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This chapter describes the development of the Community Cohesion policy in Britain. It starts by placing the development of Community Cohesion within the context of British ethnic relations. Among the issues discussed is the early history of ‘race riots’ and the response to them, as the response to the 1981 riots and the subsequent Scarman Report has a significant role in framing the response to the more recent events. The chapter further highlights the ideological nature of Community Cohesion as policy and discourse. The murder of Stephen Lawrence was the result of a racist attack. Among the findings of The Macpherson Report, it concluded that the police had failed to carry out its duties due to a range of factors including institutionalised racism, professional incompetence, and a lack of leadership on the part of senior officers. Racism had not been eliminated by the last five decades of the twentieth century.

This chapter reviews some of the implications for the understanding of the operation of the local state in implementing central government policy. It also adopts a wider perspective to ask whether the Prevent and Community Cohesion policies can be credible in the absence of a robust assault on the reproduction of inequalities in Britain. Furthermore, the broader conceptual issues of how a democratic polity may be constructed are explained. It is noted that those Muslim groups that retain a principled objection to accepting Prevent funding may enhance their prestige within segments of their community, but they will nonetheless suffer financially. Events in Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq are seen as germane to the circumstances and concerns of Muslim communities in inner-city Britain. The balancing of Community Cohesion, security, and individual autonomy cannot be aspired to in a world where rights can be relativised as an act of political expediency.

This book examines the apparent tension between the inherent logics of the two constructions of the Muslim population, as the two related policies of Community Cohesion and counter-terrorism (Prevent) emerge to address them. Both Community Cohesion and counter-terrorism policies have a generic remit that provides for them to address the majority white population, all minority communities, and Muslim communities. Community Cohesion appears to offer an invitation to greater participation in civil society by Muslim communities at the cost of biting the assimilationist bullet, while the counter-terrorism strategies of Prevent unambiguously assert that they must share a common burden of being targeted as legitimate objects of suspicion through the assertion that terrorist activity is being nurtured within their communities. An overview of the chapters included in this book is provided in this chapter.

Chapter Six continues the book’s discussion of the anti-terrorism/security/citizenship nexus. It argues that an individual’s underlying conception of security has implications for whether they are likely to believe anti-terrorism powers enhance security. Of greater significance, however, was that an individual’s conception of security strongly influenced the conceptual and linguistic terrain in which they discussed public policy in this area. Those who understood security in terms of social belonging, for example, were primarily interested in the impacts of anti-terrorism measures on community cohesion. This is in contrast to those who conceived of security as “survival”, who discussed anti-terrorism more in terms of effectiveness. Similarly, those who saw security as “freedom” focused on enhancements or reductions of civil liberties. The chapter therefore argues that security functions as a frame through which anti-terrorism powers are interpreted or read.

The existence of homegrown terrorists came as a surprise to intelligence services and immigration, integration and assimilation specialists as well. The burial of the perpetrators of 7/7 places the homegrown terrorist phenomenon within the larger issue of territory and belonging that connects citizenship and transnational networks, nationality and the extent of the diaspora. The term radicalization appears in official and academic discourse with respect to the homegrown terrorists of July 7, 2005. These youths are described as locally established individuals, acting alone or in small groups, in any case autonomously, with limited resources and as amateurs, particularly in bomb-making.