A review has been ordered by Boris Johnson to investigate far-left activism within movements including Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion.
A former Labour MP, John Woodcock, who now sits in the House of Lords as Lord Walney, an unaffiliated peer, has been instructed to probe the extreme fringes of the far-left and far-right within the UK.
Lord Walney has been appointed as the Government’s independent advisor on political violence and disruption, and will report on his findings and offer recommendations to the Prime Minister, and the Home Secretary around May.
Unveiling his probe in an interview with The Telegraph, he warned that the UK must heed the growth of the far-right in the US, which culminated in the storming of the Capitol last month.
On the other end of the political spectrum, however, he stressed: “We must be vigilant against a similar blind spot in Britain to the prospect of progressive extremism – that is, unacceptable disruption or even violence carried out in the name of progressive causes to which the political establishment and large majority of the population have great sympathy, like climate change and racial injustice.”
However, he also stressed that there is “not an equivalence of threat between the far-left and the far-right” in Britain, as he believes that they are both dwarfed in scale by Islamism.
However, he voiced alarm that permissive attitudes to intolerable activity on the hard-left may be more likely because people perceive admirable objectives, and are then liable to “submit to a conscious or often unconscious bias in overlooking the strategies to get there”.
Only recently, Black Lives Matter were also nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prizeas we previously reported.
However, it was also reported in October that there was a suggestion the Cabinet Office had been in talks with Black Lives Matter activists, and this exclusive can be found here.
