Fundamental British Values & the Prevent Duty in Scotland

ABSTRACT

In July 2015, a legal duty came into force as part of the United Kingdom’s Counter Terrorism and Security Act that included a requirement (referred to as the Prevent Duty) for schools and other education providers to “prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”. Parallel to this initiative, schools in England were also required to include teaching on “Fundamental British Values” as part of the curriculum, to “build pupil’s resilience to radicalisation”. Yet this latter element is not required in schools in Scotland. This paper argues that the absence of a requirement for teachers in Scotland to include teaching on Fundamental British Values simultaneously politicises and depoliticises the delivery of the Prevent Duty, and British identity in this context. In doing so, the paper contributes to existing debates on the relationship between the Prevent Duty and the Fundamental British Values, reflects on the political nature of these parallel initiatives and examines the security policy implications of the contentious nature of British identity in Scotland.

KEYWORDS:

• Prevent
• Scotland
• identity
• fundamental British values
• counter-radicalisation

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Faye Donnelly, Tony Lang, Sarah Marsden and James Lewis, as well as the anonymous reviewers who provided feedback and comments at various stages of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Defined as “democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance for those with different faiths and beliefs” in the Prevent Duty Guidance (HM Government 2015a).

2. This applies to the literature on Prevent more generally: very little of the literature is focused on Scotland. Where this topic has been considered in relation to Northern Ireland (McCully and Clarke 2016) it has been highlighted that it does not apply, and that its implementation would “alienate and aggravate those nationalists who, historically, see the imposition of Britishness as central to the problem” (p. 361).

3. Whilst it does include a reference to fundamental British values, this is only in reference to the definition of extremism given in the Prevent strategy.

4. For an explanation of how the Prevent Strand has changed over time see Thomas (2020).

5. For more on this episode see Holmwood and O’Toole (2018).

6. Heath-Kelly and Strausz (2019) writing on the Prevent duty in the NHS argue that this framing of vulnerability does not fit with existing understandings of the term.

7. The SNP changed the name of the Scottish Executive to the Scottish Government upon winning power in 2007.

8. For more on the history and distinctiveness of education in Scotland see (Anderson 1995, 2018; Humes and Bryce 2018)

9. It is important to point out that the requirement to “not undermin[e] fundamental British values” was set out in the Teachers’ Standards for England for 2011 (Department for Education, 2011) and the equivalent requirement is not included in the Scottish Standard for Full Registration (General Teaching Council, 2012).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Notes on contributors

Nick Brooke

Nick Brooke is an Associate Lecturer in Terrorism and Political Violence at the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence. Brooke’s current research examines the impact and implementation of counterterrorism and counter-radicalisation strategies in remote and rural spaces. He is the lead investigator on a Royal Society of Edinburgh funded project on Prevent in the Scottish Highlands and Islands. Further to this, he works on nationalism, non-violent protest and identity and the interplay between these phenomena, as well as Scottish and British politics and representations of political violence in popular culture.