Syria

Lord Howard of Lympne Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the consequences of inaction are often more serious than those that flow from action? Does she further agree that had action been taken in 2013 it might well have been unnecessary to take action now?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I certainly agree with my noble friend that, having looked at the assessment, the intelligence and the suffering of the Syrian people we felt that action was necessary. But let us be very clear: this was a co-ordinated and targeted strike to degrade the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons capability and to ensure that chemical weapons do not become normalised, which none of us wishes to see.

Iraq

Lord Howard of Lympne Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

My Lords, it is a rare privilege to follow the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, and I do so with great trepidation, which is only slightly mitigated by the fact that I agree with very much of what he said.

Many voices far more eloquent than mine have described the evil nature of ISIL and the threat that it poses. It has committed unspeakable acts of inhumanity on countless innocent civilians and undoubtedly poses a significant threat to the region and to us. I was horrified yesterday morning to hear on the radio my old friend Simon Jenkins dismissing the threat to us as no more than the risk of a few bombs going off on the streets of London. Those who are charged with the responsibility of protecting the citizens of this country cannot afford to take such a cavalier view.

The question before your Lordships is not how barbaric ISIL is or how grave is the threat that it poses; the question is what should be done to confront that threat and, in particular, what part this country should play in that endeavour. The United States has belatedly accepted that it needs to assume a leadership role. It has assembled a coalition that includes a number of states in the region. Other countries, including France and the Netherlands, have already taken action. Belgium will join them if its parliament votes in favour today. The Government of Iraq, who are most immediately at risk, have asked our Prime Minister—the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom—to make a contribution to that international effort. Is it seriously suggested that we should decline this request and that we should turn a deaf ear to that cry for help? What sort of a country would we have become if we had refused to play our part in this international endeavour to confront evil?

Of course it is true that air strikes alone will not definitively defeat or destroy ISIS. In due course it may well be necessary for action of a different kind to be taken, but the imperative now is to contain it, stop its advance and degrade its capability. That would give time—time for the Iraqi and Kurdish forces to improve their effectiveness; time for the Sunni tribes of Iraq to see that it is in their interests to oppose ISIL rather than to join it. They want to be on the winning side, and who can blame them after the treatment meted out by ISIL to those who have opposed it in vain? If the coalition can convince these tribes that it will be the winning side, that will do as much to win hearts and minds as anything else.

In my opinion, the case for supporting the action that the Government propose to take is overwhelming. It is a just cause. It is a moral cause. It is a practical cause. It is a lawful cause. It is a cause deserving of support from all quarters of your Lordships’ House.

Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Lord Howard of Lympne Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

My Lords, in order to understand the true greatness of Margaret Thatcher it is necessary to remember the state of our country and our continent in 1979 when she became Prime Minister. Our country was in decline—a decline that many thought was permanent and some thought was terminal. I remember listening—I think it was in 1978—to one of the great gurus of the time. He saw no answer to our predicament. He said: “After the next election, we shall either have a Government that doesn’t try to do the things that are necessary, in which case failure and decline will inevitably continue, or we will have a Government that tries to do the things that are necessary, in which case it will become so unpopular that it will be bound to lose the election after next”. Margaret Thatcher proved him wrong and in doing so, as the Prime Minister said, saved our country.

It has been said many times, including this afternoon, that she was a divisive figure. She was. She had to be. There was no consensus on the right thing to do for our country. If she had waited for consensus, nothing would ever have happened. She saw what needed to be done and she did it with clarity, courage and conviction. It is also true that her divisiveness on occasion extended to members of her Administration. On one occasion, a Minister sent a paper to her that she rejected. He had the temerity to send it back with the words, “Prime Minister, this is government policy”. She replied: “It may be government policy but I don’t agree with a word of it”.

In 1979, as we all know, Europe was divided in two. The eastern half was subjugated to the yoke of communist tyranny. The part that Margaret Thatcher played, in partnership with Ronald Reagan, in freeing those countries, has been well documented. However, there is one aspect of the story that is less well known. In 1990, as her Employment Secretary, I went to Poland. My noble friend Lord Fowler, my predecessor, had set up something called the Know-How fund to help establish small businesses in the newly free countries. My opposite number was Jacek Kuron, who had been imprisoned for his opposition to communism. He took me to see Marshal Jaruzelski, the man whose regime had imprisoned him. Marshal Jaruzelski told me about the part Margaret Thatcher had played in the rise of Solidarity. He said: “She visited Poland during one of Solidarity’s strikes in the shipyards of Gdansk. She said to me: ‘You know, this isn’t an ordinary strike and you ought to talk to its leaders’. Until then, I had had no more intention of talking to them than I had of flying to the moon. But she persuaded me, so I began to talk to Lech Walesa—and you know what happened after that”.

All of us who have stood for elective office have hoped to make a difference. That has become rather a cliché but, like most clichés, it is true. There are very few people who have made a difference on the scale that Margaret Thatcher achieved. She saved our country; she helped bring freedom to half our continent. The light of her legacy will shine as a beacon down the generations.