12 December 2022

This Trojan Horse report is a valuable lesson in ‘institutional timidity’

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In 2016, I was tasked by the then Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, to look at Islamist extremism in our prison, probation and youth justice system. While I uncovered a litany of problems, what was really striking was the pervasive ‘institutional timidity’ I encountered when trying to get officials to name and deal with the challenge of militant Islam.

I felt a pang of recognition when reading the Policy Exchange report into the Trojan Horse affair released today. To recap, ‘Trojan Horse’ was the phrase used in an anonymous letter sent to Birmingham City Council in 2013 which alleged there was a clandestine and networked plot to take over several of the city’s schools, oust any opposition from staff and governors  and run them on strict Islamic principles ‘under the radar.’ The letter in turn led to an investigation, led by the former Met Police counter-terrorism chief, Peter Clarke. In language that has now become all too familiar, Clarke reported that ‘nervousness around raising community tensions affected education officers’ appetite to take firmer action against governing bodies’. 

Clarke’s original report is very clear. His objective was not to test the authenticity of the anonymous letter but to investigate the credibility of the claims made in it, which were very serious and potentially in breach of the Equality, Human Rights and Education Acts. His report includes ‘clear evidence that there are a number of people, associated with each other and in positions of influence in schools and governing bodies, who espouse, sympathise with or fail to challenge extremist views.’

This view was informed by an astonishing WhatsApp trawl of some of the key figures – many teachers – espousing explicitly intolerant anti-British views and other forms of sectarianism, homophobia, conspiracy theories  and links to ultra conservative preachers. Clarke concluded that there was a concerted campaign to introduce ‘intolerant and aggressive’ Islamist ideology into Birmingham schools. 

The reaction to the original report by some Muslim activist groups and individuals was incandescent, and there has been a relentless campaign to discredit Clarke, Gove and anyone associated with the damning findings.  This agitation culminated in a podcast by the New York Times in January this year which is the focus of today’s Policy Exchange report.

The podcast team’s main contention is that because the source of Clarke’s investigation was anonymous (or ‘bogus’ in their words), any subsequent revelations must be irretrievably tarnished. They then use ‘evidence’ from  people who are clearly activists, not journalists, to reinforce the argument that a letter that they contend was fabricated by a disgruntled employee caused a confected moral panic that has entrenched ‘Islamophobia’ across the nation. While the Grey Lady generally sees Britain as not much more than racism and rain, this broadcast set new lows for journalistic bias. 

The ’national hysteria’ and reshaped national policies which Trojan Horse apparently spawned has yet to emerge in any tangible way. If anything, the instances of institutional timidity identified by Clarke  seem only to have multiplied in the years since his report.

The supine and shameful reaction to religious mobs banishing a teacher in Batley or stopping a cinema chain from showing a film, both effectively for blasphemy, are just two of numerous examples of official Britain caving in to bigoted intolerance. Precisely  the same fearful evasion can be seen in attitudes towards lawful free expression for gender critical women in local authorities, in academia and the commercial world. 

In both cases, the tyranny of a vocal and aggressive minority has cowed officialdom. Moreover, if, as the activists opposed to the Trojan Horse report allege, it was merely a pretext for the state to increase surveillance and oppression of Muslims via the Prevent strand of our national counter-terrorism plan, this has failed to emerge. The latest statistics for the strategy, which aims to deter people from becoming engaged in violent extremism, show more referrals for those thought vulnerable to extreme-right terrorism than their Islamist counterparts.

Prevent is under review and a report by William Shawcross seems to have been gummed up in the works of the Home Office. Perhaps the reluctance is also down to institutional timidity as leaks have shown the principle is sound. Credible research shows that a majority of British Muslims agree with the Prevent concept and slightly more of them than the national population would refer someone they were worried about to the programme. 

But the New York Times has built its coverage on a wilful misinterpretation of these inconvenient facts. Extremism kills here and the body count does not lie. A failure by successive governments to stand up against politically motivated attempts to traduce our counter-terrorism strategy doesn’t help. Nor does the faltering commitment of some Government departments, local authorities and quangos to spot and combat the manifestations of Islamist extremism.

One of the fastest ways to reinvigorate the extreme-right – long an absurd and pitiful aberration – is by failing to bear down on its Islamofascist mirror image. Today’s meticulously detailed Policy Exchange report exposes the useful idiocy of those who cannot or will not address that challenge. It is an irony not lost on those who want our institutions hollowed out from within. Liberal piety is a potent weapon for the truly intolerant.

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Professor Ian Acheson is Senior Advisor to the Counter Extremism Project.

Columns are the author's own opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of CapX.