Quilliam Foundation

Tom Brake Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), who has put forward a strong and effective case. He has made a very specific proposal that £150,000 should be provided by the Government. He made it clear that it should not be a blank cheque and specified that the funding would be for 12 months starting next month. What he did not do was to set out precisely what conditions and objectives might be attached, perhaps because he cannot conduct negotiations on Quilliam’s behalf, or he does not want to conduct negotiations here. He indicated clearly that at the end of the 12-month period, Quilliam would have to be self-financing, albeit perhaps having secured grants from Government for specific projects. However, other conditions might have to be attached if the Government were minded to go down that route.

The right hon. Gentleman made it clear that today’s discussion on the future funding of Quilliam is not just about the funding streams of that UK-based think-tank; it is about the Government’s current and developing policy stance on counter-terrorism—what we fund and why and how we should continue to move forward post-Prevent. Is our nation’s security to be based on ideology and on which groups emphasise or downplay certain aspects of Islam, or on reality and on the evidence of policies that have worked and continue to produce results?

As the right hon. Gentleman said, Quilliam’s funding streams are well documented and a loss of substantial funding early in its inception led to its being funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Home Office, which illustrates exactly why there is a need for Quilliam to continue. It lost funding by being vocal in opposing extremism in whatever form and from whatever source. As he said, a funder withdrew support early on in Quilliam’s life as a reaction to the organisation’s stance against suicide bombings in Israel. Quilliam’s public stance on that issue was not particularly to do with Islam, but it was part of its consistent, clear and vocal opposition to all forms of terrorism. However, the resultant situation—Quilliam being funded largely by two Departments—clearly raises issues about bipartisanship and credibility.

Quilliam is not the only organisation that publicly and vociferously challenges extremism in all its guises, whether anti-Jewish, anti-Islam or anti-western; nor is it the only organisation in which former extremists have played an active part in educating peoples, Governments and policy makers on how to recognise and counter the type of radicalisation that results in extremist behaviours. The Street project in Brixton was previously funded by Prevent and has also experienced funding cuts. It is a non-sectarian group that works from a mosque and does measurable work in combating the kind of radicalisation that can lead to extremism. Similarly, the Cordoba Foundation has produced projects with a focus on preventing radicalism from becoming extremist action. In about a week’s time, an initiative called “Learning to be a Peacemaker” will be held in this place by an organisation called Initiatives of Change, which is also working in that field.

It is true, however, that Quilliam is distinct and unique in important respects. It is the only organisation that challenges extremist views and activities by effectively straddling both the Muslim perspective and the liberal, secular, mainstream vernacular of modern Britain. It represents the swathes of British Muslims who are Muslim by birth and culture first and foremost, but who understand and adhere to the division between Church and state, which is second nature to mainland Britain. Quilliam sits within the diverse and, at times, conflicting dialogue about Islam that is both acceptable and normal practice among faith-based Muslim groups, but unlike any other organisation of its size and impact, Quilliam also sits comfortably within the traditional western liberal dialogue, which separates to a large extent the personal faith of individuals and the secular, cultural interpretation of those personal faiths.

As the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East set out, Quilliam started life as a think-tank, but the very nature of its work—outreach in universities, and research and policy advice—is much more akin to that of an effective and proactive non-governmental organisation. Quilliam’s vocal stance against terrorism that claims to be inspired by Islam has had solid results, which are measurable. Accurately signposting Government to specific individuals with an inclination for extremist action is invaluable in our fight against terrorism. As the right hon. Gentleman said, it remains one of the few groups—occasionally the only group—that consistently challenge and publicly condemn terrorism, from whatever source. As it sits within the Muslim dialogue, it has first-hand access to, and shared understanding of, the dialogues taking place at grassroots level and online that can lead to extremist action. That position is unique and invaluable to the Government’s fight against terrorism.

However, the criticism levelled at Quilliam, and indirectly at the previous Government for funding the group, is worth examination and raises important questions that need to be addressed in relation to any decisions about funding. The first is about its perceived dominance of the mainstream view. Many individuals and organisations are discouraged by an organisation that purports to be the arbiter of what is, or is not, mainstream. That is further complicated by the coming to light of a list produced by Quilliam that seems to many to suggest that some other Muslim organisations, which consider themselves mainstream, are breeding grounds for civil unrest because of ideological perspectives shared to a greater or lesser extent with radical extremist groups.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman makes a serious point. However, is it not the case that when taking part in an ideological battle, all groups describe themselves as mainstream? Indeed, even Islamist extremists describe themselves as mainstream, because they are trying to say that everyone who disagrees with them is an apostate. There is nothing unusual, therefore, about Quilliam at one end of the spectrum calling itself mainstream, while other groups at the centre of the spectrum call themselves mainstream, and groups on the radical Islamist end of the spectrum call themselves mainstream. That is not really a valid criticism.

[Tom Brake]

The hon. Gentleman is very experienced in these matters. Maybe on that particular point we will have to disagree on whether my comment is appropriate.

The funding of a think-tank by the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will inevitably contribute to a perceived lack of plurality of voices heard by Government on how best to combat extremism. Lack of funding from other agencies will raise questions about how and whether Quilliam can critically engage with Government, and will cast doubts about its credibility as an independent body with the capacity to critique Government plans and policy on tackling radical extremism. It is true to say, however, that that position conveniently forgets the numerous groups that receive funding from the Government’s Prevent strategy to undertake or continue work to counteract extremist activity. It also overlooks the many Muslim groups that are frequently invited to put their views to Government, most recently a couple of months ago at a conference I hosted here with Murtaza Shibli, when we invited Muslim organisations to share opinions and advice on how best the Government can go forward with the post-Prevent agenda.

No one can doubt the achievements of Quilliam as an NGO. The debate about funding should, therefore, rightly concern itself with levels of funding at a time of financial austerity, and not about whether we should forgo that important insight into extremist narratives. Although I support the continued funding of this much-needed organisation, Quilliam, like other NGOs and agencies working under the vital remit of social cohesion, needs to look hard at how best to make effective decisions within tighter financial constraints. Quilliam also needs to continue to pursue other avenues of funding—as it is doing—to continue, with credibility, a bipartisan relationship with Government and other Muslim groups.

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[Hazel Blears]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. The debate this morning is an attempt to ensure that Quilliam does not slip through the net, and I know that Ministers in the Department are seized of the issues. We all recognise that these are difficult financial times and that difficult decisions have to be made across the Government, and I want to explore that a little with the Minister, perhaps with some specific questions later. We recognise that these are not easy times. The Home Office, which has taken a significant reduction in its expenditure, clearly needs to economise. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East has set out a specific proposition for £150,000 of transitional funding to enable Quilliam to pursue the other applications that it has made, which ought to get us to a reasonable position. I recognise that having an organisation solely dependent on public funds is not tenable in the long term.

[Tom Brake]

The right hon. Lady has been familiar with the organisation for several years. Is she aware of whether Quilliam was previously given an indication that it should go to other organisations to find funding? If it was but has not been successful in achieving self-sufficiency, the Government would have strong reservations about putting money in again.

[Hazel Blears]

This did not become a significant issue until we were facing the current financial circumstances which pertain across Government. I certainly was not aware of a major drive, which was unsuccessful, to press Quilliam to find funds in other sectors. Clearly, the situation now is that economies need to be made. Quilliam has been put into that pot, but I want to explore with the Minister what other organisations are funded and what cuts have been made—I shall come shortly to the Research Information and Communications Unit. We need a better, broader picture of the total resources available, and what decisions have been made about funding priorities. In a few weeks, we are expecting the Prevent review, which will give us more insight into what the balance of organisations ought to be. We absolutely need a balance.

This is not a partisan issue by any measure—it transcends party politics. It relates to the security and safety of our country, and nothing can be more important than that. My right hon. and hon. Friends and I are pursuing the matter to try to get a reasonable settlement.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East said, I was the Minister with responsibility for counter-terrorism at the time of the 7 July 2005 bombings. Even now, I can feel the sense of devastation and shock that there was across the nation when that happened. People were asking who committed the bombings, why they would want to do that to innocent men and women and their families, and what led them to be prepared to take their own life to fulfil what they presumably believed to be their mission and destiny. I do not think that any of us really understood—we still do not—the many and varied factors that lead people down such a path, that lead them even to contemplate taking such steps.

We are better informed than we were then. Several organisations that have been active in this field have helped the Government and policy makers to come to a better analysis of the factors that lead people to extremism, but we do not have all the answers. I entirely accept that, although some of the measures in the Prevent programme were successful, some were less successful, but what we were doing in that area was innovative and, in many ways, experimental.

I have spoken to people in the United States, France, Germany and countries across western Europe who say that this country has been at the forefront of trying to drill down to determine what the factors of extremism are, and how to build resilience among young people so that they can resist such messages. My sense is that those other countries are just beginning to take the first steps. Indeed, that was reaffirmed for my right hon. Friend and me when we went to the United States just last week. Many of the Congressmen and women and Senators acknowledged that they are very much at the beginning of thinking about a counter-radicalisation strategy, whereas this country is well ahead. This country’s position has been aided enormously by the different groups that we have funded to help us. They have had programmes and have been able to develop an evidence base about the best way to counter extremism, and the Quilliam Foundation has been at the heart of that process for the past three years at least.

As everyone knows, Quilliam was formed by Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz, both of whom had been in the grip of extremists. They had been right at the heart of Hizb ut-Tahrir and knew what it felt like to travel down that path. Therefore, their voices and the voices of others at Quilliam who have been able to set out the emotional process that happens to people on that journey have been enormously powerful and valuable in working out strategies to counter extremism. They were certainly instrumental, when I was the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, in my decision to set up the Young Muslims Advisory Group and the Muslim Women’s Advisory Group.

It was the first time in this country that we had people at national level who were able to advise Ministers about what it felt like to be a young person in the community with strong feelings about foreign policy and contentious issues, and with the many pressures that face them at that time of their life. What could the Government do to try to help them to grow up with a sense of this country’s values but also, of course, their important personal identity and heritage? The Muslim Women’s Advisory Group was a fabulous opportunity to find out about women’s lives, and how women could influence the young men in their families to withstand the extremist narrative. We can celebrate the huge amount that we achieved, but, obviously, we have much more to do.

Going around the country after 7/7 with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East was probably one of the most testing experiences I personally have ever undergone. The sense of anger, bewilderment and shock in communities was palpable, but the message that came across to me time and again was that the overwhelming majority of people in the Muslim community totally rejected the violence that had taken place, and believed that killing innocent people was never justifiable. Unfortunately, the extremism that leads people to contemplate and sometimes adopt violence is with us now—there is no getting away from that—and is likely to be with us for many years to come. Life has changed, and we ought to recognise that the circumstances are very different. That is why it is so important that we have the capacity to tackle that ideology and the way in which people seek to groom others to take the path of violence.

I want to mention a report which I think is relevant to this debate. “Fear and HOPE”, which was published last week by the Searchlight Educational Trust, is about the new politics of identity. Many people who are susceptible to extremist narratives are struggling with their sense of identity: who am I, where do I fit in, where do I belong, what is my value set?

The report, which was based on 5,000 interviews of people across the country who were asked more than 90 questions, provides some fascinating results and evidence. What gives me optimism and hope is that there is widespread rejection of political violence. It is interesting that the vast majority of people who were questioned considered white anti-Muslim extremists to be as bad as Islamist extremists. That tells me that a core part of our communities and population are basically saying, “A plague on both your houses. We want no part of extremism, whether far-right extremism, Islamist extremism or anti-Semitism—we reject all that.”

It gives me great hope for the future that if we can build, sustain and make that heart of our community strong, it will empower and give confidence to young people to say, “I reject the extremist narrative. I reject such ideologies and share the broad values of this country.” That prize is so precious and valuable that the investment of £150,000 to enable Quilliam to move to other sources of funding over the next few months is a small price to pay, considering the scale of the challenge that we face. I absolutely agree with the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington that we need a broad range of organisations to help with the agenda at every part of the spectrum. It is without doubt that Quilliam has been prepared to be at one end of that spectrum, to speak out, not to be intimidated, and to state the case for pluralism, inclusion and British values of democracy, tolerance, free speech, and particularly the rights of women. It has been extremely effective in doing that.

Obviously, we must support other organisations, and I will come to that, but it is only three years since Quilliam was established, and to have gained its reputation in the world within that period marks it out as a special organisation that has helped us to build that evidence base. Its report on radicalisation on campuses was extremely good and contained a series of recommendations. We know that there is a problem on some of our university campuses, and the report’s practical recommendations could help us significantly. It produced a report on the use of the internet to promote Jihad. We are now seeing preachers such as al-Maliki on the internet urging people to take matters into their own hands without having a group around them, and to carry out individual acts of terrorism. That report on the use of the internet was a good piece of work. The role of television in influencing young minds is crucial.

Quilliam has produced excellent reports, and done project work—for example, its work in Pakistan, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East mentioned, which was funded by the Foreign Office, with road shows prepared in challenging and sometimes intimidating circumstances to make the case fearlessly. It has a tremendous record. It is seeking other sources of funding. It recognises that the current situation cannot continue ad infinitum, but it must be given the chance to do that work.

I have some questions for the Minister, and if he cannot answer them during the debate, I would appreciate it if he got back to me later. The Research Information and Communications Unit was established in the Office of Security and Counter-terrorism in the Home Office three or four years ago. My recollection is that that was a fairly well resourced unit. It received contributions from the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Home Office, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and it brought together a series of people with the skills to develop a counter-narrative, to publish documents, and to do research and much of the work that Quilliam has been doing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow that outstanding speech by the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears). Her work and that of the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) as Ministers on this topic excited the admiration of many of us when we were on the Opposition Benches. It continues to excite my admiration now that they are in opposition, but still fighting just as hard on this vital topic as they ever did when they were Ministers.

During the 1990s, I occasionally had the privilege of taking part in courses on public speaking, oratory and campaigning techniques with another member of the House of Commons who is now Mr Speaker. He always impressed on everyone who came to our courses that when making a speech one should have, at most, two main points, but preferably only one, with which to belabour one’s listeners over and over again, so that if they remembered nothing else about what one had said, they would remember that one point.

Here is my one point today. It is that countering hostile propaganda is not a commercial enterprise or undertaking. It requires sponsorship and support. It is absolute nonsense to say that people who are brave enough to put themselves in the front of an ideological battle should be selling their product on a commercial basis because that somehow means that their organisation is more vibrant.

If organisations that are fighting an ideological battle do not get support from the Government, they will need to get it from private sources. I know of no organisation during the cold war that fought these sorts of ideological campaigns—there were many such organisations; I was involved in several of them—that managed to make enough money to sustain itself as a going concern commercially. Such organisations had to find sponsorship. As I understand it, Quilliam has been rather particular about the sponsors it has sought. It could have taken money from undemocratic regimes but I believe that it turned down those offers. Although it might have agreed with those regimes on certain issues, it could not agree with the way that they rule their countries and peoples. Let us not fool ourselves into thinking that if Government funding is cut from an organisation, that organisation will somehow transform itself into a profit-making enterprise. It will not; that is not its function. The more time that activists in a counter-propaganda organisation spend raising funds, the less time they have available to do the job of countering radicalisation and extremism.

I hope that the Government will have the good sense to continue funding Quilliam because I am a little concerned about what may be going on under the surface. On the surface, as the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles said at the beginning of her remarks, we have an excellent speech from the Prime Minister stating that we must be tough on radicalism and that we must not compromise. We must not pretend that people who speak with a double voice, as it were, and say that they are against extremism on the one hand but treat it softly on the other, are the only people with whom we should deal. Although that sort of speech makes all the right sounds, in reality Government officials are kicking away the props that support what is undoubtedly one of the most high-profile and successful organisations in the field of counter-propaganda.

I use those words deliberately because this is a propaganda war involving propaganda by those who seek to radicalise, and counter-propaganda by those who seek to defeat and undermine their campaigns. That sort of work must not be undermined by paid Government officials at a time when the head of the Government says that we ought to do more of it.

Something strange is going on and I think I know what it is. Reference was made earlier to the important conference being held today at the Royal United Services Institute. I had hoped to attend that conference this morning, but I felt that this debate was rather more important. My mind went back to a previous conference held quite a few years ago at the RUSI, and a rather impressive Government speaker on counter-terrorism. I subsequently sought a briefing from that speaker, and the Government gave permission for me to have one. During the course of the conversation, I made the point that one clearly had to encourage moderate Muslims to stand up against minority activists, just as in so many other fields. Particularly during the cold war and student radicalism on campuses in other decades, it had been necessary for moderates to stand up for the silent majority against the noisy activist and—above all—unrepresentative minority. I was intrigued by what the expert official said. He replied, “That’s absolutely true: there is a gap between those who hold moderate values and those who hold extreme values. However, there is another gap between those who hold extreme values and those—a much smaller group—who are willing to turn their extreme values and views into extreme and violent action.”

It seems that the Government—perhaps I should say the establishment, as that remains the same when Governments change—have primarily signed up to focusing on the division between extremist people who do not intend to be violent, and extremist people who intend to be violent. There is some value in that approach, but I do not believe that it should be exclusive. If we depend on people in the Muslim community with extreme views to stand up against others from that community with extreme views who want to be violent, we will not get a happy outcome. We must promote moderate values in the Muslim community. Therefore, we need an organisation that is prepared not only to attack violent extremism, but to counter the pernicious ideology of those who might not be planning violence, but who foster an extreme ideological environment where some people will absorb sufficiently illiberal notions and end up turning to violence.

I am concerned about this issue because there are a couple of ways in which counter-propaganda organisations can work. Some such organisations can, and should, concentrate on changing minds. If we wish to try that, it is important to persuade people who are inclined towards fundamentalism that they are wrong, and to have organisations that are perhaps tolerated more happily than Quilliam within the Muslim ideological community. Those organisations can work on trying to change the minds of those who are already radical.

There is, however, another more important element that must not be neglected. We hope, and I genuinely believe, that the majority of people in the Muslim community—I would like to think the overwhelming majority—hold moderate beliefs and are not extremist at all. The problem is that of the three sectors—the moderate community, the extreme community that is not violent and the extreme splinter community that is violent—the Government machine focuses too much on the second two categories, to the exclusion of the first. The only way we will win an ideological battle or war is by mobilising the silent majority. The silent majority is a hackneyed phrase because we use it a lot. Nevertheless, we use it a lot because it is true; it has to be true, and if it were not we might as well give up on civilisation straight away. We need groups that are not necessarily involved in trying to change minds, but rather in trying to reinforce moderate views that already exist.

[Tom Brake]

Does the hon. Gentleman believe that it is unrealistic to expect Quilliam to secure funds from trusts or benefactors rather than from the Government?