Activists turn residents against Muslims and government fails to tackle them, its adviser finds

This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

Far-right activists are exploiting community tensions by swooping into towns and cities and distorting the truth in an effort to turn residents against minorities, particularly Muslims, the government’s chief adviser on extremism has found.

Extremists were stirring up white populations who would not normally support the far right and deepening social division, Sara Khan, who leads the Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE), said in her first major report.

Figures such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who is more commonly known as Tommy Robinson, Anne Marie Waters, the leader of the For Britain party, and Jayda Fransen, a former deputy leader of the fascist group Britain First, were singled out in the report for spreading anti-minority and anti-Muslim agendas.

Khan visited 20 towns and cities and sifted through 3,000 responses to a call for evidence to produce her first major report, published on Monday, titled Challenging Hateful Extremism. She concluded in her report that the government’s response to extremism was “inadequate”, “unfocused” and urgently needed a complete overhaul.

Among the cities was Sunderland, where Khan found far-right supporters were exploiting tensions over high concentrations of asylum seekers. Problems erupted in September 2016 when a woman alleged she had been gang-raped by a group of Middle Eastern men, reporting the claim on social media as well as to police.

Following an extensive police investigation, the Crown Prosecution Service, lacking evidence to substantiate the claim, did not authorise the police to charge any suspects. Prominent far-right figures, including Yaxley-Lennon, Waters and Fransen, took up the woman’s cause, organising 13 marches in 13 months.

The report said: “However, a democratic process like protesting can turn into hateful extremism when protesters deliberately distort the truth to persuade their audience to adopt discriminatory and hateful attitudes.

“The marchers said they aimed to improve the safety of women and children locally. However, their rhetoric targeted ethnic minorities, despite nearly 85% of people convicted of sexual offences in 2018 in the Northumbria police force area being white.”

A Sunderland-based group, Justice for Women and Children, was formed in May 2018 after four more alleged rapes were reported. But its campaign wrongly claimed that Asian men, Muslims and refugees were responsible for 90% of the rapes in Sunderland.

Mistrust of the state was another consequence, the report said, as Justice for Women and Children claimed to provide support services for victims of sexual abuse, though they did not have any expertise in this area. This could lead to victims not accessing existing qualified support.

Two men were later convicted of the rape of a woman in their asylum seeker hostel in an unrelated attack.

Councillors told the commission that, rather than draw attention to injustice, from the outset the protests whipped up anti-minority feeling.

The protesters also intimidated those who opposed them. One Muslim resident had his personal details publicised as punishment for organising a counterprotest. Photographs of him at the march and his personal information appeared on social media alongside unfounded allegations that he was a “paedo” and a “rape enabler”. He received numerous threats and his business was boycotted.

The report said: “Many protesters were not motivated by hate; they had concerns about their safety and the safety of those in the community.

“However, far-right agitators exploited these local grievances. Members of the movement had links to banned group National Action. The shared belief of these figures and groups was their antipathy towards minorities, immigrants and particularly Muslims. Most of those involved share a pronounced prejudice against Muslims.

“We were told that sections of the local white community which would not normally support the far right were ‘stirred up by activists’.

“By co-opting people in this way and promoting their narrative, those activists aggravated social division.”

Profile Who is Tommy Robinson? Show Hide Born Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon in 1982, Luton-based Tommy Robinson was co-founder and leader of the English Defence League between 2009 and 2013. The EDL were described as the most significant far-right street movement in the UK since the National Front in the 1970s, staging a series of provocative marches in areas of the country with significant Muslim populations. Robinson had also been a member of the BNP. In 2013 Robinson left the EDL after a high profile BBC documentary "When Tommy Met Mo", which followed Robinson's relationship with Mo Ansar after the pair met while filming a debate about Islam on BBC One's The Big Questions. However, by October 2015 Robinson was once again campaigning against Islam, addressing a Pegida rally. He subsequently set up a British section of Pegida, whose name comes from the initials of the German phrase for "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West" Robinson was convicted of contempt of court in May 2017 for filming inside Canterbury Crown Court and given a suspended sentence. The sentence was put into effect after Robinson was arrested for live streaming outside Leeds Crown Court during the course of another trial. Robinson's case attracted high profile support from far-right figures including Steve Bannon and Geert Wilders. Donald Trump Jr retweeted Robinson's supporters campaigning for his release - Robinson himself was permanently banned from Twitter in March 2018. His supporters have also staged "Free Tommy" rallies, where there have been clashes with the police. In July 2019 he was given a nine-month jail sentence after he was found guilty of contempt of court for live streaming a video that according to the judge encouraged 'vigilante action' and 'unlawful physical' aggression against defendants in a sexual exploitation trial.

Robinson has previously been convicted for "using threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour" during a fight between Luton and Newport County football fans. He was imprisoned for 10 months for using somebody else's passport to enter the United States, and for mortgage fraud. Photograph: David Levene

In her report, Khan said victims needed to be better protected, and those working to tackle extremism needed more support. She said the home secretary should lead a new taskforce, involving the government and public bodies, in an effort to address the problem.

The review called on the government to focus on what the commission calls “hateful extremism”, which stands apart from terrorism and violent extremism.

Hateful extremism could be behaviour that could “incite and amplify hate” or make the “moral case for violence” and could put people at risk of harm, the report said.

Growth of far right networks 'fuelled by toxic political rhetoric' Read more

Such behaviour might direct “hateful, hostile or supremacist beliefs” to groups perceived to be a threat to “wellbeing, survival or success”.

Last month in an interview with the Guardian, Khan called language used by Boris Johnson to describe Muslim women demeaning and dehumanising and warned that politicians and the media risked provoking violence through their rhetoric.

She criticised the use of inflammatory phrases and terms such as “enemies of the people” and “saboteurs” – both of which featured in Daily Mail headlines – in political discourse.

The debate over the use of inflammatory language in public erupted when the House of Commons returned after the unlawful prorogation of parliament and Johnson refused to acknowledge his words had consequences as he was confronted by MPs.