School governors told to ‘dismiss’ grooming gangs concerns

I agreed with you until your last sentence. There was, in my opinion, an implication that may not have been intentional, that because the rumour sounded suspiciously racist, it must therefore actually be racist, and racism isn't permitted, so the rumour must be quashed. It is very easy for us lo make assumptions – and indeed I may be making one in my interpretation of the incomplete facts I have read about this.

It is often stated that when someone alleges abuse, we must believe them. In my opinion this isn't quite right (and dangerously so). I think it would be better ti say that when someone alleges abuse, we mustn't disbelieve them. We should take their words, and their feelings, seriously; we should not display doubt about what they are telling us; but we are very rarely in a position to judge the truth of the allegation. Safeguarding means taking action to lessen the chances of [further] abuse, and reporting the allegation as appropriate to safeguarding leads (and it may need reporting to police). It does not mean taking sides when there are two conflicting stories; it does sometimes mean taking active measures to prevent the alleged abuser from being in a position to abuse.

I’ve explained my perspective, and my reason for bringing it up. You do seem to be focussed on imagined “motives” rather than what people are saying.

I'm not insinuating that at all, I'm just trying to understand your perspective.

So perhaps you could stop insinuating that I don’t care about far right extremism.

Prevent is about ideology, and that includes both right wing and left wing ideology as well as religious ones. However, the number one credible threat to the security of the UK and its people is and always has been (after the Good Friday agreement) Islamist terrorism as the report was clear on and the government acknowledged. Yet most referrals are either not based on ideology (and aren’t taken up) or they are “far right” indicative that there is still a problem with people not understanding the focus of the programme which is to prevent terror attacks on British soil.

I don't disagree with the principle. We might disagree on the degree of threat that is currently being posed by the far right.

I'm still not clear as to whether you think there should be a separate infrastructure to deal with threats from the far right, whether you think it's ok for these to be dealt with by Prevent, or whether you don't think the far right presents a sufficient threat to warrant being dealt with at all.

I think funding and support should be proportionately allocated on the basis of the terrorist threat to the UK as per the intended focus of the programme. So right wing extremism would need to be assessed as to how much of a credible terrorist threat it is and dealt with accordingly.

This is something of a derail, but my intention was to make the point that there is often an “approved narrative” that applies to these training sessions, such as my Prevent one. To me, this seems like an example of same.

The last government held their hands up and admitted they had a problem in some areas following the report. See this extract of their implementation of the report’s findings (my bold):

Progress update

We are clear that Prevent is a counter- terrorism capability, a duty, and that its aim is to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. This is set out in CONTEST 2023, the new Prevent duty guidance, and the new Channel duty guidance.
We have updated the GOV.UK Prevent duty training courses to ensure they use the terminology of Islamist extremism and extreme right-wing, and to make it clear that the primary threat to the UK emanates from Al-Qaeda and Daesh. We have incorporated additional threat information into our new face-to-face training package, which is currently being piloted, and we are developing a dedicated training package on ideology with the support of CCE.
Rigorous criteria for Prevent-funded project activity has been adopted, to ensure that Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) are delivering projects that tackle the prevalent terrorist and extremist threats in that area, and that funding is allocated accordingly.
The new Prevent Security Threat Check (see recommendation 12 for details) is now in use across the system, including for all RICU commissions. This makes sure that work is focused on the current threat and proportionate across ideologies. Guidance for RICU analysts has been implemented to ensure this standard is met.
CCE will also have a continued role in ensuring thresholds are being applied consistently and proportionately, across the breadth of Prevent.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-review-of-prevents-report-and-government-response/independent-review-of-prevent-one-year-on-progress-report-accessible

No, it doesn't surprise me either. The far right are increasingly active in my area.

So do you think an entirely separate process should be set up to deal with the growing threat from the far right, with separate referral mechanisms and separate partnerships etc to respond to this, separate training courses etc? Or is it your view that we don't need to respond to the radicalisation by far right groups?

From my perspective, there are economies of scale and benefits from having a single reporting mechanism for end users in dealing with these issues through a coordinated approach, but happy to hear other views.

And it doesn’t surprise me that the far right are the “fastest growing source of referrals” at all. The report I read was quite clear that they found it unbalanced.

It’s not supposed to tackle “hate crime” for example, that’s for the police.

That’s scope creep. It was set up to deal with the much larger Islamist terrorism threat. I read a recent report into it, it was quite damning that people didn’t really understand what it’s supposed to do.

I would agree, but to be clear, governors weren't actually being told by this training that they must automatically assume that allegations are untrue or disinformation. That wasn't the point being made at all.

I have already explained why I think the basic premise of the question was flawed and that the training was therefore inappropriate, so I won't repeat myself here, but it is a point of fact that governors were not being taught that allegations should be dismissed and not investigated.

But if they had worded the question in a way that made the ‘new tactics’ sound completely outlandish and overtly racist, would anyone honestly have a problem with it?

Yes, I have a problem with governors being told that they must automatically assume that allegations are untrue (and, not just untrue, but 'disinformation'), rather than something to be investigated. 'Outlandish' is subjective.

Prevent is supposed to focus on all forms of extremism, and not only Islamic terrorism. I'm surprised that the training didn't make that clear.

The prevent training that I've done has certainly addressed the dangers of all types of radicalisation, including extreme Islamist groups. It's hardly surprising that they address the far right threat as well, as I think that's the fastest growing source of referrals.

I think you meant to address that to me. If so, please re-read my posts. I made it very clear that I wanted absolute transparency, accountability, justice and truth with regard to the grooming gangs, both in relation to the rapists themselves and in relation to those who were complicit because they failed to act. The fact that I want to acknowledge that these things occurred within a wider context of the abuse and exploitation of girls being allowed to continue in other situations does not mean that I want to cover up the specificity of the reasons in these particular cases. I want to look at the detail of these cases and the bigger picture. I do not believe that you could read and understand my posts and genuinely take from them that I wanted to "protect rapists", you just wanted to shut me down by trying to be deliberately inflammatory.

I’ve done public sector Prevent training, which despite the intended focus of the Prevent programme on Islamist terrorism, focussed almost entirely on the lesser threat of right wing radicalisation. So I have done “similar training” ie one with an approved narrative.

Thank you for that - someone did respond with a link and actually I had then seen that story after posting. Thank you for the useful rundown and it's good to see they're starting to be held to account. I used to love the BBC. I really feel at sea with have nobody to trust now.

This.

I find it interesting that the two of us on this thread who have done similar trainings ourselves, share the same POV on the article.

I'm not too sure if anybody has ansered you yet but in the case of Trump they edited his speech to make it appear that he was advocating for violence.

In the case of the Queen, they reversed two shots that were filmed in Buckingham Palace when the Queen was having her photo taken to make it look as though she stormed out in annoyance.

With Trump, the BBC edited his speech so that it appeared that he said:

"We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and I'll be there with you, and we fight, we fight like hell"

While he did say those actual words, that was actually from three different parts of his speech and the BBC just edited out the parts in between and swapped the order.

This is what he actually said in the first part:

"And after this, we're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you, we're going to walk down, we're going to walk down.

Anyone you want, but I think right here, we're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.

Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

Notice the last sentence in that quote? Where he talked about marching "peacefully"?

He then spoke for a further 50 minutes where he talked about fighting against a number of groups:

He talked a lot about fighting against "weak Republicans" in his own party.

He also talked about fighting with the media and went on to say:

"But our fight against the big donors, big media, big tech, and others is just getting started. This is the greatest in history. There's never been a movement like that."

Then at the end of the speech he did say the bit about fighting:

"As this enormous crowd shows, we have truth and justice on our side. We have a deep and enduring love for America in our hearts. We love our country.

We have overwhelming pride in this great country and we have it deep in our souls. Together, we are determined to defend and preserve government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Our brightest days are before us. Our greatest achievements, still away.

[a bit about how he will improve the security of election results]

And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun. My fellow Americans, for our movement, for our children, and for our beloved country.

And I say this despite all that's happened. The best is yet to come.

So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give.

The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."

Suggest she emails them.

I don’t know, but I imagine it will be due to mass reporting. If it meets talk guidelines, MN may unhide it if they’ve hidden it in error.

Anyone know why Knotty’s thread about a TiM teacher in her DD’s school has been hidden by MN? Didn’t seem particularly offensive and raised genuinely interesting points about how to respond to compelled speech.