British PM scrapes win over anti-terror plans

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2008

LONDON (AFP) — British lawmakers narrowly backed government plans to hold terror suspects for up to six weeks without charge on Wednesday, but Prime Minister Gordon Brown needed the help of a minor party to win.

All nine members of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Northern Ireland's biggest Protestant party, backed the anti-terror proposals to increase the pre-charge detention period for suspected extremists from 28 days to 42.

That ensured the 315 to 306 vote win, although rumours of a deal with the unionists were hotly denied.

Thirty-six members of Brown's Labour Party rebelled, holding firm in the face of last-minute concessions from the government and personal interventions from senior figures and the prime minister himself to get them to change...