Baroness Foster attempts to tighten UK laws on glorifying terrorism - amid attempts to 'normalise' violence
A former first minister is seeking to amend UK government legislation in a bid to tighten the rules on the glorification of terrorism – to counter efforts to “normalise” past violence.
Baroness Arlene Foster wants changes to Westminster’s Crime and Policing Bill which would make the wearing or displaying articles in support of proscribed organisation a criminal offence.
She said the issue is putting a “wedge between those from different backgrounds” and bringing fear to ordinary citizens – and must be defeated “in all its forms”.
Legislation is currently making its way through the House of Lords, where peers are seeking to make amendments – with Baroness Foster’s proposal expected to be discussed in March.
“At committee stage I received support from cross bench, DUP and Conservative peers – I hope now that I have clarified that it is intended to deal with only current proscribed organisations and not historic issues that the Liberal Democrats will also support it”, the former DUP leader told the News Letter.
“My key point around glorification is the impact it had on current and future discourse – and the fact that some are trying to normalise terrorism.
“This has the terrifying consequence that young people begin to think terrorism is acceptable. When glorification is added to the narrative from senior politicians that there was ‘no alternative’ it is very dangerous for our future society”, the cross-bench peer said.
Earlier this week, DUP MP Carla Lockhart called on the government to amend the terrorism act to explicitly prohibit the the glorification on convicted terrorists. That came after Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald eulogised a former convicted IRA man on social media as a man who dedicated his life to peace.
Brendan 'Bik' McFarlane was jailed for a gun and bomb attack on the Bayardo Bar on Belfast's Shankill Road, which killed five people and injured 60 others.
Speaking on the issue at Westminster last month, Baroness Foster said: “As someone who has lived with and through terrorism, I am always alert to anything which would encourage it and bring back those dark days of intimidation, murder and mayhem. Unfortunately, over the years since the cessation of IRA violence, there has been a strategy from Sinn Féin to lionise and put terrorists and their actions on a pedestal.
“There are many examples of Sinn Féin politicians, many of them senior figures, attending commemorations and celebrations for the lives of those who sought to murder their neighbours. In the interest of time, I will not bring any examples of that, because I have done so in the past in this Chamber, but suffice to say that apart from the pain which it causes to their innocent victims, it also seeks to normalise terrorism as a legitimate way to bring about political change”.
Baroness Foster also told peers that there have been no prosecutions under the existing legislation, to her knowledge, in Northern Ireland – in comparison to 52 prosecutions in England and Wales since 2011.
She said the legislation needs to be changed so that glorifying the acts of a current proscribed terrorist organisation, should “in and of itself” be a criminal offence.
Questioning the lack of prosecutions in Northern Ireland , she said policing across the UK “should be without fear or favour and certainly should not allow political bias or fear to enter decision-making”.
She said defeating terrorism “is about not just militarily defeating the organisation but not allowing the narrative of those terrorists to be justified”.
“Unfortunately, with the continued glorification of the IRA by senior politicians and others, there is a deliberate attempt to rewrite what happened in Northern Ireland. It was an unjustified, bloody, murderous terrorist campaign—nothing more and nothing less—and those of us who grew up with threats and the attempted murder of members of our family will not allow that to happen. We need society as a whole to recognise it as well. I urge noble Lords not to utter the phrase, ‘Yes, but it’s Northern Ireland and that’s all very difficult’.
“It is really not difficult. Whether you were a loyalist terrorist or a republican terrorist, you were a terrorist: someone who went out with the sole purpose of murder. Of course, the same is true of other shades of terrorists today”.