Constructing “British Values” within a Radicalisation Narrative

Abstract

This article examines the reporting of the “Operation Trojan Horse” affair in two British newspapers, the Daily Mail and The Guardian, in 2014. I argue that this high-profile case was a vehicle for the Conservative-led Government, and parts of the United Kingdom’s press, to advance their doctrine of muscular liberalism, an ideology that locates the rise of extremism in the policies of multiculturalism. In this interpretation of the event, it was argued that, under a Labour council, schools in Birmingham had been given the freedom to practise a segregationist agenda, resulting in an infiltration of Islamist ideology. Through a radicalisation narrative, that locates the causes of terrorism with extremist thought, an issue of local governance and agency was transformed into an argument about terrorist radicalisation. This allowed Government agencies to intervene, at a local and national level, promoting an assimilationist agenda through conceptualisations of national identity, here constructed as “British values”.

KEYWORDS:

• British values
• extremism
• Islam
• media
• Muslims
• national identity
• radicalisation
• representation

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to acknowledge Dr Arun Kundnani for reading and commenting on this article.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Birmingham, located in the West Midlands, is Britain’s second largest city (after London) with a population of 1,073,045 according to the 2011 census, 234,211 of whom stated that they were Muslim.

2 Birmingham City Council, when the letter was sent to them in November 2013, took the view that the letter was an act of provocation, to raise community tensions, and that there was no case to answer. The letter was then circulated more widely, including to the Department for Education, who acted upon it (Clarke 2014).

3 Richard Kerbaj and Sian Griffiths, http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/article1379071.ece.

4 Special measures are applied to schools that (in the view of the Inspectorate) fail to provide an acceptable standard of education and where it is thought that the management are not in a position to turn the school around. The school is given an action plan and is subject to increased monitoring for up to two years (Ofsted 2015).

5 Based on the definition provided by the Government in their 2011 revised Prevent strategy, as: “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs. We also include in our definition of extremism calls for the death of members of our armed forces, whether in this country or overseas” (HM Government 2013).

6 I have referred to central Government to differentiate it from the local council who took a different view of events. Whilst central Government saw this as a failing in local government, it could be interpreted as the local council being more familiar with operations on the ground.

7 A definition that can also be contested.

8 See section on the Daily Mail for further discussion of this article.

9 Examples of research that conceptualise ideology as a precursor to terrorism, cited by Kundnani, include Neumann (2008), Gartenstein-Ross and Grossman (2009) and Sageman (2004).

10 With a readership, across both versions, of 23 million per month (http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/nrs-daily-mail-most-popular-uk-newspaper-print-and-online-23m-readers-month-0).

11 It is one of the most popular quality papers, along with The Telegraph, with a readership of 16.3 million per month in 2014 (http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/nrs-daily-mail-most-popular-uk-newspaper-print-and-online-23m-readers-month-0).

12 The Sun newspaper was the most likely to present evidence relating to Islamist ideology, in 80 per cent of cases. The findings amongst the other conservative newspapers are lower but more in line with that of the Daily Mail.

13 Conservatism is a feature of many (different) faith schools yet this is only problematised in relation to Islam.

14 The Department for Education investigation purposely did not go into schools but instead used documentary evidence and witness interviews (Clarke 2014).

15 These standards set the minimum requirements for teachers’ practice and conduct (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/teachers-standards).

16 Woolwich refers to the murder of an off-duty British soldier, Lee Rigby, on the streets of Woolwich, London, 22 May 2013, by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. Both Muslim converts, Adebolajo claimed that the attack was revenge for the killing of Muslims (in Iraq and Afghanistan) by the British army.