Shadow home secretary responds to figures showing more referrals for neo-nazism than Islamic extremism in parts of UK

The government’s controversial counter-radicalisation strategy, Prevent, has failed to change the attitudes of those on the far right, the shadow home secretary has said in response to figures showing the number of referrals linked to neo-nazism is overtaking Islamic extremism cases in some parts of the UK.

Diane Abbott said the figures reflected “the alarming rise of far-right activity across the country”. “It also reflects the increasing confidence of far-right groups to air their views publicly,” she said on Monday.

“These figures are useful in proving what we already know, but the Prevent programme has failed to change the attitudes of those on the far right.”

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Ben Wallace, the security minister and MP for Wyre and Preston North, has highlighted the increase in far-right radicalisation in England and Wales. Figures show that almost 300 under-18s were referred to officials under the Prevent strategy last year. Of these, at least 16 involved children under the age of 10.

“The Prevent strategy is seeing a growth in far-right referrals,” Wallace told the House of Commons recently. “In some areas of the country, these Prevent referrals outnumber those about the other parts we are worried about.”

Data released by the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) under a freedom of information request from the Sunday Times shows that the number of far-right referrals in England and Wales has increased by 74%, from 323 cases in 2014-15 to 561 in 2015-16. About 292 cases, or 52%, involved under-18s.

“The Prevent strategy is misconceived because it limits legitimate safe spaces for discourse, places like classrooms and lecture theatres,” Abbott said. “We urgently need an anti-extremism strategy that addresses the subversive and veiled far-right activity that is allowed to fester in private.”

The NPCC figures come as Merseyside police investigate the appearance of stickers around Liverpool declaring that people were entering “Nazi-controlled zones”.

The stickers, posted by a neo-Nazi youth movement called National Action, were timed to coincide with Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest One of the neo-Nazi stickers that appeared in Liverpool to coincide with Remembrance Sunday. Photograph: Patrick Hurley/PA

“It’s the politics of hate. We’re seeing the rise of this sort of thing across the country, across the western world and it’s of huge importance that we all stand united against it and make sure there is no place for this sort of thing in Liverpool or anywhere,” Patrick Hurley, a Mossley Hill councillor said.

Britain’s Muslim communities have criticised the Prevent strategy as a toxic brand and a “big brother” security operation, but it was recently revealed that the programme is to be toughened up rather than scaled back as part of the government’s wider reworking of its counter-terrorism strategy.

The chief constable of Leicestershire police, Simon Cole, who is in charge of Prevent, said earlier this year that far-right extremists made up half of all cases in Yorkshire and 30% of the caseload in the east Midlands.

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Nationwide, however, Islamic extremism is still the most common referral, with 2,810 cases making up 70% of those flagged up under Prevent.

The NPCC said it was worth noting that the Prevent duty, which sets out the obligations of public-facing bodies under the strategy, was introduced in July 2015 and has resulted in a significant increase in referrals of all types.

Ibrahim Mohamoud, a spokesman for Cage, an independent advocacy organisation, said on Monday: “What these figures suggest is that Muslims are still far more likely to be referred to Prevent in England and Wales.

“There still seems to be a great deal of dissonance between the way the authorities understand the role of ‘extremist ideology’ or ‘radical fundamentalist thought’ in the case of Muslims, and the subscription to far-right ideology.”

Yvette Cooper, the chair of the home affairs select committee, has said the fallout from the 23 June vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election should serve as a warning about the dangers of whipping up hatred and prejudice in political campaigns, as MPs prepare to examine a spike in hate crime in the UK.

Police recorded 41% more hate crimes in July 2016 than in the same month the previous year, with a peak on 1 July, records show. Several high-profile attacks occurred in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, including the vandalising of the Polish community centre in Hammersmith, west London, and the death of Arkadiusz Jóźwik, a Pole who was attacked in Harlow, Essex.

Rashad Ali, a senior fellow specialising in extremism at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue thinktank, told the Times that in some areas of Wales, the proportion of Prevent referrals from the far right were “well over” 50%.

Ali said the rise in far-right extremism could be linked to the “loss of the centre ground” in today’s politics. “Whether it’s on the left or the right, the fringes are now leading the debate and the discussion,” he said.

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Ali argued that Trump’s election, with the endorsement of the KKK, and the rhetoric of Marine Le Pen, the Front National presidential candidate in France, were helping to “legitimise the world view” of fascists.

National Action is believed to have fewer than 100 members, but the group has a strong presence on social media, where it has celebrated Trump’s election with images of him captioned “white power”.

Matthew Feldman, the co-director of the centre for fascist, anti-fascist and post-fascist studies at Teesside University, said the radical right was “starting to mainstream its narrative following the decline of the BNP as the main party-political vehicle for radical right ideas”.

“This led to a proliferation of other groups like the Defence Leagues and Britain First – both of which are much more anti-Muslim than the more developed neo-fascist policies advocated by the BNP, including antisemitism and biological racism,” Feldman said.

“So it is a time of change for the far and radical right in the UK, although like the US, 2016 has been a very different year than most. The Brexit vote, like that of Trump’s election, seems to have sparked, at least for some, a kind of ‘celebratory racism’ whereby some hate incidents are apparently legitimated by the ‘trigger’ event of an enormous and unexpected victory.”

Feldman added, however, that the immediate context can obscure longer term developments, which may be driving the increasing far-right Channel referrals and Prevent cases over recent months and years.

“Over the last decade, governmental and media focus has been overwhelmingly concentrated upon the threat from jihadi Islamist extremism and terrorism,” he said. “Given finite resources and time, this has necessarily meant that less attention has been trained upon the radical right, which has increasingly turned to the lowest common denominator of anti-Muslim bigotry since 7/7.

“In this, as the BNP had already recognised in 2005, turning away from racial to religious hatred was a potential issue that could break into the mainstream. Unlike in the past, the lowest common denominator of Islamoprejudice has allowed a number of different types of radical right groups, such as the counter-jihad movement, which are street-based and party political, to work together locally in places like Dover, Swansea and Newcastle.

“The increase in far-right referrals therefore comes as little surprise to those monitoring the radical right during these years of upheaval, both for radical right groups and domestic politics in Britain.”