Author: Edited by Imran Awan and Brian Blakemore
ISBN No: 978-1-4094-5321-5
Review date: 13/12/2025
No of pages: 174
Publisher: Ashgate
Publisher URL:
http://www.ashgate.com
Year of publication: 06/11/2013
Brief:
Extremism, Counter-terrorism and Policing. Edited by Imran Awan and Brian Blakemore
price
£45
If you are concerned about the topics in the title – Extremism, Counter-terrorism and Policing – this academic work is for you. Interestingly, as a sign of how policing is being taken up by universities as a topic for study (for better or worse – like nursing?) two of the six authors are former 30-year police officers. They are Huw Smart and Patrick Tucker, each former South Wales officers. They write on countering global extremism and community policing respectively. The two editors in a summing up chapter repeat the argument that to be too heavy-handed actually makes things worse and is the greater threat to society – namely, the very community conflict the terrorists want to whip up; or a ‘police state’. One editor, Brian Blakemore, suggests much can be learned from the Troubles in Northern Ireland, though we’re in the age of social media, where British youths can be radicalised by preachers anywhere over the internet. The editors conclude that extremism calls for ‘a robust and community-led approach’. To lump religion with terrorism is not helpful, they say: “The threat from the far right is also as real as the one from Islamist extremism.”
