UK Conservatives ‘giving in to terrorists’ in coalition row on Islamic State response

The UK’s Conservative Party were accused today of “giving in to terrorists” and risking radicalising more young people by seeking a ban on extremist preachers from university campuses in a coalition row over how to respond to Islamic State. New laws place a duty on institutions to prevent students being drawn into terrorism but the governing parties are split over how it should be implemented in official guidance to educational leaders. Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps confirmed there was a “difference of opinion” over the guidance to be issued.

Vince Cable doesn’t want to do what the Conservatives want to do which is to make sure that on campus we do not have radical preachers saying things which incite violence.

Grant Shapps, Conservative Party chairman

Attention has been focused on efforts to prevent young people being lured into joining terror groups by the unmasking of the Islamic State (IS) executioner known as “Jihadi John” as British computer graduate Mohammed Emwazi. Labour demanded a watchdog investigation into whether a relaxation of the “control order” system for keeping suspects under surveillance had allowed Emwazi and others to slip through the net and join Islamist fighters in Syria and Iraq. But politicians on all sides continued to defend the work of the intelligence services against suggestions MI5 contacts with Emwazi could have contributed to his radicalisation as emails emerged in which he said he feared he was a “dead man walking”.

The phrase ‘extremism’ they are talking about is very, very nebulous, it is unclear, and there is a danger that the Conservatives will clamp down on free speech and that will be giving in to the terrorists. We are not prepared to do that.

Ed Davey, Lib Dem Energy Secretary

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