D-day: 75th Anniversary

Lord Birt Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, and his most eloquent speech; I will echo many of his arguments and sentiments.

D-day marked the beginning of the end of the Second World War; we should never take that subsequent victory for granted. Modern scholarship tells us that, fighter for fighter, the Germans were the most ferociously effective force in the field in that war but Hitler, thank goodness, made a number of critical errors that would hasten his demise. He took on the Soviet Union, a huge, populous country with a hostile climate. His biggest error was to declare war unilaterally on the United States two days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and thus propel America into the war.

Before Hitler’s declaration of war, President Roosevelt had wanted to intervene in Europe, but the mood in Congress was isolationist and hostile—let us note the warning. The US began the war against Germany with much diminished military capacity, but it quickly swung into action and, with its industrial might, soon constructed ships faster than the Germans could build U-boats. America went on to transport vital materials and supplies to the UK.

We had begun the war strategically exposed: two-thirds of our food, one-third of our iron, 90% of our petroleum and 100% of our rubber all came from across the sea. The Battle of the Atlantic, however, would now be won: 3 million US troops and a mass of materiel would arrive in the UK before and immediately after D-day. That was only possible because we were an offshore island from which an attack on mainland Europe could be successfully launched.

Hitler’s final mistake had been not to attempt to invade and conquer the UK when we were at our weakest, post Dunkirk. Without our independent island status, it is inconceivable that the US could have launched an invasion on mainland Europe direct from America. In the east, the Soviets fought Hitler to a standstill, but at a price we should never forget. Of the 50 million who died in World War II, 25 million were Russians. As my noble friend Lord Bilimoria reminded us, the invasion of Italy had begun a year earlier in 1943. By the time of D-day, Hitler was extended on every possible front, and persistent bombing from the UK by the RAF and the United States Air Force weakened his defences in Europe even further.

Therefore, let us give thanks today, as others have said, to the British men and women of my father’s and my mother’s generation, who fought bravely to protect us on the land, sea and air. Let us thank the Russian people for their great sacrifice. Above all—and here I echo my noble friend Lord Hannay—let us thank the US for coming to our aid a second time and with concomitant sacrifice in this most cruel and destructive of wars. Let us recognise that, while we may not all concur with President Trump’s policies and attitudes, he is the Head of State of our greatest and most important ally and should be honoured accordingly. Let us secondly recognise that if the US had not entered the war, Hitler might have ultimately vanquished the Soviets and ruled all of Europe, including—eventually and inevitably—the UK itself. Alternatively, if the Soviets had prevailed, western as well as eastern Europe might have ended up under the Soviet yoke. Either way, the UK would have tumbled into a totalitarian nightmare.

Let us finally recognise—and many have said this, as Her Majesty did last night—the genius of those after the war who created an institutional framework, including the UN, NATO and eventually the EU, which has underpinned the stability of our continent for 75 years after centuries of war and strife. D-day, 6 June, is a day for us to be intensely grateful, to proclaim that we take nothing for granted and to speak up in support of those very institutions which have underpinned our peace and prosperity for so long.

National Security Situation

Lord Birt Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to participate in this most expert and well-informed debate. Our world presents innumerable threats. In parts of the globe, we face a powder keg of demagoguery, extreme ideology and regional rivalry, and added to this venomous mix are religious factionalism, ethnic confrontation and terrorism. Old and new technologies fan these flames: nuclear proliferates; Salisbury and Syria bear witness to a century-old ban on chemical weapons not holding; cyber enables malign, encrypted communication; there are powerful propaganda tools for evil; and there is intrusive and destructive new weaponry. There is no escape from this toxic brew. ISIS fighters return home to our streets, and conflict in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America promotes population shifts which in turn impact the equilibrium of settled nations far away, in turn promoting extremism, isolationism and protectionism. We are all connected.

We, our allies and international bodies all struggle to deal with this compound of forces. Russia’s use of its veto to defend the indefensible cruelly underlines the limitations of the UN. NATO countries represent overwhelming wealth, dwarfing other blocs, yet they appear collectively not to be able to invest effectively in comprehensive, integrated military capability, and NATO is further handicapped by its defined purpose from projecting western power beyond the theatre of its operations. Moreover, the internationalist consensus of our natural allies is undermined by emerging populism, making concerted action harder still.

How is the UK to navigate this messy, troubled world? There is no magic wand. History bequeaths the UK a world role which we have never forsaken. Moreover, we have high military and intelligence capability and, with others, we should be willing prudently and carefully to deploy it where clear global benefit can be obtained. We have learned the limitations of intervention in civil wars—I have never heard those limitations better expressed than they were expressed today by the noble Lord, Lord West—but we were entirely right this week, alongside our key allies, to draw a red line in Syria and to do so with dispatch.

I am uncomfortable with the stories of stretched and inadequate capabilities in our Armed Forces—best evidenced today by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria—even with an investment of 2% of GDP, and I have instinctive sympathy with the cause, but I would like to hear a refined case made by the Armed Forces and their supporters which clearly differentiates between what capabilities we as a sovereign nation must have and what capabilities we need to participate in a concerted effort with our key allies. Is there not a case for intensifying the co-ordination of our joint defence capability with our closest allies, France and the US?

In international aid, the UK has a fine, progressive record. In driving global prosperity, we have long been proselytisers for free trade and for its beneficial impact, and we will remain so. We are keen supporters of international law and its institutions, and we must redouble our efforts to improve the effectiveness of these institutions, especially the UN. We must use our considerable diplomatic skill, our standing and our soft power to promote peace, stability and prosperity worldwide and to address other pressing global challenges, from malaria to climate change to plastic in our oceans.

Finally, on our own continent, we need above all to bring Russia in from the cold. It is one of the great civilisations. It brought us Eisenstein, Diaghilev, Tolstoy and Stravinsky. We have strong cultural bonds with that great country, but Russia’s political culture has been shaped by feudalism, communism and autocracy. In its own true interest, Russia’s future must lie not with adventuring, mischief and opportunism, let alone an extraordinary, incomprehensible use of an advanced military weapon in an English cathedral city. We were lucky to hear the erudite reflections of the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, on the context behind that dreadful act. Rather, Russia’s political and economic future must surely lie with a mature and grown-up relationship with its European neighbours, and we must do all we can to foster that and to restore harmony on our doorstep. Here, I echo the sentiments of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and of the Minister in his opening remarks.

We must, of course, secure our own home territory, but the better safeguard of our security will come from fighting ever harder, in line with our natural instincts as a nation, to foster internationalism wherever we can and to help to make a better world.

Iraq Inquiry

Lord Birt Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Soley, who spoke, as so often, abundant good sense. The Chilcot report is entirely persuasive about the failure to plan adequately for the aftermath of invasion, as so many of your Lordships have said. Neither the US, the UN nor the UK rose to the challenge. We shall never know what would have happened if we had—or, incidentally, if there had been no invasion at all. We do know that the outcome of invasion was utterly tragic for the people of Iraq, for our and our allies’ brave soldiers who lost their lives or suffered grave injuries, and for the families who stood behind them.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya have all given us terrible lessons in the limitations and unpredictability of intervening in complex societies. Nor can we be proud of what the inquiry uncovered about the UK’s ability to match our security ambition to our military means and to equip our armed forces appropriately. All these lapses merit the censure they have attracted. I am far less persuaded, however, by the inquiry’s assessment of the circumstances surrounding the decision to go to war, where I fear it takes the wisdom of hindsight a little too far. Saddam Hussein is one of history’s greatest villains: he invaded one neighbour and waged a prolonged and costly war on another. He was cruel and despotic, he had used weapons of mass destruction on his own people and conspired to acquire a nuclear capability. 9/11 demonstrated the ambition, imagination and ruthlessness of modern terrorism and had traumatised our oldest ally. It was not only reasonable but right that the US and the UK should consider the risk—not the likelihood, but the risk—of horrendous weapons falling into terrorist hands.

It was truly salutary to learn that Saddam had indeed eliminated WMDs, but I think it was unfair to condemn those who, given Saddam’s villainous record, had every reason to suspect that he had maintained a WMD capability and who believed intelligence that confirmed that suspicion, false though that turned out to be. Nor do I think the inquiry provides a rich enough context to Prime Minister Blair’s handling of relations with President Bush. Let us recall another intervention to overturn a truly wicked despot. If the US had not intervened in World War II, the consequences would have been incalculable. If the Germans had won on the Eastern front, they would surely have later invaded the UK, and we might now be living in a Nazi Europe. Alternatively, if the Soviets had won, the House of Lords might now be a Praesidium. Our debt to the US is incalculable. America lost lives and paid an enormous economic cost to save us and others from Hitler, so Tony Blair was entirely right to offer strong moral support to the US after 9/11—that was what was meant by, “whatever”.

I am the first to welcome the process reforms in the intelligence agencies prompted by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and the reforms in the Cabinet Office machinery introduced by David Cameron. I accept, without demur, the inquiry’s findings about the evaluation of intelligence. But due process should not remove the need for Prime Ministers to manage our key relationships and to make judgments about our long-term national interest in the round, weighing every factor. I do not doubt for one moment that Tony Blair made those judgments in good faith. I worked in No. 10 for six years as Prime Minister Blair’s strategy adviser—albeit only on domestic policy, so I was not involved at all in the matters before us. When you work closely with someone over time, you learn their true character. The label “sofa government” is a caricature, as the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Morgan and Lady Armstrong, all made abundantly clear earlier in the debate. For my part, over and again I found Prime Minister Blair addressing issues seriously and diligently, trying to bottom out any problem of substance that confronted him.

The noble Lord, Lord Bew, who is not in his place, reminded us earlier of the impact of those abilities on Northern Ireland. Tony Blair was gifted and hard-working. He encouraged, and listened keenly to, a wide range of views, in my direct experience. In all his dealings I found him open, honest and straightforward—not qualities I always experienced elsewhere in government. The disastrous outcome in Iraq will weigh heavily on a good man, but no one can fairly suggest that he did not set out with the best of intentions towards both our allies and the people of Iraq, and towards safeguarding what he saw as the UK’s national interest.