I support and strongly sympathize with the Iraqi resistance to US occupation, Palestinian suicide bombers attacking their Israeli oppressors and radical Islam's armed struggle against Western Imperialism. If that's glorification, so be it. [Ed Strong]

BLAIR WINS TERROR GLORIFICATION VOTE

Tony Blair narrowly succeeded today in winning a crucial Commons vote on anti-terror laws after accusing the Opposition of trying to "dilute and weaken" them.

Despite a backbench rebellion, cutting the Government's majority to 38, MPs voted by 315 to 277 to overturn a Lords defeat striking out Government proposals outlawing glorification of terrorism.

The result - after three testing days for ministers with key votes on ID cards and smoking - will come as a huge relief for the Prime Minister.

Earlier, at a stormy question time, he warned that to take out references to 'glorification' in the Terrorism Bill would send out a "massively counter-productive signal".

Mr Blair said: "People outside will infer that we have decided to dilute our law at the very moment when we should be strengthening it and sending a united signal that we aren't going to tolerate those who glorify terrorism in our country."

William Hague, standing in for Tory leader David Cameron, branded the move " ineffective authoritarianism" and accused Mr Blair of "posturing" on the issue when he could have cross-party agreement.

"Wouldn't it be better to have a watertight law designed to catch the guilty, rather than a press release law designed to catch the headlines," he said, to Tory cheers.

When the issue was last debated in the Commons, during the committee stage of the Terrorism Bill, the Government's majority was cut to just one, as 31 Labour MPs rebelled.

Today the number of rebels was put at about 15 by one backbench source.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke rammed home the Government's message at the startof a 180-minute debate on the issue, insisting he was "not prepared tocompromise" on outlawing glorification of terrorism.

Mr Clarke said he wanted to send "a clear message to all those recruiting terrorists", adding that all MPs had a duty to protect the people they represent.

The measure to outlaw the glorification of terrorism as part of a wider offence of indirectly encouraging terrorism scraped through the Commons last year.

But the Lords replaced it with an offence of describing terrorism in a way that would encourage listeners to emulate it.

Mr Clarke said the Lords' proposal was too narrow and would not cover placards, publications or websites that glorified terror to encourage others.

"There are all too many people who may be influenced by those who glorify terrorism and conclude they have a duty of some kind to kill and injure innocent bystanders in the misguided belief that they are bound to do so by their faith," he warned.

"I believe it's our duty to those we represent to do everything we can to prevent this happening."

Shadow attorney general Dominic Grieve accused ministers of simply closing their ears and eyes to the case put to them and warned: "The House is in danger of passing law that's unworkable.

"Glorification is not clear, precise or adequately defined. By plucking this concept out of the air, the Government is going to cause itself and the courts great difficulties.

"Glorification has no place and should have no place in our law. It is incapable of proper interpretation .... and risks criminalising those the Government does not intend to criminalise. It is, frankly, as a concept, rubbish."

Mr Grieve warned that Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who would be leading the 90th anniversary celebrations of the 1916 Easter Rising by Irish revolutionaries in April, could be caught under the legislation.

For the Liberal Democrats, Alistair Carmichael said his party was concerned about the "vagueness" of the term glorification.

He said: "The effect of heaping vagueness on vagueness is to enact bad law. I didn't come here to enact bad law." [PA]


WHAT IS THE GLORIFICATION OF TERRORISM?

The phrase comes from the government's terrorism bill. It was in use at the time of the 2005 Queen's speech, when the intention to pass a new bill was announced, but it was not until after the July 7 London bombings that it became an established part of the political lexicon.

Six days after the attacks, Tony Blair said the new anti-terror laws would aim to "pull up this evil ideology by its roots" by tackling incitement to terrorism. He announced a two-week consultation on a variety of measures, including how the law against those "glorifying" terrorism could be tightened.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Glorification - a person who "glorifies, exalts or celebrates" a terrorist act - made it into the draft legislation published the following September.

The legislation threatened a five-year jail sentence for anyone glorifying a terrorist act committed over the last 20 years. The small print said the home secretary would draw up a list of historical terrorist acts that it would be a criminal offence to glorify.

The following month, the list was abandoned, the jail sentence reduced to 12 months and the definition of glorification tightened up so it was necessary to prove the intention was to incite further acts of terror.

Even in its revised form, the offence did not get through the Lords when the upper chamber revised the legislation. Today, the government is attempting to win a vote that would reverse that decision and restore it to the bill.

WHAT ARE THE ARGUMENTS?

In the Lords debate, the Home Office minister, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, told peers the government did not believe it "acceptable that people should be allowed to make statements which glorify terrorism".

She said ministers believed such statements made it "more likely their audience will themselves commit acts of terrorism".

Those who oppose the proposed offence argue that existing laws are already used to prosecute individuals such as Abu Hamza, who would appear to be targets of the glorification charge.

WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE TO GLORIFICATION?

In striking down glorification, the Lords proposed an offence of "describing terrorism in a way that would encourage people to emulate it".

The Tories accuse Downing Street of manufacturing a "bogus" spat over the issue in order to make the prime minister look tougher on terror than his opponents. Dominic Grieve, the shadow attorney general, said the alternative wording proposed by the Lords actually made the legislation tighter.

The home secretary, Charles Clarke, said the Lords amendment referred only to words which might lead a listener to emulate terrorism, meaning placards and images such as those carried on the anti-cartoon protests in London would not be covered. He said amendment would allow the glorification of terrorism "with impunity".

WHAT ABOUT FREE SPEECH?

When the bill was first proposed, there were fears the offence of glorification risked criminalising such figures as the Irish taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, when he commemorated the 1916 Easter Rising.

In the Lords debate, Baroness Scotland made it clear that, under the revised form of the bill then under consideration, prosecutions would proceed only when it could be shown a suspect clearly intended that terrorist acts should be emulated.

Mr Clarke received unexpected support in this area today when the organisation representing university vice-chancellors said they were satisfied ministers had met their concerns about the section on intent.

Universities and academic unions had feared a history lecturer who quoted statements by revolutionaries or a politics class shown an Osama bin Laden video could face jail for glorifying terrorism.

The most common challenge to glorification (not entirely sidestepped by the sections on intent) is where it would leave the supporters of a figure such as Nelson Mandela and the ANC's struggle against apartheid-era South Africa, which used violence.

Geoffrey Bindman, a leading human rights lawyer, told the BBC's Today programme that the law could become a "dangerous inroad on freedom of speech" if it was used against people who said it could be necessary to use violence against a repressive regime.

WHAT ARE THE EXISTING LAWS

The laws currently available to prosecutors come from a number of acts. Hamza's conviction included four charges brought under the Public Order Act 1986 of "using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with the intention of stirring up racial hatred".

The first conviction of a Muslim preacher - that of Abdullah el-Faisal in 2003 - was also first use of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act for soliciting murder without a specific victim (he called for the killing of Jews, Hindus, Americans and non-believers).

Existing terror laws - those of 2000 and 2001, which the current bill replaces - do not deal with such soliciting or incitement.

Hamza's sole charge under the Terrorism Act was for the possession of a document, the Encyclopaedia of the Afghani Jihad, containing information "of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism".

Simon Jeffery @ Guardian