UK Citizens Returning From Fighting Daesh

Debate between Jim Shannon and Robert Jenrick

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for granting this debate, and to so many right hon. and hon. Members for expressing an interest in it. I am particularly honoured that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) will respond to the debate for the Government. I know that the nation sleeps more soundly and sweetly in the knowledge that he is our Minister for Security.

This question is not a new one. We have grappled with how to view and respond to our fellow citizens who go abroad to fight in foreign wars. They did so not for money, as mercenaries, but because they believed that was the right thing to do, and they joined the side of the conflict that at least ostensibly—and certainly, for those unversed in the complexities of an individual conflict—held widespread public support. That side was viewed by many, perhaps at times the majority, as the right side, or as, in one way or another, Britain’s ally. Some 50,000 English, Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish fought in the American civil war, and several thousand fought in the Spanish civil war, as was memorialised by George Orwell. More recently, dozens of British volunteers joined Croatian units during the Yugoslav wars between 1991 and 1995.

After the experience of the American civil war, Parliament passed the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870, which prevents Britons from enlisting in a foreign army that is at war with a state currently at peace with the United Kingdom. However, that Act has never been properly enforced. It was, and it remains to this day, extremely difficult to monitor and to prosecute such an offence. Those returning from the Spanish civil war frequently expected to be given a hero’s welcome; in fact, they were invariably treated with suspicion by the police. They faced workplace discrimination, and many were even prevented from enlisting during the second world war.

Today, many—perhaps hundreds; I do not have an authoritative estimate, but perhaps the Minister will give us one in a moment—British citizens have travelled to northern Iraq, and from there into Syria. They have trained with Kurdish forces and militias and, ultimately, fought on the frontline against Daesh, in some cases in the fiercest fighting that there has been in this conflict, at Sinjar and Kobane.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate about a very interesting issue. Many people who went to the middle east to fight on the allied side—the side that the Government are supporting—checked with their own police forces and Government officials to let them know that they were going, and they were allowed to go, but when they returned, some were arrested, questioned and detained. Is there not something wrong when someone checks to see whether it is all right to go but then is arrested on their return? Why should that be?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Gentleman gets to the point of the debate and I will return to that issue in a moment. The Government and the country need a clear and consistent policy. If we let individuals go, why should we arrest them for terrorism on their return?