Northern Ireland has experienced decades of politically motivated violence, paramilitarism, and community polarisation on a scale unmatched elsewhere in the UK. This piece by Zara W. Tahir examines why Prevent has never been applied in Northern Ireland, what has been done instead, and what that tells us about whether Prevent is truly fit for purpose anywhere.
In 2016, Andy Burnham, at the time the Shadow Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, compared the Prevent Duty to internment in Northern Ireland calling it “a policy felt to be highly discriminatory against one section of the community”.[1]
Now, as Prime Minister, he has an opportunity — and arguably an obligation — to ask the question Northern Ireland has already answered by practice: is Prevent a counter-terrorism tool, or is it a mechanism for surveilling communities the state has already decided to distrust?
A decade on, the Prevent strategy remains absent in its application in Northern Ireland, despite the UK asserting that Northern Ireland has an extremism problem. This extremism, it claims, arises from ethnic and religious hatred, and it has even deemed Belfast the ‘race hate capital of Europe’.
Although there is legislation in place to tackle hatred on ethnic and religious grounds, UN committees have found that they fall short of what is required under the guise of safeguarding free speech.[2]
So why does the UK refuse to apply Prevent in Northern Ireland?
One reason is that, given the unique history of Northern Ireland, passing such legislation through the Northern Ireland Assembly, representatives of ‘past suspect communities’, would likely block it. This is especially the case given that responsibility for counterterrorism sits with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Another reason may be that, similar to Scotland, the idea of promoting ‘British values’ would be problematic, since,
“The Belfast / Good Friday Agreement (GFA) conceded people here do not have to be loyal British citizens, or indeed British at all. Under the GFA both London and Dublin:
…recognise the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship…[3]”
One final reason is that the local actors that would be involved in the implementation of Prevent are likely to be uncooperative and suspicious.
“The inherent lack of trust in the state and state agencies, including the police, mean that initiatives to prevent extremism led or funded by the state could be treated with extreme skepticism by some communities, given the role of the British army, Royal Ulster Constabulary, and M15 in the conflict (see, for example, Operation Kenova and the case of the Miami Showband Killings; Travers & Featherstonhaugh, 2007).[4]”
A Different Approach
Although Prevent is unlikely to be applied in Northern Ireland in the future, there are concerns regarding the manner in which violence and radicalisation within minority communities is divorced from community-led approaches adopted to combat Troubles-linked violence.
Nonetheless, with Northern Ireland’s history there are a a number of grassroots organisations focusing on peace building, women’s groups, cross-border initiatives, mental health interventions linked to the experience of the troubles, trauma-focused work, and so on, that have a healthier approach to CVE.[5]
And it’s this community-led approach that is cited by academics as being most effective in preventing Terrorism and Political Violence (TPV):
“Lessons from Ireland have the potential to demonstrate to our European neighbors and further afield, how the response to TPV should be informed by local realities, how prison intervention cannot be universally understood or separate from social conditions, and how reactionary policy making serves to prevent decades of experience being brought to bear on how we frame and respond to instances of TPV. Finally, the manner in which activities (that might in another jurisdiction be termed P/CVE) that address TPV emerge in Ireland, both North and South, is a lesson in how existing, community-led, grassroots-driven activities can be central to dealing with the complex social issues often at the root of TPV. These initiatives are often concerned with cross-community collaboration, crime prevention, youth support, and shared cultures”.[6]
The History of CVE in Northern Ireland
Understanding why Prevent cannot work in Northern Ireland requires understanding how Northern Ireland has always approached radicalisation differently from the rest of the UK.
Northern Ireland has its own history with Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) especially during the period known as ‘the Troubles’. There are, however, key differences between how radicalisation and extremism were viewed during the Troubles, and how they are viewed today through the UK’s Prevent strategy.
In northern Ireland, radicalisation was considered a ‘social’ process rather than a purely ‘ideological’ one:[7]
“The assumption that ideology can and should dominate how we frame the motives and justifications for violence was never prominent in the discourse on Northern Ireland—it was long understood that personal and family history, discrimination, victimization, opportunity, and grievance were important in understanding the emergence of division and engagement in violence[8]”
Radicalisation as we know it today, with its focus on individual ideology, almost as existing in a vacuum, is a fairly recent configuration that can be traced back to the aftermath of 9/11. As a result, Islamist extremism is treated differently via Prevent, which refers Muslims disproportionately from other groups.
But as a result of how it views radicalisation as a consequence of a broad base of factors, de-radicalisation in Northern Ireland was considered a social process not an individual one.
“The Peace Process was not primarily focused on the individual actors who engaged in violence, but more broadly on rights, governance, and policing, reflecting the societal origins of the conflict and the societal solution. As Neil Ferguson points out, in the case of Northern Ireland, there was an understanding that ‘with changes in the political context, people of violence can become peacemakers’[9]”
Current Programmes to Combat Radicalisation/Paramilitarism
The current CVE landscape in Northern Ireland frames radicalisation as a social process. However, despite this, what is emerging from the current landscape is a troubling double standard: one approach for communities shaped by the Troubles, another for minority ethnic and Muslim communities.
Simon Coveney, the former Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs has highlighted the role of poverty and discrimination as underlying causes of terrorism.[10]
However, behind the scenes, minorities – thanks to an approach much like the way in which Islamist extremism is treated by Prevent – are singled out and targeted through a lens that focuses purely on ideology. This discrepancy was noted by the UN:
“In another recent statement to the UN, the reality of Ireland’s P/CVE strategy was revealed to be focused on minority communities and led by community-policing Ethnic Liaison Officers. Radicalization was only referred to in the context of minority communities and mirrored the language often used in the United Kingdom to refer to British Muslims who engage in terrorism—homegrown extremists. There is no reference to Troubles-linked violence despite the ongoing threat from dissident republican and loyalist groups.[11]”
This illustrates the emergence of what some have described as a two-tier system. Troubles-linked violence is dealt with at grassroots level, with the Fresh Start Agreement explained below, which tackles socio-economic factors, while violence emanating from minority communities is seen in line with the rhetoric surrounding Prevent, despite its absence in Northern Ireland.
This is exactly the discrimination Burnham was describing in 2016 and is a double standard that he has now inherited.
The Fresh Start Agreement
In 2015, the Fresh Start Agreement was introduced to tackle paramilitary and organised crime. From this programme, two subsequent strands emerged that specifically dealt with young people and education: Aspire and WRAP.[12]
In 2019, the WRAP programme commenced as a ‘wrap-around’ education service for young people, mainly focusing on children aged 10-18. It had three objectives:
(1) To provide a range of needs-based, education-in-the-community interventions enabling children and young people to reach their full potential in core skills of literacy, numeracy, digital skills and the broader areas of the curriculum.
(2) To provide emotional well-being support; helping children and young people to be ready to learn resulting in improved emotional self-regulation, improved behaviour and positive attitudes to education.
(3) To support children and young people through effective collaboration, including between parents, family, community, schools & service providers, and breaking down barriers between communities.[13]
Compare this to Channel, which is the de-radicalisation programme at the end of Prevent, in the UK, Scotland and Wales: it is a referral-based process in which individuals, often children, are assessed for their perceived ideological risk – and it is done without charges, without transparency, and frequently without the consent or understanding of their families.
WRAP is just one example of a strategy that focuses on a grassroots approach to countering extremism and radicalisation, rather than the isolating top-down approach employed by a Channel panel.
Lessons from Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland did not adopt Prevent. To combat terrorism and political violence, it has invested in communities instead, producing an approach that is “informed by local realities”, and that sees “how reactionary policy making serves to prevent decades of experience being brought to bear on how we frame and respond to instances of TPV”.
Northern Ireland proves that grassroots-driven activities can be central to dealing with the complex social issues often at the root of TPV, rather than reactionary policies like Prevent.
Andy Burnham once called Prevent toxic. The evidence from Northern Ireland suggests he was describing it precisely. The question now is what he intends to do about it.
References
[1] Frances Perraudin ‘Andy Burnham calls for “toxic” Prevent strategy to be scrapped’ (The Guardian, 9 June 2016) <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/09/andy-burnham-calls-for-toxic-prevent-strategy-to-be-scrapped>
[2] Daniel Holder ‘As “extremist” as Finchley? The “Counter Extremism Strategy” and the Irish context’ [2015]
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ora Lynch, ‘Counter Extremism in Ireland/ An Overview of the Landscape’ [2023] 64
[5] Ora Lynch, ‘Counter Extremism in Ireland/ An Overview of the Landscape’ [2023] 65
[6] Ibid., 69-70
[7] CREST, ‘The Violent Extremist Lifecycle/ Lessons from Northern Ireland’ [2020]
[8] Ora Lynch, ‘Counter Extremism in Ireland/ An Overview of the Landscape’ [2023] 60
[9] Ibid., 60
[10] Ibid., 64-65
[11] Ibid.
[12] David Lowe, ‘Hate Crime in Northern Ireland/ The Need for Legislation and a Bespoke Version of the Prevent Strategy’ [2025] 271
[13] Ibid., 271-272
[14] Ora Lynch, ‘Counter Extremism in Ireland/ An Overview of the Landscape’ [2023] 65
[15] Ibid., 69-70
Related…
How is the Prevent duty implemented in Scotland and who is standing against it (Expert View)
Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash
