Given Prime Minister Tony Blair’s habit of invading other people’s countries, there was in 2003 a growing concern in the UK that it might “radicalise” some people and lead to terrorism. As a result, the government introduced its Prevent policy of identifying those who might be radicalised and sticking them in a programme to change their minds.
As of 2015, it became a legal duty for those working in education to report to Prevent “individuals who are at risk of... not just violent extremism but also non-violent extremism”.
Liberation Squares takes us to a group of three GCSE students who come a cropper with this system. However, the first section of the show seems like a gentle coming-of-age story in which long-standing friends Ruqaya, (Vaneeka Dadhria) and Sabi (Asha Hassan) chat about music, comics and the hassle they sometimes get from a bus of rowdy school students.
Things change when the local library they visit as a regular escape is turned into a Bibliotek which lets you read but not borrow books.
Getting to know in person Xara (Halema Hussain), who is a hit on TikTok and also annoyed at what has happened to the library, they help her with an online protest in which she says, “I’m furious. I’m rage... All on one page”, mentioning in her posting Rosa Parks and calling for a boycott of the Bibliotek.
This somehow gets the attention of Prevent. Her phone is confiscated and a teacher leads one of them to an interview about her potential extremism. It also changes the way teachers behave towards them.
Undaunted, they devise a plan to get back the phone and find out what on earth has led to them being identified for what they refer to as a pre-crime.
The confident cast delivers a lively, entertaining show centred on an unjust system that each year delivers thousands of young people into the hands of Prevent.