Description
In 2015, the Prevent duty made statutory the requirements for public sector workers to show ‘due regard’ for preventing people from becoming involved in extremist and terrorist activity. It also made the promotion of British Values mandatory within the education sector, where teachers were required to embed these values into their everyday pedagogic practices. This paper draws on a four year empirical study surrounding educationalists enactments of the duty within Greater Manchester Further Education institutions and examines the scope through which British values became embedded in the fight against terrorism and extremism. Specifically, it will posit that the labelling of these values as “British” resulted in a perceived promotion of ethno-nationalist Britishness that served to feed into far-right rhetoric. Adopting a critical terrorism studies perspective, the paper will therefore argue that despite efforts of staff to promote British values, or “our values” as they reframed the agenda, as the antithesis to all forms of threat, the discourse of British values limited their capacity to do so, minimising the threat of the far-right whilst exacerbating that of Islamist-inspired ideologies through their difference.
