Terrorism: Glorification

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to deal with the glorification of terrorism and terrorists in the United Kingdom.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Before the noble Baroness starts, I remind noble Lords that this debate is time-limited. We have one speaker in the gap. If any speakers go over their time, that will eat into the time for the Minister to respond to the points made by noble Lords.

[Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, first, I thank noble Lords who have stayed to take part in this debate, late on a Thursday afternoon. It is a timely debate because, as we all know, this week sees the beginning of the Omagh bomb inquiry. As it has begun, we have heard from the families of the victims of that bomb about how terrorism has destroyed their lives. The families of the victims have always behaved with decorum and dignity; my prayer is that they finally receive the answers they have been searching for and a modicum of closure. That dreadful day in August 1998 has much been in my mind this week.

I particularly want to thank the Minister, who is very knowledgeable of the threat of terrorism. This is in no small part due to his service as a Minister in the Northern Ireland Office, and I look forward to his response later. Of course, he is not here today as an NIO Minister but rather as a Home Office Minister, because the glorification of terrorists and their organisations is certainly not confined to my part of the United Kingdom but is a threat to the security of the nation as a whole.

I want to speak principally about Sinn Féin’s continued glorification of the terrorist organisation the Provisional IRA, and the consequences of that. However, recently, on the streets of some of our major cities, we have seen other proscribed organisations, such as Hamas, being lauded. That too has its consequences, particularly around radicalisation. I am sure that other colleagues will want to speak to that issue.

As someone who has lived with and through terrorism, I am always alert to anything that would encourage it and bring back those dark days of intimidation, murder and mayhem. Unfortunately, in the years since the cessation of IRA violence, there has been a strategy to lionise terrorists, putting them and their actions on a pedestal. There are many examples of Sinn Féin politicians, many of them senior people, attending commemorations and celebrations of the lives of those who sought to murder their neighbours. In the interests of time, I bring noble Lords the most recent example of a senior Sinn Féin figure glorifying the past deeds of terrorists.

Before Christmas, Michelle O’Neill, the vice-president of Sinn Féin and the current First Minister of Northern Ireland, attended a Provisional IRA commemoration in County Londonderry. The men she was commemorating before Christmas were killed by their own bomb as they travelled through Magherafelt in December 1971—long before Michelle O’Neill was born. Their names were Jim Sheridan, John Bateson and Martin Lee, all members of the self-styled South Derry Brigade of the IRA; it was announced after their deaths that they were on “active service” at the time. Here were three young men with murder in their hearts, who had been dead for 53 years in December, and the current First Minister of Northern Ireland thought it appropriate to commemorate them.

It goes without saying that, as on every occasion when this happens, the deep offence and hurt to those who have suffered at the hands of the IRA is revisited. The retraumatisation of victims is unforgivable and needs called out on every occasion it happens, but this public act of commemoration also sends a very clear message to young republicans that what these young men did was honourable. It glamorises what they did and, to young and impressionable people who have little knowledge or life experience of the brutality of the IRA, it makes them sound like heroes, which patently they were not.

The often-chanted “Ooh ah up the Ra” is a symptom of the continuing republican glorification of dead terrorists. It is, some argue, just a bit of fun, but nothing could be further from the truth. I will never forget being at a black-tie event in Belfast and being asked for a picture by a glamorous young woman, only to have her sing “Ooh ah up the Ra” into my face as she took a video. The fact that my father had survived an IRA attempt on his life, or that as a teenager I was on a school bus that was blown up by “the Ra” because our bus driver was a member of the security forces, was irrelevant to her. She thought that it was funny. I did not.

There is the issue. If we allow people in positions of authority to glorify terrorism in the way that the current First Minister of Northern Ireland does, it normalises and sanitises terrorism, and, in a cyclical way, this will lead to young people being radicalised again. Witness the radicalisation of those currently on our streets supporting the actions of Hamas. Many of the young people doing so know little about the Middle East but think it is quite hip and trendy to support Hamas, because they hate Israel.

A little knowledge is a very dangerous thing. If all you know about the IRA is that they took on the Brits and that the First Minister said they were a “great bunch of lads”, you will think that “Ooh ah up the Ra” is a grand wee chant. These young people know little of the devastation, murder, intimidation and barbarity of the IRA, because it is not something that the current First Minister talks about.

There have been conversations in the past about making the glorification of terrorism a criminal offence. Indeed, the Terrorism Act 2006 makes provision for a person to be charged with an offence if they make a statement that encourages a person to commit, prepare or instigate acts of terrorism. There have been no prosecutions under this section, to my knowledge, in Northern Ireland to date because, when challenged about such behaviour, Sinn Féin will argue that it is just honouring its dead. But of course it is much more than that. Its senior leadership is sending a message to wider republicans that violence and terrorism can be justified and that what the IRA did was justified. Of course it was not; there was never any justification for the violence, despite what the current First Minister claims. She will continue to claim that, and indeed to support the actions of these terrorists publicly, until she is prevented from doing so under law.

On Tuesday in the other place there was an Urgent Oral Question on the Government’s extremism review. During that Question, the member for North Antrim, Jim Allister MP, asked the Minister for Security about the glorification of terrorism by the current First Minister of Northern Ireland. The response he got from the Security Minister was disappointing, as he said:

“I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to delve into matters in Northern Ireland in the context of this response”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/1/25; col. 165.]


Why not? If the current First Minister of Northern Ireland is intent on continuing her glorification of terrorism and, at best, is reckless about the consequences, surely that should be a matter that a Security Minister should delve into. I hope the Minister here will be able to be a little clearer on that issue.

The IRA were defeated by the security services across the United Kingdom, not least the brave men and women who served in the RUC, the RUC Reserve, the PSNI, the Ulster Defence Regiment and then the Royal Irish Regiment, and of course colleagues in the mainstream Army. As the daughter of an RUC officer, I was always incredibly proud of how he served without fear or favour. For him and for many others to have their memories sullied by glorifying the terrorists who sought to murder them makes me very angry. We cannot allow the propaganda of the IRA’s political wing to rewrite what happened in Northern Ireland. That is why a change in the law is required, especially to deal with those in authority who continue to exalt and deify terrorists who have caused so much hurt and pain.

I am aware that, in 2023, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation considered whether the legislation on the encouragement and glorification of terrorism under the 2006 Act should be amended. He concluded that it was not possible to formulate a mere glorification offence within acceptable limits, and therefore recommended against amending Section 1 of the Terrorism Act. However, this conclusion was before the onslaught of the glorification that we have seen on our streets in respect of Hamas, and perhaps Mr Hall KC may want to review this section again. However, I acknowledge his expertise and instead propose a more nuanced approach.

I submit that the Government should consider an amendment to the legislation so that persons in authority or holding a particular office, such as a Minister in government or in the Northern Ireland Executive, should not be allowed to glorify past acts of terrorism, or terrorists, and that if they do so, they are committing an offence. This amendment is narrow in scope but would deal with the specific issue of people in authority sending skewed messages to young people about terrorism and the terrorists of the past. It falls within the counterterrorism strategy’s first principle of Prevent,

“to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism”,

and therefore aligns with the Government’s strategy. I look forward to the Minister’s thoughts on that proposal.

I also note that there is a new interim Prevent commissioner, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, who was appointed very recently, and I am more than happy to discuss this matter with him. He is here today, and I am very glad about that. I will leave my remarks there, and I look forward to hearing from noble Lords in relation to this issue.