Aspects of the government’s ‘Contest’ counter-terrorism strategy have not been without their critics: ID cards, extended detention of terrorism suspects and arguments over which Muslim groups can genuinely counter radicalisation, for example, have all caused controversy.

As those critics have included the very people who are expected to help deliver the strategy – such as universities with large Muslim student populations, community groups and local councillors – the Home Office’s second Contest strategy (Contest II) was published last month as a partially declassified document in order to make sure that everyone understands what is being asked of them.

The local level

Work to prevent radicalisation of individuals, called ‘Prevent’ (see box for more details), relies on a complex local network that involves groups including the police, local authority staff such as youth workers, and the third sector.

Rachel Briggs, a senior research fellow working on radicalisation at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), says some agencies and groups have had moral concerns – whether focusing exclusively on Muslims is discriminatory, for example – while others have not felt that extremism is a priority in their areas and have avoided getting involved.

This concerns observers such as Professor Wilkinson, an expert from the University of St Andrews’ Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, who points to last year’s attempt to blow up a restaurant in Exeter. An attempted bombing in Devon “didn’t seem very likely, but it just underlines the need for this expertise to be available on a wider basis”, he says.

At the Home Office, Charles Farr, director general of the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT) and the man ultimately responsible for delivering the Contest II strategy, admits that some local authorities and community groups have been wary of the Prevent agenda. This concern needs to be acknowledged and addressed, he says.

For example, the Prevent strand’s promise of 300 police officers to work with neighbourhood policing and counter-terrorism teams has raised fears that community work might be subverted to intelligence gathering. But Farr says this is not an intelligence operation; the police are there to work with the community, “identifying and reducing risk”.

Equally, he says, Contest II’s commitment to challenge those people whose views are legal but undermine shared values such as “democracy, the rule of law and equality of opportunities” is not about criminalisation of those views. “It is about debate,” insists Farr.

Over the past 18 months, he continues, central government has “worked very hard to debunk some of the myths around Prevent II – that it discriminates against Muslims, that it stigmatises Muslims, that it brands all Muslims extremists. None of those things are true.”

He now hopes that people will be prepared to look at the strategy “constructively, and think how it can be translated into objectives at a very local level”.

International interests

The other aspect of Contest II that the Home Office is keen to emphasise is its recognition that terrorism activity in the UK will inevitably have international links – whether in funding, literature or training. Farr says his job is to “make sure the capabilities we have here for fighting terrorism are matched overseas”.

Professor Shaun Gregory, an international security and Pakistan specialist at Bradford University, says there is “a growing awareness of the need to integrate”. But, he adds, there are currently large gaps between different organisations – for instance, between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in Pakistan and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in Afghanistan – despite Pakistanis’ deep involvement in Afghan affairs.

Even within single organisations there are problems, Gregory believes. “I have the sense that the FCO is highly compartmentalised,” he says – with, for instance, communication failures between the counter-terrorism and South Asia desks.

The Overseas Contest Group, chaired by the FCO, is in place to coordinate overseas counter-terrorism work, but Farr admits that “there is always more work to be done – particularly on the connection between counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency”.

National networks

By comparison, coordination at the national level is well-established. Researcher Briggs says this has been “helped enormously by the formation of OSCT”, with Farr chairing the Contest board that is attended by key departments, and overseeing the domestic counter-terrorism work of the Security and Intelligence Services (SIS). Briggs believes the OSCT has bought together people with “different departmental brains, contacts and expertise”, and has “enough responsibility and power to make things happen”.

Cross-government working is a notoriously difficult nut to crack, and Farr ascribes OSCT’s success to three things: unanimous political and official support: adequate resources; and the effective combination, or “synergy”, of strategy and delivery within the same office.

But while the national structures for cooperative working are well in advance of the networks at the local and international level, Farr believes there is still “a huge way to go” if the strategy is to be delivered over the next three years. Its success will rest, he says, on his team’s ability to explain the threat and strategy effectively to departments that may have quite different priorities.

The Department for International Development’s focus, for example, is poverty reduction rather than counter-terrorism (see news, p1). And the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG), continues Farr, “has many, many other functions and counter-terrorism is not the only one – or even the main one”.

“It is part of our job to reflect that and respect that,” he concludes. “There are always big challenges. But in general, it works pretty well”.

Contest II: the strategy

PURSUE: to stop terrorists.
What: This includes intelligence-gathering, prosecution, legislative measures such as that allowing extended detention of suspects, non-prosecution measures such as deportation, or control orders – all of which have to be balanced with human rights.
Who: Home Office, police, prison and probation officers, Security and Intelligence Services (SIS), the MoD, FCO, and international allies working abroad.

PREVENT: to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremism.
What: Interventions to prevent the radicalisation of vulnerable individuals and groups.
Who: CLG, local authorities, prison and probation officers, youth workers, community organisations and third sector bodies.

PROTECT: to strengthen our protection against terrorist attacks.
What: Protecting national infrastructure, borders and crowded places.
Who: The inter-departmental Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure takes care of critical facilities such as power stations; the UK Border Agency covers borders; and the National Counter-terrorism Security Office advises the managers of busy or crowded public places.

PREPARE: where an attack can’t be stopped, to mitigate its impact.
What: Dealing with a terrorist attack and recovering from it afterwards.
Who: Police, fire, ambulance, hospitals, and other members of local and regional ‘resilience networks’.