Dear IRR News subscriber,

Speaking at a conference in Israel, the UK’s chief counter-terrorism officer defends the Prevent counter-radicalisation strategy, saying it should be judged as a ‘public health model’ approach – an approach which is increasingly being rolled out in more areas across the UK.

As local authorities, schools, universities, hospitals, charities and families are increasingly used to collaborate in actively producing security, we know that this results in increased surveillance and the criminalisation of minoritised communities. Most recently, an online platform targeting Muslim British teenagers, SuperSisters, set up by a company describing itself as a ‘not-for-profit community group’, has been revealed as actually funded by the Home Office’s counter-extremism programme, as we document in our calendar of racism and resistance.

This week, we republish a speech given at the report launch of Leaving the War (TNI, 2019) by Race & Class Editorial Working Committee member Arun Kundnani, which outlines why counter-terrorism policies do not work and what an alternative would look like. He argues that ‘Rather than transforming our social ties into mechanisms of surveillance, we need to take a holistic view in which we tackle the root social and political causes of violence’ which includes ‘a demand for a genuine democratisation of security policy’, wider processes of transparency and accountability and an end to the Prevent policy.

As we draw towards US Thanksgiving Day commemorations, Danny Reilly reviews the timely republication of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, specifically aimed at young people, which makes the legacy of Indigenous Peoples’ resistance against colonialism and imperialism more accessible.

IRR News Team