Responsibility to Protect — House of Lords, 2015-07-16
Topic: International Affairs
Frank Ashcroft Judd (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord McConnell for giving us this opportunity to debate a crucial issue. Since my noble friend joined the House, he has brought a very special and refreshing commitment and drive to our considerations of these international matters. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for the answer she gave me recently—very detailed answers—to some of my Written Questions. They were very helpful answers that illuminated arrangements the Government are putting in place and the principles to which they try to adhere I particularly welcome this debate because I so much look forward to the remarks of the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery. He has had a spirited and long-standing understanding of the implications of Britain’s involvement in the world and has followed this with great enthusiasm. We will miss him gravely I should declare an interest as a trustee of Saferworld and a lifelong member of the United Nations Association These issues once again bring home the underlying truth and reality of total global interdependence. The world now, in almost every way, is interdependent and the first reality of politics is how we relate to that and make a success of our membership of the global community. We like to talk about values. Values are by definition universal; we cannot dip in and out of them. If our values apply within the United Kingdom, they apply to what we do as members of the global community. John Donne was right: "No man is an island, entire of itself … any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind … therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee" I believe that, in the times in which we live, the truth and wisdom of that observation have become more telling than ever We have to avoid the pitfalls of self-gratification or halo polishing. Saying to the world, "Well, we are concerned and we are going to do this", is the politics of gesture. Of course, if we are going to intervene, it must be effective. What must be very much there in making the decision are the consequences of intervening. Do we weigh those consequences carefully enough? On the other hand, we must never forget the consequences of not intervening. I will only say that Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya leave an uneasy feeling that perhaps we did not understand the implications of what we were doing quite as deeply as we should have done. I often think that in these evaluations, historians, anthropologists and certainly members of the NGO community, particularly those who have had long-standing commitments to any area, are crucial, because they give an insight into the deeper and complex implications of what is going to be involved These matters apply immediately in a bigger setting: Greece. What is going to be the consequence not only for Greece itself and its people but for security in all that region—a crucial region of Europe—of the policies that have been imposed, the way they have been imposed and the language that has been used in doing so? Are we taking that seriously enough? And can we in Britain really say that, because we are not part of the euro, we have not got to face up to what is happening to the Greek people or see what we should be doing to help, not least because of the very significant security considerations There is also the Mediterranean situation. The refugees are coming from Syria, Eritrea, Sudan and Gambia, where the human rights situation is dreadful. What specifically are we doing to tackle the issues that are causing people to take terrible risks in trying to escape the reality of their everyday life? There is one big challenge to Europe in all this and to us within the United Kingdom: that whatever the virtues of strong fiscal discipline—and I am not against it—it cannot exist simply in isolation. It immediately raises the issue of what the accompanying social policy and priorities are. It makes that side of the equation more important than ever; otherwise, what insecurity lies ahead I think that this applies even within the United Kingdom. A great deal of wisdom, insight and patience will be involved in finding the right solutions for the United Kingdom. We must not allow ourselves to become preoccupied with tactical victories in skirmishes. We must be looking all the time at the long-term strategy. I am not complacent. Ireland is there across the Irish Sea. If we have got it wrong, goodness knows what could begin to happen within the rest of Great Britain. It also matters in the way we arrange the world economy. If we are disproportionately consuming the resources of the world, it does not really carry much weight when we tell the rest of the world what it must do and how it must behave. If we have not got the commitment of the rest of the world on the social priorities that are essential, what are we going to do about our disproportionate consumption of the resources of the world The noble Lord mentioned the Security Council. This is a time when we have to ask: what is security? It brings home that for the Security Council to do its job properly in a modern context it has to have a very wide approach to the social and economic issues that are central to complement the more limited vision of military security, if I may use that term, as it has applied in the past I wonder whether we are taking all these matters sufficiently into account in our national security strategy, which was initiated in 2010. We have to become much more alive to the underlying economic and social issues, which, if we do not get them right, are always going to lead to the danger of conflict. But above all, in my older years, I have very firmly concluded that Donne was absolutely right.