‘Primary pupils spouting race hate learned at home’

Primary school pupils are “spouting far-Right racist views” in a sign of the growing extremist threat in Britain, the head of the Government’s counter-extremism commission warned today.

Sara Khan said children were echoing the hateful ideas of their parents and that similar indoctrination was also taking place in Islamist households.

She added that the trend was posing a “significant challenge” for society and suggested that the family courts — which have already taken children into care to protect them from Islamists at home — should be more alert to the problem of young people being brainwashed by far-Right parents.

Her comments came in an interview with the Evening Standard in which Ms Khan also warned that the country is living in an “era of extremism” that is threatening democracy.

She said the threat was being fuelled by a new breed of “slick, professionalised, intellectualised” extremists who were using social media and other methods to spread their toxic ideas.

The threats posed by the far-Right, Islamists, anti-Semites and hard-Left radicalisers were all growing as a result, with a major “whole-society push back” needed in response.

The warning from Ms Khan, who met security minister Ben Wallace this week to discuss the far-Right threat, comes in the wake of the New Zealand mosques massacre and a spate of foiled terror plots here.

There have also been a number of hate crime incidents including a suspected far-Right stabbing in Stanwell, near Heathrow, and Islamophobic abuse directed at the Finsbury Park imam Mohammed Mahmoud as he returned home from an inclusion event on Monday.

Ms Khan, who has run the Government’s Commission on Countering Extremism since it was set up last year, said she had been “shocked” to hear about Mr Mahmoud being abused by a bus passenger and then spat at by a cyclist.

Her starkest warning, however, was on the growing far-Right threat and evidence of children being indoctrinated by their parents.

“I’ve come across teachers and youth workers telling me how young primary age children are spouting far-Right, racist, xenophobic points of view, coming from their parents,” she said. “I hear it from the other side, from people providing support to head teachers dealing with parents with Islamist extreme views. I don’t think people fully appreciate the scale of that.”

She added: “Early intervention is so critical when it comes to preventing extremism. I’ve seen first hand that if you deal with people showing the early signs, it is much easier than when they become hardened.

“I wonder if there’s enough being looked into with far-Right extremism and whether we are recognising the fact that there will be some children in our country who are without a doubt being radicalised by their parents and whether the family courts are taking the same level of interest in recognising that.”

On the wider extremism threat in Britain, Ms Khan said: “We are living in an era of extremism. From what I’m seeing of it on the far-Right, with Islamist extremism, they are both on the rise. There are also the hard-Left, we’re also looking at that, and speaking to Sikhs and other faith groups concerned about rising extremism in their community.

“I’ve been going up and down the country and to lots of parts of London and I’m shocked at the experiences people are telling me about extremism at a local level and the harm it’s having to individuals, to particular groups, to local economies, businesses, community cohesion, to our wider democracy.” Ms Khan said her commission would publish a “snapshot” assessment of the state of extremism later this year and was also commissioning research papers into the problem as part of its work to find solutions.

She added that more help was needed for those trying to stand up to extremism. “They are not getting the support they need,” Ms Khan said. “They are being targeted by extremists, they lack funding and resources. That upsets me.”

Four of the 18 terror plots that have been foiled since 2017 have involved far-Right extremists. The emergence from 2014 of the now banned far-Right group National Action has fuelled the problem and MI5 has been drafted in to combat the threat.