A coalition disagreement over engaging with extremists

WATCHING David Cameron answer questions from university students in Qatar last week, one of his less impressive moments came when a student tackled him over a speech on multiculturalism and radical Islam that he gave to the Munich Security Conference in early February.

You said in that speech that multiculturalism has failed, said the student. Don't you think you are encouraging hatred? What about British tolerance?

Mr Cameron gave a slightly waffly reply. Britain was a successful example of a multiracial society, he told the students of Qatar University. What he had been criticising in Munich was the idea that Britain should be "super tolerant" about communities living separately. He was criticising "state multiculturalism, which was the doctrine that we had in our country for too long that you keep people separate". Under this doctrine, he said, it was believed that different immigrant groups should live together, speak their own language, go to their own schools and not integrate at all. I remember leaning over to the reporter next to me and saying, blimey, he is describing apartheid, not multiculturalism. All in all, the prime minister sounded a bit shrill and unconvincing.

Today in the rather chillier environment of Luton, the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, launched his own critique of Mr Cameron's Munich speech. Even before Mr Clegg had opened his mouth, the antenna of the Tory blogosphere were a-quiver, following briefing that the Liberal Democrat leader in the coalition was going to disagree with his Conservative boss.

Over at ConservativeHome, the pre-eminent Tory website, Paul Goodman reported: "there's great unhappiness in senior Conservative circles about Clegg's speech".

Well, the Luton speech is now out, and it is true that Mr Clegg has picked a fight with Mr Cameron on the subject of multiculturalism.

One of the most striking bits of Mr Cameron's speech was where he set out a checklist of non-negotiable British values, that a liberal society should actively defend:

Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and a much more active, muscular liberalism.  A passively tolerant society says to its citizens, as long as you obey the law we will just leave you alone.  It stands neutral between different values. But I believe a genuinely liberal country does much more; it believes in certain values and actively promotes them.  Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, democracy, the rule of law, equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality.  It says to its citizens, this is what defines us as a society: to belong here is to believe in these things.

In contrast, Mr Clegg sets out a vision of an "open, confident society" in which different values compete. He says:

Liberal societies do not expect everyone to live in the same way, or believe in the same things; conformity can crush liberty. But in liberal societies, all of us must defend the freedoms of others, in exchange for freedom for ourselves. In an open society, values compete but do not conflict.

This is the background against which we have to consider the issues of multiculturalism. We have to be clear what we mean here. Where multiculturalism is held to mean more segregation, other communities leading parallel lives, it is clearly wrong. For me, multiculturalism has to seen as a process by which people respect and communicate with each other, rather than build walls between each other. Welcoming diversity but resisting division: that’s the kind of multiculturalism of an open, confident society

I will be astonished if tomorrow's press reports of the Luton speech do not focus on this tussle over multiculturalism, under headlines like: "No, multiculturalism has not failed, Clegg says".

But for my money, another ideological disagreement aired in the Luton speech counts for much more, because it leaves the realm of high rhetoric and heads squarely into the arena of active policy-making.

When I wrote a print column about the prime minister's Munich speech, I was briefed by a senior figure that the core of his argument was not really the stuff about multiculturalism.

Mr Cameron, I was told, was quite deliberately weighing in on one side of a long-standing dispute within the British counter-terrorist establishment as it reviewed Britain's "Prevent" strategy, a central plank of the government's efforts to combat violent extremism. I wrote then:

mostly, Mr Cameron’s intention was to weigh in on one side of a debate that has gripped Whitehall for a decade: should the government fight terrorism by working with ideological extremists who claim to oppose violent acts in Britain (if not elsewhere)?

In its final counter-terrorist strategy in office, Labour plumped for challenging such “non-violent extremists”. Mr Cameron is intervening because he thinks that decision has not been followed through, says a Whitehall source. The prime minister, says the source, has been persuaded by the “conveyor belt” theory—the belief that non-violent extremism is often a “way point” on the road to lethal radicalism. Mr Cameron thinks multiculturalism has drifted from a tolerance of other cultures towards a tolerance of other value systems, some of them hostile to Britain

Within the Westminster village, that dispute is often described as a conflict between the intelligence and security services (whose officers tend to the view that engagement with bad people is often necessary to ward off trouble from still worse people), and political types with more neo-conservative views (the Policy Exchange think tank is often mentioned here, and the education secretary Michael Gove).

The real significance of Mr Clegg's speech in Luton was that the Lib Dem leader signalled, very firmly, that he comes down on the spooks' side of that debate, and believes that the government and its agencies need to engage with unpleasant but non-violent extremists.

Compare and contrast. Mr Cameron said in Munich:

Whether they are violent in their means or not, we must make it impossible for the extremists to succeed.  Now, for governments, there are some obvious ways we can do this.  We must ban preachers of hate from coming to our countries.  We must also proscribe organisations that incite terrorism against people at home and abroad.  Governments must also be shrewder in dealing with those that, while not violent, are in some cases part of the problem.  We need to think much harder about who it’s in the public interest to work with.  Some organisations that seek to present themselves as a gateway to the Muslim community are showered with public money despite doing little to combat extremism.  As others have observed, this is like turning to a right-wing fascist party to fight a violent white supremacist movement.  So we should properly judge these organisations: do they believe in universal human rights – including for women and people of other faiths?  Do they believe in equality of all before the law?  Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government?  Do they encourage integration or separation?  These are the sorts of questions we need to ask.  Fail these tests and the presumption should be not to engage with organisations – so, no public money, no sharing of platforms with ministers at home

And here is Mr Clegg in Luton, explicitly defending a pair of Lib Dem ministers who attended a British Muslim conference that is, by his own admission, also addressed by some pretty radical figures:

If we are truly confident about the strength of our liberal values we should be confident about their ability to defeat the inferior arguments of our opponents.

Smart engagement means engaging in argument at public events, where appropriate and at the right level. Of course these are always difficult decisions to make. But to take one example, the Global Peace and Unity conference attracts around fifty thousand British Muslims each year and is an important opportunity to engage in argument – and so Andrew Stunell, the Government’s Communities Minister did this year.  Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader, also spoke at the event.

Now there may well have been a small minority of organisations and individuals at that event with deeply unpalatable, illiberal views.

But you don’t win a fight by leaving the ring. You get in and win. The overwhelming majority of the people attending this conference are active, engaged and law-abiding citizens. We don’t win people to liberal ideals by giving ourselves a leave of absence from the argument.

Equally, smart engagement means being extremely careful about decisions to proscribe individual organisations. There are occasions when that is the right course of action. I have to say that, for me, agreeing to the proscription of the Pakistani Taliban was a straightforward decision.

But proscription must always be a last resort, never a knee-jerk reflex. That is why the Pakistani Taliban is the only organisation we have proscribed since entering Government. And that is why, consistent with our agenda for smart engagement and as part of the Government’s review of Counter Terrorism powers, we decided against increasing the government’s powers to proscribe

Lib Dem sources say that Mr Clegg's speech was sent to Number 10 in advance, and signed off by Mr Cameron's team. Those same sources confirm that the deputy prime minister intended to signal an honest political disagreement when it comes to the rules of engagement for non-violent extremists.

The Prevent review will be finished shortly. Forget lurid press headlines about labels like multiculturalism. This is a fight about the best way to defeat domestic terrorism. This is the real stuff of coalition politics, not to mention life and death.