Preventing Hateful Extremism and Promoting Social Cohesion

On 22 May 2017, an Islamist suicide bomber detonated his bomb outside an Ariana Grande pop concert at the Manchester Arena. His chosen target was guaranteed to kill the most innocent in our society, young people, predominantly teenage girls enjoying a night of music and dancing. The Mayor of Greater Manchester, former MP Andy Burnham, responded by launching the Greater Manchester Preventing Hateful Extremism and Promoting Social Cohesion Commission to further understand how a resident of Manchester could commit such a brutal atrocity against children and what can be done to stop it happening again.

An ex-member of the far-right group Combat 18 who has turned his back on hate, the chair of the review into the 2011 riots, and the North West’s former top lawyer are amongst a panel of experts of the commission to tackle extremism and promote a stronger, more cohesive Greater Manchester.

Manchester’s groundbreaking commission had four distinct aims: to identify the broader determinants of social exclusion and how people across Greater Manchester could work collectively to address them; to consider how a distinctive community-led Greater Manchester approach to challenging hateful extremism could be developed; to understand if a Greater Manchester Charter could be an effective way to promote social cohesion; and to evaluate how Prevent (the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy) operates in Greater Manchester.

This year, the commission published its findings in its report, “A Shared Future”.