Prevent is one plank of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy. It is aimed at stopping people becoming radicalised. Their own website states, ‘Police have a long history of working to prevent vulnerable people being drawn into criminal behaviour. The government-led, multi-agency Prevent programme aims to stop individuals becoming terrorists and police play a key role.’

How delightful, then, to read that I hold a series of views that might lead to my very own referral. Last week, the Guardian reported the following:

A document from Prevent, the official scheme to stop radicalisation, includes believing in socialism, communism, anti-fascism and anti-abortion in a list of potential signs of ideologies leading to terrorism.

It comes as the Conservative government considers widening what it will consider to be extremism.

The document is part of online Prevent awareness training for those covered by the duty to inform if they suspect radicalisation. That includes teachers and youth workers.

As a Socialist, who is none too keen on fascism and has been quite public about my dislike of abortion, it is somewhat troubling to discover that I might be flagged as holding to ideologies that lead to terrorism. I have, during the course of my academic work, spent a lot of time looking into certain groups of terrorists and I must admit, I’ve never once been close to being drawn in either to the ideologies that underpin their activities nor to any of the acts of terrorism.

The particular irony here, as the Guardian note in their report, is the following:

The government commissioned a review of Prevent by Shawcross, whose appointment led to a boycott of the review because of his alleged anti-Muslim and rightwing views.

The guidance for those covered by the Prevent duty was updated afterwards in July 2023.

The document details the main two ideologies driving the terrorist threat to the UK: Islamism, which makes up the bulk of the caseload, and the extreme right wing, which makes up about 20-30% of the caseloads, according to counter-terrorism sources.

Prevent was originally intended to address the terror threat from Islamism in the UK. It was broadened to include other forms of terrorism, but as the Guardian rightly note, the overwhelming majority of the caseload of the Prevent programme concerns Islamist terrorism and extreme right-wing terror. The changes reflect either a political bias in the government or a politically motivated desire not to appear targeting particular groups when it is clear that Prevent was always designed to target particular groups because the terror threat in the UK was predominantly from particular groups.

Whatever the reason, it is troubling. Not only are the government happy to include almost anyone they disagree with using these nebulous terms, but they are also severely limiting the possibility of free and frank discussion of political views. If ideological positions like Socialism and Communism get listed as ‘extreme’ and grounds for counter-terror interventions, there can be no easy or straightforward discussions of these views. Likewise, if anti-abortion or other single-issue matters get labelled the same way, we are making discussions of these views all but impossible.

The fear when we see these things – particular positions being flagged that many bible-believing Christians hold – is that here comes a crackdown on perfectly acceptable, normal Christian beliefs. Whilst I don’t want to be blasé about that – we are not beyond issues of forced speech and imposed regulations insisting we do what the Bible says we ought not to do – these things often don’t become the issues we often think they will. They usually either get watered down, withdrawn altogether or become totally unenforceable, particularly when the legality of them is brought before the courts.

In practice, more than any of that, I question how far these things will really get. For starters, we are going to have a General Election this year. There is every reason to believe these changes may get dropped or changed by a different government. It is also pretty blatantly politically skewed. These things very rarely manage to take hold. But it is a wake-up call, as these things often are, that the freedoms we take for granted are only a piece of legislation or a government programme away from being severely impeded and potentially removed from us.