William Shawcross appointment may spell end of controversial Prevent program

The British government’s decision to appoint the controversial writer and ideologue, William Shawcross, to lead the supposedly “independent” review of the Prevent counter-radicalization program has baffled Muslim community leaders and experts alike.

British Muslim community leaders and activists have been quick to criticize the appointment on the grounds of Shawcross’s well-established Islamophobic views.

Back in 2012, as a director of the neoconservative thinktank, the Henry Jackson Society, Shawcross said: “Europe and Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future. I think all European countries have vastly, very quickly growing Islamic populations”.

A spokesperson for the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB - an umbrella body representing hundreds of mosques, educational and charitable organizations) described Shawcross’s appointment as a “Trumpian” move.

The spokesperson added: “Once again, the government is making it clear it has no interest in truly reviewing the policy. William Shawcross is singularly unfit to be a neutral and fair assessor of this government policy [Prevent], which has been criticized for unfairly targeting British Muslims, given his frightening views about Islam and Muslims".

“It is ironic that a policy supposedly charged with preventing extremism is to be scrutinized by a person who holds hostile views on Islam and Muslims, who has links to people with extreme views on us, and who defends the worst excesses of the so-called ‘war on terror’”, the MCB spokesperson concluded. 

Meanwhile, Dal Babu, a former senior Muslim officer in the Metropolitan Police, condemned the appointment on the grounds that: “Shawcross is a man who has demonstrated lack of independence in matters involving the Muslim community and sadly this is a missed opportunity to develop an effective [counter-radicalization program] that safeguards our children”.  

Who is William Shawcross?

Needless to say William Shawcross is steeped in the traditions of the British establishment. His father, Hartley Shawcross (popularly known as Lord Shawcross), was a lead British prosecutor in the Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal.

More consequentially, Lord Shawcross was a key fixer for the post-war Information Research Department (IRD), the propaganda arm of the UK Foreign Office.

Shawcross junior proved to be a prolific writer in the 1970s and 1980s, writing on a wide variety of subjects, including dissent in the former Czechoslovakia, chaos and conflict in Cambodia and US foreign policy in the Far East.

Shawcross even wrote a book on the last Shah of Iran (The Shah’s Last Ride – 1988) in which he painted a sympathetic portrait of the ousted monarch.

Shawcross was close to the Shah’s regime, in particular maintaining strong ties to former Iranian foreign minister Ardeshir Zahedi.

It is also worth noting that Shawcross’s father (Lord Shawcross) was at one point the President of the MI6-linked Iran Society in Britain.     

Shawcross junior may have had mild left-wing leanings in his younger years but by the 1990s he had made a decisive shift to the right, before fully embracing neo-conservatism.

Shawcross’ most important public role to date was as chairman of the Charity Commission between 2012 and 2018.

During his tenure as head of the Charity Commission, Shawcross drew widespread criticism for appearing to disproportionately target Muslim charities for investigations involving alleged financial impropriety and links to terrorism.

Why is Prevent so controversial?

Originally launched in 2003, Prevent is a key strand of CONTEST, the UK’s core counter-terrorism strategy. The stated purpose of Prevent is to identify, challenge and ultimately “treat” individuals who are deemed to be at risk of “radicalization”.

Thinktank uses 'anonymous' funding to produce pro-Prevent survey

The British government

Prevent purports to work in the pre-criminal space, well before vulnerable individuals have crossed the boundary into outright criminality and terrorism.

However, from the outset Prevent was met by skepticism and resistance by key organizations and leaders in Britain’s Muslim communities.

The Prevent scheme has often been branded as “toxic” in so far as it is widely perceived to be a cover for political-ideological policing and spying.

The long-awaited government review of Prevent was supposedly designed to at least in part address some of the community’s concerns about this scheme but the appointment of Shawcross (who at the very least harbors unfavorable views of Islam) has elicited comments from Muslim activists that the government is “trolling” Muslims.

The Tory government is clearly trolling the Muslim community. First it appointmented Sara Khan as extremism tsar, and now William Shawcross as independent reviewer of Prevent. What next? Maajid Nawaz as Chief Mufti of Britain?

— Roshan M Salih (@RmSalih) January 27, 2021

To get an idea just how unsuitable Shawcross is for reviewing Prevent, a scheme that directly impacts the lives of many British Muslims in some of the most profound and intrusive ways imaginable, one just has to review his Islamophobic comments over the years.

Shawcross has often highlighted the threat from so-called “Islamic fascism” and has gone on record as claiming that “Islamic extremism” poses “the most deadly threat” to the charity sector in England and Wales.

To make matters worse, Shawcross defends torture techniques (such as waterboarding) and has even attacked the foundations of the Geneva conventions.

He has even broken ranks with fellow right-wing British intellectuals by putting up a spirited defense of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

What next for Prevent?

Ironically, the appointment of a deeply problematic candidate to review Prevent may lead to its speedy demise.

Broadly speaking, two trends have already made the Prevent brand obsolete. One is the Muslim communities’ overwhelming rejection of the scheme and the other is the changing nature of the terrorism threat to the UK.

Once almost fully focused on so-called “Islamist” terrorism, British counter-terrorism agencies are increasingly looking at far right and white supremacist groups as instigators of terrorist rhetoric and associated action.

Thus, former Tory minister-turned-establishment-critic, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, spoke for many in the Muslim community when she wrote Shawcross’s appointment will further “toxify” the Prevent policy “which is at best a broken brand and at worst has a dubious record of implementation”.

Inappropriate appointment that will further toxify a policy which is at best a broken brand at worst has a dubious record of implementation
Another example of the govts dangerously ideological, divisive & flawed understanding of the issues around countering extremism 🤦🏽‍♀️#Prevent https://t.co/xEUlpDVhcv

— Sayeeda Warsi (@SayeedaWarsi) January 26, 2021

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