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East Midlands Community Contact Unit: ‘Experiences of a Regional Intervention Unit in Addressing Violent Extremism’

The substantive difference between Community Cohesion work and the Prevent Agenda is the concept of challenge.  A large part of the roll out of ‘Prevent’ has concentrated on ensuring that staff working across many organisations are aware of the issues surrounding vulnerability and know who to refer any concerns to.  However, for those in charge of  managing and effecting change of these cases through intervention work within this arena, the basic questions of who?, when? and how? have been a difficult and sensitive reality.   By drawing on their experiences of process development and work with real life cases, the East Midlands Community Contact Unit share their expertise in managing and commissioning interventionists within this highly important area of work.

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The nature and historical permutations of neo-Nazism are under investigation in this presentation.  More specifically, the international dimension to so-called ‘Universal Nazism’ reveals a particularly close kinship between extreme right-wing movements in Britain and the United States.  Most visibly, a number of small organisations – following the Patterns of Prejudice’s exploration of recent ‘right-wing groupuscules’ – have turned to the  internet to propagate their views; other activists have gone further still in embracing paramilitarism and, in some cases, terrorism. In considering an example of the latter, this presentation provides a case study of what may be called ‘broadband terrorism’: the correspondence of neo-Nazi groupuscule moving from online activism to terrorist activity.

This presentation analyses the political dynamics of the English Defence League. Highlighting that the EDL holds several characteristics that distinguish it from Britain’s tradition of largely anti-Semitic far-right ideologies, it draws on the ideas of Hans George Betz. In particular, it uses Betz’ concept of nativism to highlight that the EDL’s ideology can be placed in a newer trend of far-right populism, typified by Gert Wilders and other contemporary European far-right populist ideologues and movements. The EDL combines this broad ideology with the structure of a social movement lacking a clear programmatic vision for change, and so focuses on direct action campaigns that often lead to public disorder.

Gerry Gable – Confronting Right-Wing Extremism in a Western Democracy

In this keynote lecture, Gerry Gable offers a personal reflection on his work with Searchlight. His talk shows how, since 1964, Gable has developed a range of approaches to gathering intelligence on the Far Right. Cases discussed include historical examples, such as Searchlight’s dealings with Colin Jordan, to contemporary themes, for example revealing fundamental problems with the British National Party’s accounting practise. Finally, Gable also reflects on the positive, and not so positive, relationships that Searchlight has developed over the years with Britain’s various intelligence bodies.

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Searchlight Magazine website

Birkbeck/Wiener Library Lectures:

Date: 11 February 2010

Professor John Foot (University College London): ‘Italy’s Divided Memory. World War Two, 1940-1945.’

John Foot is Professor of Modern Italian History in the Department of Italian at University College London. He has published very widely on modern Italian history. His books include Milan since the Miracle. City, Culture, Identity, Berg, Oxford, 2001; Disastro! Disasters in Italy since 1860: Culture, Politics, Society (edited with John Dickie and Frank Snowden), St Martins/Palgrave, 2002; Modern Italy, Palgrave, 2003; Calcio. A History of Italian Football, 4th Estate, London, 2006. His most recent book is Italy’s Divided Memory, Palgrave, 2010.

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Event date: 15 April 2009

Birkbeck College University of London and the Wiener Library, London joint Lecture Series 2008/9

Professor Michael Mann (UCLA): Explaining the Rise and Fall of Fascism

The Birkbeck-Wiener Library joint lecture series cotinued on 15 April 2009 with a lecture by Professor Michael Mann on ‘Explaining the Rise and Fall of Fascism’. This lecture took place at Birkbeck, University of London (main building, Malet Street, WC1E 7HX, in Room B34) at 7pm.

Professor Michael Mann is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and a world authority on political theory and history. He is widely well known for his publications on capitalism, nationalism, militarism, globalisation, imperialism, ethnic cleansing and fascism. His major works include ‘Fascists’, a comparative study of fascism in six European countries (2004); ‘The Dark Side of Democracy’ on ethnic cleansing (2004); ‘Incoherent Empire’ on contemporary American imperialism (2003); and the prize-winning series ‘The Sources of Social Power’ (Volume I: A History of Power from the Beginning to 1760, published in 1986, and Volume II: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914, published in 1996).

The lecture is followed by a commentary from Professor Lucy Riall (Birkbeck), who has published widely on European and Italian history. Her most recent book is ‘Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (2007), which analyses the political strategy behind the construction of a popular cult of Garibaldi in nineteenth century Europe

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