The Home Office paid for a boyband to travel to areas of the UK with high Muslim populations and perform songs with anti-radicalisation themes.
Mr Meanor, a pop trio featuring singers from Essex and LA, performed at schools in Burnley, south Manchester, Leeds and Blackburn at the height of Isis attacks in 2016.
One school the group travelled to, Parrs Wood High School in East Didsbury, Greater Manchester, had a student travel and join Isis a couple of years previously.
The group released a song in aid of the Warrington-based charity Foundation for Peace.
Financial records seen by PoliticsHome revealed the charity received £400,000 in funding from Prevent shortly before the tour, which accounts labelled “Panther [programme]”.
The group released a song entitled “Think About It”, which is about trying to process emotions following terror attacks.
In the song, the group sing: “Turn the TV on and something else ain’t right.
“More people gone don’t know how we sleep at night, What I’m hoping is we can lead a precious life. 9/11 changes how we view these things People want to terrorise and 7/7 left behind more broken lives right before our eyes.”
The group said they wrote the song the day after the Paris terror attack of 2015, in which Isis terrorists killed 130 people.
The group said they wrote the song the day after the Paris terror attack of 2015, in which Isis terrorists killed 130 people
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Communications company BreakThrough Media managed the comms for the tour.
In promotional material, the group claims to have brought the song to Foundation for Peace chief executive Nick Taylor, who organised the school tour around the North West.
However, posts on social media by former contractors indicate the tour and campaign were organised by the Home Office.
BreakThrough worked closely with the secretive Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU) at the Home Office.
Leaked RICU documents from 2015 suggested BreakThrough had worked with the Foundation for Peace, which was initially set up by the families of victims of an IRA bombing in the 1990s.
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Mr Meanor toured schools across the UK
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The RICU has proved controversial, with critics labelling it a “propaganda unit.”
It has reportedly organised the “bussing in” of imams to local areas to repeat Home Office talking points following terror attacks, as well as organising influencer campaigns online.
A government source has previously said it exists to service the fact that “the [British] government doesn’t want spontaneity: it wants controlled spontaneity.”
Meanwhile, BreakThrough Media was previously found to be operating a social media channel targeting young Muslim women called “This is Woke” on behalf of the Home Office.
The Home Office funded the scheme through the secretive department
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GETTYThe current projects being worked on by the RICU are kept well under wraps.
However, documents released to the Cranston Inquiry, which is investigating the deaths of 27 people crossing the channel, highlighted that RICU were working on a comms campaign deterring operators and travellers of small boats.
One former Home Office source told PoliticsHome that a number of campaigns to deter migrants had been established in recent years.
A Home Office spokesman said: “This campaign was delivered under the previous government and has now been discontinued.”
Emergency services are seen outside the station at Kings Cross on July 7, 2005
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There is no suggestion that any of Mr Meanor knew they were secretly being funded.
The foundation for Peace confirmed it had worked with Prevent coordinators and said there was “nothing secret” about its funding.
A spokesman told the Daily Mail it was granted a three-year grant by the Home Office in 2016, as part of the department’s “anti-radicalisation” strategy, to take their work into schools across northern England.
The RICU made headlines in 2023 when it suggested reading the works of Christian writers, such as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, could lead to “far-right radicalisation.”
The group also suggested TV shows Yes, Prime Minister, The Thick of It and Great British Railway Journeys, hosted by GB News’ Michael Portillo as possible red flags for extremism.