that doesn’t been that they are not referring on what they see as a genuine risk of radicalisation.

I think the Shawcross report has been highly contentious and is far from clear to me that some of the recommendations are actually being enacted at ground-level. For instance, he wants the term ‘Islamists’ to be used consistently. At a practice level, a lot of people know that that term damages relationships and damages engagement by Muslim communities, who don’t like the broad term Islamists. It’s both academically incorrect and it’s also an unhelpful connection to the religion of Islam, rather than violent jihadism. 

[Grossman] So if you were going to update your book today, 12 years on, what would you be saying about Prevent now?

What are some of the key themes and critiques that you would be examining, in light of where Prevent has landed in a contemporary landscape, that I think probably most people would agree, has diversified and evolved considerably, and in many ways has become more complex than it was, you know, ten to fifteen years ago?

What would be your main focus now if you were to update the book, perhaps for a second edition?

[Thomas] I think for the second addition would certainly be describing and analysing that very significant, sort of shifting content and focus from Prevent One to Prevent Two today that we discussed. Also, I would want to really engage with some this contention that I’ve described, because the contention, publicly around Prevent, is out of all proportion to the size and budget of this policy. It’s quite symbolic of some broader issues about equality, about extremism, and about the places that these different communities within Britain. I would want to engage with the nature and the motivation of some of those arguments around Prevent. But I do think that the way Prevent has developed and the journey it’s been on, does raise some broader issues for PCV, both nationally and internationally, that I want to engage in in the book. That includes the actual congruence of this early detection and intervention duties for frontline professionals.

Is this really congruent with the pre-existing broader safeguarding responsibilities that professionals across all national domains have as part of their jobs? But also, Prevent is continuing, as I describe, to reduce the scale of community-based work, where it was solely based on bystander community work, and that community-based approach did inspire a lot of other countries. Britain is now very much moving away from that community-based work and questioning its effectiveness and rational stay

So, obviously together we’ve recently written a book chapter discussing the role of community-based work within PCV. And that’s in the new Routledge Handbook on Radicalisation and Counter Radicalisation. I think there’s a couple of issues there. One is; can there ever be community-based PCV work that doesn’t stigmatise communities?  Because its policies explicitly about terrorism and funded through counterterrorism work. And does that now inherently label or stigmatise the communities, the geographical spaces, that it is targeted on?

But also, internationally, extreme right-wing terrorism and extremism is the growing threat. And in certainly in virtually Western countries, that means coming from the majority community. So, is any sort of community-based geographically targeted PCV policy really going to be effective?

Alongside the growing influence of the online space for radicalisation and plot development. I’d certainly want to rethink fifteen years on from the start of the Prevent program, the role of the effectiveness of community-based PCVE.

[Grossman] Just in relation to some of those themes that you would want to engage with now. One of the current debates in the field is about the roles of, and also the relationship between, where we place the emphasis in preventing and countering violent extremism, on behaviour versus ideology.

So should we be focusing pretty much just on what people do? or is it really important to understand (in terms of things like disengagement)…or is it really important to understand the motivation, including the ideological dimensions of motivation for violent extremism?

Where do you see the current Prevent as falling, in terms of the emphasis on ideology and/or behaviour, in its approach?

[Thomas] I think the downplaying of the community-based element arguably addresses some these issues. Because in Britain, and I think even Internationally, there’s always been contention around what should PCV activity look like; Is it about resilience building? Is it about association and strengthening place within communities and networks? Or should it be much more hard-edged focus on ideology and political education and pedagogical, to a certain extent?

Certainly, the contention around Prevent in the UK has often been the charge, for instance in the police, that community-based work just looks like youth work. Arun Kundnani, many years ago, highlighted police criticism of the Police playing cricket with Muslim youths, as part of Prevent. And that looks laughable for some people, but on another angle, it’s actually just bringing those young people to a safe space, but also building relationships with police and with youth workers.

So, there’s a live international issue about what should community-based work look like; what should it involve? The UK seems to be answering that by downplaying the community element, whereas the channel process, of the individual mentoring and counselling for those identified at being at risk, is overtly about ideology. That counselling and mentoring focus on thinking about world views, about assumptions, and it’s done by individuals, by what’s called in Britian, ‘intervention providers’ who have the skills, background and expertise, sometimes they’ve even come out of those extremist ideologies themselves to argue and engage with that.

But the Shawcross review that was published last year on Prevent, overtly said that there should be more focus on ideology. And that was curious for the reasons I’ve said, that whether it will be effective or meaningful to try to do broader programs of ideology work within communities, often with young people showing no sign of, or even knowledge of these ideologies.

And of course there is within the literature, there continues to be great contention around the role of ideology for people who move towards involvement in violence, with often lots of evidence that they have no knowledge or engagement with that ideology or faith that they are interpreting in that way. So Shawcross was very much in the camp that it’s all about ideology, and that represents a broader sort of problematic view for me of the Muslim community.

[Grossman] A really fascinating perspective, Paul, thank you for that. Look, I would just like to move on now to a couple of questions to help listeners understand a bit more about your own history and career development in this area. Who in the field of preventing and countering violent extremism is particularly influenced your own work?

[Thomas] I’d start by broadening out a bit. Because throughout my work… I’ve been influenced by British educationalist Steven Ball and his colleagues. They focus on the enactment of policy ground-level. My research around multiculturalism through to Prevent, has been about policies are understood and enacted at the ground-level. Often they’re being modified….the British changes in Prevent now are being resisted, or unelevated at the ground-level. So that work around how policy is done at groundwork level continues to influence me. I’ve always had an interest in pedagogy and the role of education, which represents my background as a youth worker, what role can education play in the role of extremism? The work of Lynn Davis on educating on extremism is very interesting, and continues to be influential to me. I particularly like the theoretical work by Francesco Ragazzi around how we understand prevent and violent extremism. And of course I’ve been very privileged to learn and collaborate with colleagues like Joel Busher, and yourself.

[Grossman] Very kind of you to say so, Paul. If you were going to be writing a new book tomorrow, what would you be writing about? What’s the pressing topic or issue on your mind?

[Thomas]Given the broader issues I’ve raised about how Prevent can be understood, in relation to international directions of PCV, I’d like to look more at: comparative understandings; additional different national settings; what their policy architecture is around PCV; and what some of the components are; what the trajectories of those components; which components are being prioritised and which are not? So this quite growing distinction between some countries using community-based work still, and Britian, for instance, moving away from that, is something I’d be interested in exploring more. Hence, which actors are playing which roles within national PCV policy approaches.

[Grossman] The kind of comparative work that you’ve just outlined, is an excellent fit with a sort of sociological qualitative informed research perspectives and methods that you have long brought to your work. Why is qualitative enquiry a relevant method in studies of terrorism and violent extremism?

[Thomas] For me, those approaches allow us to explore how prevent and countering violent extremism policies are actually understood and enacted at the grass-roots level, by the professionals who have been asked to implement these. They have to implement  them within their broader responsibilities and broader policy context. And that’s how often terrorism studies ignores the fact that people enacting these policies have other things to do – they’re not full-time terrorism prevention specialists. But also, how those policies have been experienced and perceived, including by those communities on the receiving end as well.

[Grossman] So, looking forward now, Paul. What most excited you about the directions that you see being taken in terrorism and violent extremism studies today?

[Thomas] There is a growing body of empirical work around the implementation of counterterrorism policies and the impact, and as I’ve described, that’s my interest. But for a long time, the literature has been dominated by theoretical political critiques of these policies and not based on actual empirical data. For instance, we know we have, in the last few years, British data and large scale surveys around British Muslim attitudes that show, in spite of what the literature and critiques say, most British Muslims have never heard of Prevent, and when it’s described to them, they support its principles. That’s a fundamental contradiction to where most of the literature has been.

There is also a growing and much needed research focus on the apparent representation of individuals with mental health difficulties or neurodiversity within these larger groups seen at being at risk of radicalisation. I think that’s a field where we need more evidence on, and we need to understand much better.

[Grossman] And that takes me to my final question for you. Which is, in addition to that focus on things like the role (if any) of neurodiversity. What other areas do you think we might need to be paying more attention to over a sort of five-to-ten-year horizon? If you’re looking beyond the curve of where we are now, where should we be focusing our attention, in ways that perhaps are under-examined at the moment?

[Thomas] I think we still don’t know enough about effective educational interventions, whether that’s with the broad population or with those at risk. The individual interventions, for instance, the UK channel program, are still largely black boxed. We don’t know much about the methods and their impact and effectiveness… There is still little policy and practice focus on how community members, and how intimate bystanders, as we’ve termed, can be involved in identifying and reporting moves towards violent extremism. Policy is still too focused on professionals essentially.

I have a long, many years ago I was a reactive anti-fascist in my community, and I think the Extreme Right-Wing threat is growing internationally. I and other colleagues are writing about this, but there is still not enough policy and practice focus on the threat Extreme Right-Wing terrorism, and we need to see more of that.

[Grossman] Paul, this has been a really insightful and thought-provoking look at how your thinking about strategies for countering violent extremism in the UK has developed, as indeed the Prevent strategy itself has compared to the earlier work that you’ve done on prevent, it’s been a rich and simulating discussion. And I like to thank you for that, and also to thank our listeners. We really hope you enjoyed the conversation today.

[Narrator] That concludes today’s episode. This podcast was brought to you by the Terrorism and Political Violence Journal, Utrecht University, and the Hub Security and Open Societies.

The sound design was done by Peter Veen. For more information on this podcast series, including what to expect in the next episode, please check the description. For now, we thank you very much for listening, and please join us again for the next episode of the Terrorism and Political Violence, the podcast.