“This is an important and timely initiative which recognises the dangers and pitfalls of the Prevent policy and rightly calls for people to withdraw their support and involvement with it. Whilst history teaches us that policies introduced in the name of countering terrorism are quickly extended to dissenters and political activists more generally, it also teaches us that by standing together and united, we can resist unjust power and create a better and stronger society for all people and communities”

Dr Rizwaan Sabir, Lecturer in Criminology, Liverpool John Moores University

Organisations supporting ‘Together Against Prevent’ have agreed and are promoting the following statement:

• We recognise and condemn the damage that Prevent’s “spot the potential terrorist” approach has made primarily in stigmatising and criminalising entire Muslim communities, but also to a growing number of political activists and campaigners labelled with ill-defined terms like “non-violent extremist” or “domestic extremist”.

• We view Prevent as a policy that is based on insufficient evidence to support the flawed assumption that ‘extremist’ ideology opposed to subjective ‘British values’ is the single most important cause of terrorism. We therefore support closer collaboration between different campaigning, religious and community organisations to call on the government to end its Prevent strategy.

• We support and encourage more political debate in schools, colleges and universities and reject attempts to close down and censor dissenting voices. We welcome open discussion with all young people about potentially radical ideas and call on all educational institutions to vigorously defend the right to free academic inquiry on issues considered ‘controversial’.

• We pledge to take no Prevent funds and support non-cooperation, wherever possible, with local Prevent programmes.

Show your support

If you support this statement, encourage you to add the ‘Together Against Prevent’ logo (left) to your website and link it to a specific new page about the campaign on your website.

Download logo (JPG, 139 kB) Text (HTML) for your website (TXT, 3 kB) See the Resources and What is Prevent? pages for more information. If your organisation wishes to add its name to the list of supporters of ‘Together Against Prevent’, see our Sign Up page.