The duty on public bodies to report signs of radicalisation, included in the government’s strategy to counter Islamist extremism, is today’s equivalent of internment in Northern Ireland, the shadow home secretary, Andy Burnham, has said, calling for the strategy to be scrapped.
In a speech to the Chamber of Commerce in Manchester, Burnham called for a cross-party review of the Prevent strategy, but said his personal view was that the policy should be discarded. “I do feel that the brand is so toxic now that I think it’s got to go,” he said.
Burnham also announced Labour’s intention to oppose the government’s extremism bill, which was unveiled in last month’s Queen’s speech. It contains new powers to ban “extremist” organisations, gag individuals and enable local councils to close premises used to “promote hatred”.
“The Prevent duty to report extremist behaviour is today’s equivalent of internment in Northern Ireland – a policy felt to be highly discriminatory against one section of the community,” said Burnham, referring to the policy adopted during the Troubles under which hundreds of people were imprisoned without trial because they were suspected of being involved with the IRA.
“It is creating a feeling in the Muslim community that it is being spied upon and unfairly targeted. It is building a climate of mutual suspicion and distrust. Far from tackling extremism, it risks creating the very conditions for it to flourish.”
Speaking in advance of the 20th anniversary of the 1996 IRA bomb in Manchester city centre, which was the biggest to have exploded in the UK since the second world war, Burnham said the national mood in the face of the terrorist threat was more optimistic then than it is now.
“Now we live in very different times. The national mood has completely changed. Possibility has given way to pessimism. Solidarity to suspicion. Confidence to confusion. Hope to fear. It’s almost a complete reversal of where we were back then,” said Burnham, who last month announced his intention to run to be Labour’s candidate for mayor of Greater Manchester.
Burnham said that since 9/11 the UK had been “struggling – and failing – to find the right response to this new form of terrorism”.
“That single event shocked us out of the optimism and unity that had been so tangible just five years before. That is exactly what it was designed to do, just like the Manchester bomb,” said the MP for Leigh. “But this time, instead of building bridges, we seem to have slipped back into the language of division, suspicion and alienation.”
Burnham told the Guardian after his speech that Prevent, which was introduced under the last Labour government, had been allowed to go down the wrong path. “The Prevent strategy and potentially this extremism bill are creating the conditions for more radicalisation not less. It’s as simple as that really,” he said.
Burnham said “a language of xenophobia has entered the lexicon” of British politics and that many politicians were flirting with racism. “The subliminal message is there and it’s getting close if not beyond that [racist] line at moments.”
“The right has sought to introduce [religion and race] into the political debate,” he said. “What reason could there be for it being repeatedly pointed out that Sadiq Khan is Muslim in the London mayoral campaign? That wouldn’t have happened, I don’t think, 10 to 15 years ago. Why is that happening now? When the IRA were at their strongest it wasn’t repeatedly pointed out that British politicians were Catholic.”