00:00Where I grew up, it was really remote, you know, it is a mass majority white area.
00:05During my time in high school, I found out about a far-right social media group that a friend was
00:11involved in.
00:12It was a really anti-Islamic, borderline white supremacy group.
00:17And from there, me and my friend, we kind of started promoting the far-right in our school.
00:20I was a really, really angry, negative person, you know.
00:24I had, like, a lot of anger. I was very anti-authority.
00:27I've never really known my real dad. He's never been around, so I grew up with my mum.
00:32She never supported what I did. She was massively against it.
00:35She didn't know how involved I was.
00:38Obviously, she knew about the UDL, she knew about Britain first,
00:41but it was very hard for her to really argue a case against me
00:44because I had all this knowledge of the far-right.
00:49It's not pepper-spraying?
00:50You know, it's supposed to be about me being able to see Hannah this,
00:53but thanks to you, I'll probably never get to see it ever again.
00:56Well, yeah, I wanted you to do something, but I didn't think this.
00:59Hang on a minute. You're not in a pick-and-mix store now, we're with.
01:01You know, you can't just pick and choose what you like and what you don't like.
01:05You're one of us now.
01:06The main people I knew, you know, they'd often just say, you know,
01:08it's a brotherhood, you know, we're all united, we're all kind of,
01:11we're all kind of, you know, you scratch my back, I'll scratch your sort of thing.
01:16Well, it's not true at all.
01:17You know, they'll use you for everything you've got.
01:19What really made me leave in the end was prevent.
01:22They essentially, simply just don't prevent terrorism, you know.
01:28They'll try and get someone who's, you know, vulnerable to, you know,
01:31extremism at the earliest stage possible.
01:34They came into my college at the time after I had said some quite offensive remarks in a class.
01:39I got reported to a safeguarding team at my college.
01:42The safeguarding team contacted the, you know, the authorities,
01:46and the authorities deemed it as enough of a threat to, you know,
01:49kind of pass me over to the channel process.
01:51I joined the far right when I was 15 years of age.
01:55I got involved, really, because I was very much against what the IRA were doing at the time.
02:00I got recruited at school.
02:02Somebody gave me a leaflet.
02:03It was like an anti-IRA leaflet.
02:06And then from joining that organisation, you know, I basically ended up wasting 20 years of my life.
02:12You know, my wife at the time gave me an ultimatum.
02:15She says, combat 18 on me.
02:17And I chose combat 18.
02:20And eventually I just decided, you know, this is destroying my life.
02:24I've got to get out.
02:25But it's really hard to leave far right groups.
02:27Prevent equals safeguarding.
02:29You know, you protect your children and young people
02:31against people who are getting involved in gangs and drugs.
02:34And this is exactly the same.
02:36And schools now are really good at not only spotting the signs, but actually asking for help.
02:41When you've mentored somebody and they've gone from a process of being an extremist to moving on,
02:46and then they come to the end of that then,
02:48and then they normally have a time when they sort of go away, reflect and come back.
02:52But then when they want to get involved and sort of support the work we do, you know, that's priceless.
02:56I mean, we've had a couple of instances where we've got individuals who have contacted us.
03:01So one example has been a friend of a mom who has saw similarities with Steve, the character, in the
03:08mom's son.
03:09And then we've managed to then get engagement, discuss why the young person is supporting populist right feelings,
03:16really sort of just anti-Muslim feelings.
03:18And then what they've done then is once we've cleared those issues up,
03:22that individual has carried on then and, you know, got back on with their school life,
03:26which for us is a brilliant success.
03:28More people are asking questions about how do we stop extremism and, you know, via media,
03:34you know, this is a great thing to use to, you know, get people and give them that positive message.
03:41In my initial meeting, I got given a Prevent IP, which is an intervention provider,
03:46and I just had a really good relationship with him from the start.
03:49You know, we had a very similar background, you know, both grew up in a, you know, a real white
03:53working class area.
03:55I had this fire propaganda, and as part of the propaganda, there was, you know, quotes from the Koran.
04:00And what he said was, he said, it is an app on your phone.
04:02He said, download it, you know, you take the number, you know, the verse and the line.
04:07He said, what you do, you put it in the search bar at the top, and he said, you search
04:10it,
04:10and if it comes up, you know, if the quote comes up, read it in context.
04:14And he said, if the quote doesn't show up, it's quite possibly a fake.
04:17He said, feel free to do more research on it, but from my experience, if it doesn't show up, it'll
04:21probably be a fake.
04:22And when I read these, you know, these quotes in context, I was like,
04:26it was almost a light bulb of all the head moment.
04:27It's like, you know, this makes sense, you know.
04:30I'm being massively ashamed of what I did, you know.
04:32I can't apologise enough for what I've said and what I've done.
04:36But, yeah, moving forward, I want to use bad experience for good.
04:41I don't want to, you know, stop all the young people doing the same things I did.
04:52I don't want to use bad experience for good.
