Labour Islamophobia definition risks ‘blasphemy law by back door'

Telegraph

01-03-2025

Just a matter of weeks ago, Lord Walney was serving in the heart of Government.
But then he had the disconcerting experience of being sacked by some of his oldest friends.
The peer and former Labour MP, who served for over four years as the Government's independent adviser on political violence and extremism, was told in February by former party comrades at the Home Office that his job no longer existed.
'I've known Yvette [Cooper] and Dan [Jarvis, the security minister] for a long time and count them both as friends and colleagues in the Labour Party. They were pretty open with me. It was clear they were looking to rejig things,' he said.
'The most important thing is not so much whether they wanted to keep me in the role of official adviser but whether they're going to take my advice. We will see.'
The axe fell less than a year after Lord Walney delivered a report, commissioned by the Conservatives, which recommended much tighter rules on protest after years of disruptive direct action by environmental groups, pro-Gaza protesters and far-Right activists. Now he is keeping a sceptical eye on what the Government does next.
In his first interview since his sacking, he says that Labour's fundamental problem is that the party is romantically wedded to the idea of protest. He says ministers have too much of a 'sceptical mindset' about cracking down on disruptive demonstrations.
'I think the Labour Party that I grew up in is founded upon and steeped in the tradition of protest. I mean we've all been on countless marches in life. And so instinctively and understandably and probably rightly, Labour people's priority is to protect the legitimate right to protest. Now, I have always been clear that that is my priority as well, but that very often the line is drawn in the wrong place.'
'My review was an attempt to challenge the received wisdom,' he says, 'about how we judge what is legitimate protest and what is not'.
The Crime and Policing Bill, published this week, has not overawed him. 'The balance is not right at the moment,' he says after a first browse of the 330 page bill, 'there's more to be done to change public order law.'
His position is simple: 'The right to protest does not necessarily translate into protesting in the same way, at large scale, in essentially the same place every week, deeply making one part of our community deeply uncomfortable and feeling under threat while draining police resources.'
He believes the new Bill does not give the police and Home Secretary sufficient powers to crack down on repeated mass demonstrations such as the Gaza protests that have been taking place in central London since the beginning of the Middle East war in 2023.
'There is not that power in the legislation at the moment,' he says, 'That is manifestly a gap, and it's something that I think bodies representing Jewish communities in Britain are pressing the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary to implement so there's still time to do it in the Bill, but they've not done this as yet. It's not in there.'
He remains optimistic that with pressure in and outside parliament, 'there is time to get this right'.
Keir Starmer's new hawkish stance on defence this week has given him hope. 'He's recognised his responsibility as PM and you've seen this last week he has genuinely moved the dial. So, ultimately, I'm optimistic and confident that he will want to do that on the home front as well.'
He says there is a 'significant disconnect' between politicians and the public who support the right to protest but are 'deeply frustrated and really concerned by those who abuse the freedoms that we have here'. He refers to protestors who glorify terrorism on the streets and environmentalists who vandalise public spaces.
'Unquestionably, Islamist extremism and Islamist terrorism is the greatest threat this country faces and it is really important that we continue to acknowledge that,' he says, adding 'that remains the case post the Southport riots, damaging though they were, and it is vital that we are not deflected as a country from it.'
He says the Government must be 'prepared to talk about the nature of the Islamist threat facing the country, where that manifests itself in violence, but also in the erosion of our values and the undermining of our way of life that Islamist extremists can pose.'
He worries that the political class is too nervous about the subject: 'I think people within Westminster and Whitehall would not necessarily understand, or be confident to articulate a difference between Islamism and Islam and the vast majority of Muslims who practise that faith and would have no truck with Islamism.'
The planned definition of Islamophobia being championed by Angela Rayner is the opposite of this candid approach, he says, and risks introducing 'a blasphemy law by the back door'.
The Labour Party's official definition of Islamophobia, drafted in 2018 by an All Party Parliamentary Group, has been criticised for stifling legitimate debate.
Lord Walney says the definition 'was produced by well meaning people that were nevertheless taken down a path by some less well meaning people into a definition that would curtail discussion'.
If that definition became law, he says, the Government would 'literally brand taboo the subject that we need to be talking more about to protect ourselves'.
'We have to be free to criticise religion'
Ministers 'need to say more clearly' that they oppose such laws, he says, 'because we have to be free in this country to criticise religion, which we do all the time to Christianity '.
'I think it is going to be the Government's responsibility to re-clarify what freedom of expression means in this country,' he says, citing examples of people being hounded by police for burning the Koran which he describes as a 'worrying test case'.
'Burning of sacred religious texts is abhorrent and disrespectful, but it's really important that it's not illegal,' he says.
If any such definition were to be introduced, he would prefer the title 'Anti-Muslim Hatred' to 'Islamophobia', suggesting the latter title risks 'clear potential for unintended consequences'.
'You have to work that bit harder if you're going to call this Islamophobia. You've got to work that bit harder to make the distinction and to carve out freedom of speech and make sure that you don't introduce a blasphemy law by the back door'.
Lord Walney has been on a political journey. Only a few years ago he was John Woodcock, Labour MP for Barrow-in-Furness, sharing space on the Commons benches with friends who would go on to form the current Cabinet.
While they stayed in the Labour party, he became disenchanted with it over anti-Semitism and the party's Left-wing foreign policy under Jeremy Corbyn. He describes it now as 'a deeply traumatic time for all of us'.
He left the party and told the public to vote Conservative at the 2019 election, later receiving a peerage from Boris Johnson before being appointed as the government's independent adviser on political violence and disruption.
'I don't regret the choices that I made but I looked at the Labour Party and thought that it was irredeemable, and those who stayed thought they could claw it back, and they were and they were right, and I was wrong.
'You just sort of need to do what you believe in, but that is why Keir and Yvette and others took the long view. There are many reasons why he's Prime Minister and I'm not, but one of them is that he took the long view and made that call when I didn't, and I really do respect that.'