Just Stop Oil hold disruptive protests like this one in London in May this year
The number of climate activists referred to the Prevent anti-terrorism programme has increased following the emergence of disruptive environmental protests, the BBC has learned.
The UK government’s Prevent scheme aims to stop people becoming terrorists.
Critics say Prevent curbs human rights by stifling non-violent political beliefs and should be reformed.
The government says it has never advised referring people to Prevent for lawful climate activism or protest.
Anyone can contact the police or a local authority to make a Prevent referral, which usually involves filling out a form to explain a concern about someone deemed to be at risk of radicalisation.
Since 2015, institutions including schools, universities, hospitals, local authorities, police, and prisons have had a legal duty to consider the risk of radicalisation.
The Home Office told the BBC Prevent interventions were legitimate for those who could be radicalised into terrorism in the name of environmental causes.
But climate activists say the government’s definition of extremism is too broad and authorities are confusing extremism with non-violent civil disobedience in too many cases.
Sir Peter Fahy, a former national police lead for Prevent, said it was “inappropriate” to treat non-violent climate activists as potential terrorists.
Terrorist threshold
He said the fear of being flagged to police in a Prevent referral could deter people from protesting, and argued the rise in environmental cases reasons “shows how confused we’ve become about all of this”.
“Prevent has been and should be about people who want to take their extremism into violent action,” Sir Peter said.
Prevent has mainly focused on Islamist and far-right terrorism but it does try to counter other types of extremism.
The government groups “eco-terrorism” in a category of violent extremism motivated by ideas on “the extreme political left-wing”.
It says although this category does not represent a significant threat, some activity has met a terrorist threshold in recent years and security services continue to investigate such cases.
There have been “a small number of instances of terrorist behaviour that have been motivated by an environmentalist ideology”, the Home Office said.
In response to a freedom of information request, the UK’s police chiefs told the BBC there were 32 Prevent referrals for “Left Wing – Environmental” reasons between 2015 and 2022.
There was a notable spike in referrals in 2019, when Extinction Rebellion – a climate group known for its disruptive protests – came to prominence with large demonstrations in the UK and internationally.
Prevent assessment
The BBC has spoken to one climate activist who was assessed by Prevent. They said they did not wish to be named in this report because they feared they would lose their job.
The climate activist was referred to Prevent by their employer after being arrested at an Extinction Rebellion protest. The person has been cautioned by police and convicted for public order offences committed at disruptive environmental protests.
The BBC has seen a copy of the form used to refer the climate activist to Prevent. The form says they were referred “due to being a member of Extinction Rebellion and other splinter groups”.
The form says the groups “are not considered extreme in themselves, but individuals within them may hold extremist views”.
The climate activist was assessed by a multi-agency safeguarding team and they said no further action was taken.
When people are referred to Prevent, the police decide whether or not they need more comprehensive intervention through a process called Channel.
The Home Office said there were fewer than 10 referrals for environmental reasons each year between 2015 and 2022, but refused to release specific figures, citing safety and privacy concerns.
The number of Prevent referrals adopted as Channel cases for all reasons is relatively small every year, representing 9% of the total in 2022-23.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Lawful protest or activism does not meet the threshold for Prevent referrals and at no point has the government advised referring people simply for climate activism.
“Prevent is an early intervention programme which seeks to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism, regardless of the ideology. If a person is not at risk of radicalisation then their case will be closed to Prevent.”
‘Not science’
A controversial strand of the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy, Prevent was set up by Tony Blair’s government in the 2003 following the 9/11 attacks.
A key moment in its evolution came in 2015, with the introduction of the legal duty on schools and other institutions to report those deemed at risk of radicalisation.
Human rights activists have long accused Prevent of demonising Muslims, and having a chilling effect on freedom of expression.
Earlier this year, Amnesty International urged the UK government to scrap the Prevent duty in a report condemning its impact on human rights.
“People are being referred to Prevent for non-violent political beliefs,” said Ilyas Nagdee, Amnesty International UK’s racial justice director.
But Lord Carlile, who reviewed the scheme for the government in 2011, said environmental protesters who “presented as potentially violent extremists are properly referable to Prevent”.
He said there was a “superficiality to analysis based on numbers and on descriptions as brief as ‘environmental activist’ without looking at the context” of each referral.
Lord Carlile said while the programme could be improved, he did not agree with those who argued it should be scrapped because “some environmental activists were allegedly drawn into Prevent”.
He said counter-terrorism was “not science” and “the police have a very difficult job”, arguing: “You can’t just write off Prevent because there have been some mistakes, any more than you can write off the police for arresting people who later are not charged.”
Contested definition
Most referrals to Prevent are made in the education sector, where training to understand the risk of radicalisation is encouraged.
In its Prevent report, Amnesty found some training materials listed environmental causes “as potential forms of an ill-defined extremism that can lead to a referral”.
Mat Osmond, who’s a senior lecturer at Falmouth University in Cornwall, told the BBC his employer asked him to re-take Prevent training after he helped to organise a student Just Stop Oil talk on campus last year.
He accepted he did not follow the university’s Prevent procedures when booking a room.
He said the training was about “spotting the signs of radicalisation in students” and had no relevance to room-booking procedures at his university.
Outside work, Mr Osmond has been involved in climate activism himself.
In October this year, he was found guilty of obstructing a road as part of a Just Stop Oil protest in London and was sentenced to a 12-month conditional discharge.
When asked if he regretted his actions, Mr Osmond said he found obstructing “random fellow citizens” a “deeply uncomfortable” thing to do.
But he said he would make “a categorical distinction between being drawn into violent extremism” and “taking action with non-violent resistance campaigns”.
David Knowles echoed this distinction.
A former Prevent national lead within education, he had a significant role in the introduction of the legal duty in 2015.
He said he didn’t come across any environmental extremism when he was working in counter-terrorism.
Mr Knowles said: “Breaking the law doesn’t mean you oppose democracy or the rule of law because, let’s face it, lots of people in this country have protested and successfully changed the law.
“So people who might glue themselves to the road, to me, are not extremists.”
But he said Prevent was a vital part of the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy and should be allowed to continue to protect people “from all forms of harm and risk”.
“Prevent is about safeguarding people away from extremism and terrorism, and it’s not about supressing free speech at all,” Mr Knowles said.
