The Glorification of Terror Must Be a Crime

For two decades the United Kingdom has nominally outlawed the glorification of terrorism. In practice, the law has failed. I am putting forward an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill  because Parliament must confront an uncomfortable truth: we have allowed the public celebration of terrorist violence to become normalised, sanitised and, in some quarters, fashionable.

The current offence under Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006 sets the bar so high that prosecutions are vanishingly rare. It requires proof not merely that terrorism is being praised, but that the speaker intended others to be encouraged to emulate it. That distinction might satisfy a lawyer’s logic, but it collapses in the real world.

Glorification radicalises whether or not a court can prove intent.

The problem is not confined to Northern Ireland, though it is there that the moral failure has been longest tolerated. The routine lionising of IRA terrorists by senior political figures has inflicted fresh trauma on victims while sending a corrosive message to a new generation: that murder can be reframed as heroism, and terrorism retrospectively justified as political struggle.

Chants such as “ooh ah up the ra” are not harmless cultural artefacts. They are the audible residue of a society that has failed to draw a firm moral line. When young people, ignorant of the brutality and barbarity of terrorism, are encouraged to celebrate those who carried it out, the consequences are predictable.

The scenes on Britain’s streets since October2023 with proscribed organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah openly praised, should finally put an end to any complacency. Radicalisation does not begin with bomb-making manuals. It begins with narratives. Terrorism thrives where its mythology goes unchallenged.

Those who argue that this is all too complex, too sensitive, or uniquely “Northern Irish” are wrong. Terrorism is terrorism. Whether republican, loyalist or Islamist, the intent is the same: to murder civilians in pursuit of political ends.

No democratic society can afford to equivocate on that point.

The failure to prosecute under the existing law raises another troubling question: whether policing and prosecution have become overly cautious, even timid, when political pressure looms. The law must be applied without fear or favour. If legislation is so narrowly drawn that it discourages enforcement altogether, then the fault lies with Parliament.

My amendment offers a necessary correction. It removes the requirement to prove encouragement to emulate, recognising that glorification itself is the harm. It would bring the law into line with lived reality and send an unambiguous signal that celebrating terrorism is beyond the bounds of acceptable public conduct.

This is about sending a very clear message about how we reject terrorism.  It is about refusing to allow history to be rewritten by those who would airbrush murder into martyrdom. Terrorism was wrong. It remains wrong. It will always be wrong.

A society that tolerates the glorification of terror is one that invites its return. Parliament should choose clarity over cowardice, and pass this amendment.

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