Perhaps the Prevent training that people are currently receiving does not mention the reason that it was set up in the first place? Or gives incorrect information about its origins?
You tried to point people to correct information with your link. I'll try some others.
Analysis: The Prevent strategy and its problems
2014
Preventing Violent Extremism - also known as Prevent - has been a government priority for a decade.
But despite millions of pounds, initiative after initiative, the strategy remains deeply controversial, virtually impossible to fully assess and, if its critics are right, fatally compromised and incapable of achieving its goals.
Prevent is one of the four Ps that make up the government's post 9/11 counter-terrorism strategy, known as Contest: Prepare for attacks, Protect the public, Pursue the attackers and Prevent their radicalisation in the first place.
In the early days of Prevent, Whitehall was divided over what Prevent meant: was it purely about al-Qaeda-inspired extremism or was it about other groups as well?
Was it about tackling violence or the underlying ideology?
How could officials work out who they needed to target to get results?
Impossible to assess
Ministers threw cash at Prevent - particularly in the wake of the 2005 London suicide bombings.
In the six years after those attacks, almost £80m was spent on 1,000 schemes across 94 local authorities.
Security officials wanted schemes to prevent young people from following al-Qaeda's world view.
But other officials saw it as a means of funding pet projects on community cohesion.
Many groups that received funding knew what they were doing - focusing on theology and countering the politics of extremism.
But others had no idea about radicalisation at all - and some believed it was a myth because they had no expert experience and were suspicious of the message.
Full article:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28939555
3 The Prevent Strategy and Duty
2016
Background
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The Prevent Strategy has a long history. Relevant initiatives can be traced back as far as 2002, when it was recognised that a long-term effort would be needed to prevent another generation falling prey to violent extremism of the (then Al-Qa’ida) ideology.15
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The question became more pressing after the terrorist attacks in London in July 2005, and this resulted in “a more explicit acknowledgment of ‘neighbour terrorism’—that the terrorist threat was internal rather than external and required engagement with, and the energising of, affected communities at levels other than security and policing.”16 A formal Prevent Strategy was initiated by the Labour Government, following the London bombings of 2005. It forms part of the CONTEST counter-terrorism strategy and has seen several iterations since.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201617/jtselect/jtrights/105/10506.htm
The Prevent strategy and the UK ‘war on terror’: embedding infrastructures of surveillance in Muslim communities
2018
Abstract
The Prevent policy was introduced in the UK in 2003 as part of an overall post 9/11 counter-terrorism approach (CONTEST), with the aim of preventing the radicalisation of individuals to terrorism. In 2015, the Prevent policy became a legal duty for public sector institutions, and as such, its reach has extended much deeper into society. This article, based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork—including interviews, focus groups and participant observations—seeks to uncover and analyse the function of surveillance at the heart of the Prevent strategy. Contrary to official denials, surveillance forms an essential feature of the Prevent strategy. It regards radicalisation as part of an overall conveyor belt to terrorism, and thus attempts to control the future by acting in the present. The article shows how the framing of the terror threat in the ‘war on terror’, as an ‘Islamic threat’, has afforded a surveillance infrastructure, embedded into Muslim communities, which has securitised relations with local authorities. Its intelligence products, as well as the affective consequences of surveillance, have served to contain and direct Muslim political agency. Such an analysis uncovers the practice of Islamophobia at the heart of the Prevent strategy, which accounts for its surveillance tendencies.
Full article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-017-0061-9
Note: These links are to clarify why Prevent was first set up, which is what is in dispute, not to comment on current stats about domestic terrorism.