© AFP/Getty ImagesThe family of Drummer Lee Rigby on Sunday visited the site of his murder in Woolwich.
A dramatic battery of measures to prevent radicalisation of British Muslims was outlined on Sunday by the home secretary, Theresa May, including tougher pre-emptive censorship of internet sites, a lower threshold for banning extremist groups and renewed pressure on universities and mosques to reject so-called hate preachers.
May also signalled that she was prepared to do battle with Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, over his veto of the communications data bill.
After four days in which ministers have been praised in some quarters for avoiding a kneejerk response to the killing of soldier Lee Rigby outside his Woolwich barracks in south London, Whitehall swung into action. It has promised a new taskforce, chaired by the prime minister, and a root and branch review of Prevent, the government strategy to combat radicalisation.
M15 will also deliver a preliminary report to the intelligence and security committee on how it failed to realise that Michael Adebolajo, one of the Woolwich suspects, represented a serious threat to national security, even though the services had been tracking him for years and at one point sought to recruit him.
The government confirmed he had been arrested and deported from Kenya in November 2010. Adebolajo had allegedly been trying to reach neighbouring Somalia to fight with al-Shabaab, the Islamist militant group.
Police investigating the soldier's murder made a ninth arrest on Sunday when armed officers in balaclavas seized a 22-year-old man on a north London street.
The man, who was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder, was detained by detectives from the Met's counter-terrorism command and specialist firearms officers near Highbury Corner at around 2.45pm.
No shots were fired during the arrest and the suspect was taken to a south London police station.
Earlier, the family of the murdered soldier visited the scene of his death to lay flowers and keepsakes and to see the hundreds of tributes that had been left on the Woolwich street where he died.
May, giving her first considered policy response to the killing, said she was concerned thousands were under threat of radicalisation.
She said there was a case for strengthening powers of the media regulator Ofcom as well as blocking or taking down extremist messages on the internet, proposals that may alarm internet service providers.
She said: "There is no doubt that people are able to watch things through the internet which can lead to radicalisation."
May said that since 2010, 5,500 items had been taken down from the internet. A government source said: "We cannot stand by and let people whip up violent hatred of Britain and its values and culture with the appalling consequences we have seen."
In addition, ministers are looking at:
- Using orders to ban organisations that don't meet the threshold for proscription.May also challenged the BBC for interviewing radical preacher Anjem Choudary in the wake of the Woolwich attack.
- Tightening the duties on universities to take action against extremist preachers.
- Closing unregulated schools and madrassas, as well as requiring mosque committees to be accountable for the imams they invite to speak.
- Protecting the budgets of the counter-terrorist police and the intelligence services in next month's spending review.
- Reviewing the focus and budget of the Prevent programme, set up by the last Labour government and already reviewed once by the coalition.
She said he has "disgusting views and I think it is right that we look at how those views are being presented, and I think there were many people who did indeed say: 'What is the BBC doing interviewing Anjem Choudary?'"
Choudary was also interviewed by Channel 4.
May also called for a revival of the communications bill, currently blocked in its fuller form by the deputy prime minister.
The former Labour home secretary, Alan Johnson, suggested May should resign if she cannot win cabinet support for the proposals, but Menzies Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader, sprung to the defence of Clegg saying: "What is being argued for by some is that all of us should be subject to scrutiny of every telephone call we make, every text we send and every internet site we visit. That is a very, very substantial intrusion into people's lives."
Lord Howard, the former Conservative leader, said if the Lib Dems will not change their minds, "I think the Conservative part of the government should explore the possibility of getting this legislation through with the co-operation of the Labour party".
In practice Labour has yet to see in detail what revised proposals May is seeking to reintroduce, and certainly believes the original proposals were disproportionate.
The Muslim Council of Britain expressed reservations at some of May's proposals. In a statement it said: "We must be vigilant and ensure we do not inadvertently give into the demands of all extremists: making our society less free, divided and suspicious of each other. Lessons from the past indicate that policies and measures taken in haste can exacerbate extremism.
"We acknowledge that there is a difficult conversation to be had about extremism and the role of our mosques and religious institutions. We have been here before."
Tim Stevens, the co-author of a major piece of research into countering online radicalisation in 2009, warned that little had changed since this report, which concluded that any strategy that relies on restricting online content alone was bound to be crude, expensive and counterproductive.
He added that the calls for the revival of the communications data bill, "a law enforcement, intelligence-gathering measure", were being conflated by some in the wake of the killing of Lee Rigby with "an idea that somehow taking down internet sites and so on is a way of countering radicalisation".
Police said suspects Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Adebowale, 22, remain in custody in separate London hospitals after being shot by police on Wednesday.
It has emerged that Adebolajo had recently become a father, according to his brother-in-law, who did not wish to be identified.
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