Counter-terror chief Neil Basu says homegrown terrorism is caused by a lack of social mobility and British Muslims should not be forced to ‘assimilate’
- Neil Basu said the police and security services needed help fighting terrorism
- He called for ‘social inclusion, social mobility and education’ to stop violence
- Said UK is ‘socially inclusive’ country where people can practise own culture
Britain’s head of counter-terror policing has said homegrown terrorism is fuelled by a lack of social mobility and inclusion.
Neil Basu, the Metropolitan police assistant commissioner, said better education and opportunities for young people would do more to fight terrorism than ‘the policing and state security apparatus put together’.
He also said British Muslims should not be forced to ‘assimilate’, adding: ‘Assimilation implies that I have to hide myself in order to get on. We should not be a society that accepts that.
Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said police and security services are no longer enough to win the fight against extremism and called on wider society to play a role
Mr Basu told The Guardian: ‘Nothing I am saying remotely excuses these heinous acts of criminal violence.
‘But the deeper causes need examining. My teams are world class at stopping attacks and locking terrorists up. But we need to stop the flow of recruits into terrorism.
‘Don’t forget that 70%-80% of the people we arrest, disrupt or commit an attack here, are born and raised here. Born or at least raised here. That has got to tell us something about our society.’
‘I want good academics, good sociologists, good criminologists … to be telling us exactly why that is.’
The potential next head of the Metropolitan Police said there were common themes in the lives of people considered more ‘malleable’ to terrorist recruitment, from ‘high anxiety’ to a ‘lack of confidence’.
He urged that the government must grapple with ‘education, access to health, not disproportionate outcomes in criminal justice, feeling like you’ve got an opportunity to get on in life’.
Mr Basu admitted that the Government’s Prevent counter-terrorism strategy had been ‘badly handled’ and argued it needed to be more community-led to be successful. Pictured is the aftermath of the London Bridge attack
Mr Basu admitted that the Government’s Prevent counter-terrorism strategy had been ‘badly handled’ and argued it needed to be more community-led to be successful.
He revealed number of counter terrorism operations rose by 50 per cent from 2015 to 2017 and have since stayed at a high level.
Despite Isis losing territory in Iraq and Syria, the terror threat in the UK is still severe, meaning an attack is ‘highly likely’.