Soft Power and Conflict Prevention

Lord Judd Excerpts

Friday 5th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords I am extremely grateful to be able to hear and participate in this debate. We should all be appreciative of the most reverend Primate for the way in which he has given us this opportunity. This has been a refreshing debate, because for once we have talked about strategy rather than about our constant preoccupation with tactics. Our species is lost if we cannot reassert the primacy of strategic considerations, towards which tactics are a means of travel.

This is about conflict prevention. I see a great paradox in human society at the moment. On the one hand, we are more and more conscious of our total interdependence with others across the world. On the other, there is a growing sense and yearning for personal identity and significance. Sometimes we talk, for example, in the context of our own society, about the issues of Scottish nationalism. However, we overlook—I declare an interest as a half-Scot; I am very close to my Scottish family—what people yearn for, which is the sense that they matter and belong, and have dignity and identity. That is of course central to any concern about conflict and its prevention.

However, if we are talking about peace, which by definition we must be, sometimes the language we use becomes too easily confused. We talk about peace enforcement, peacekeeping and peacemaking, but over my lifetime I have become interested in what I see as the greatest challenge, peacebuilding, which is quite different. That is about finding the bricks with which you build the security for the future, and it requires infinite patience. There will be many set-backs, but the danger is that we get into an impatient management mode in which we want to manage a solution and, in a sense, want to find a solution to other people’s problems, get them to buy it, and then enforce it. That is destined to lead to greater and greater trouble in the future. We need solutions that belong to the participants in the conflict. That means building relations of solidarity. Solidarity is a very important concept, because it is not about talking to or about other people but about talking with them, listening and learning from that experience.

The noble Lord, Lord Williams of Baglan, referred to the immensely important part played by the NGOs—and again I declare an interest, because that has been very much part of my life. I think that he is right to emphasise why they matter so much, because, although they are not all perfect, at their best they are close to the people. The advocacy that they bring into deliberations is that based on experience and engagement, and their strength is that they really are in a meaningful relationship with the people about whom we are talking. Governments of all persuasions have failed to see the vital importance of this aspect of NGO activity—that they bring an unrivalled contribution to the quality, content and integrity of the debate.

The most reverend Primate referred to the issue of visas, and I am very glad that he did. One issue here, it always seems to me, is that we fail to realise that a relevant centre of higher education in the nature of the world in which we live must be an international community. It is not just about having overseas students here and the contributions that they make to the finances of a university. The quality of the education is related to its being an international community, in which people from completely different backgrounds are learning and studying together and informing each other from different perspectives. To do anything in administration that hinders the process of developing these flourishing institutions as centres of international co-operation and understanding is to be very detrimental to our future.

On a more local level, I happen to be a patron of a very interesting local organisation based in Marlborough, set up at the time of the Brandt report, which has kept going extremely well. The point about the Marlborough Brandt Group is that over 20 years it has brought people from the Gambia in West Africa to Marlborough to work there on Marlborough’s social problems and challenges. Behind the façade of the college and all the rest, there are a lot of challenges and social problems in Marlborough. Young people from Marlborough have been going to work in the Gambia. That programme has recently had to stop because they simply cannot cope with the difficulties of getting visas for the Gambians to come to this country. It is at moments like this that we have to ask ourselves what on earth we are doing, cutting off our noses to spite our faces. If anything is an illustration of practical co-operation, that is it.

If we are talking with the NGOs, they would be the first to make the point—and my noble friend Lord Boateng referred to this in a powerful and effective speech—that it is all about a matrix. It is a matrix of climate change and social issues, as well as refugee, migration and economic issues, along with issues of land and water resources and health and security. There is a need for security sector reform, because everyone needs to have a stable society. Of course, the security sector will be necessary—but it must be one that is trusted and in which there is real accountability. So security sector reform is a vital part of our approach.

Underlying all this is the issue of human rights. You can put it very simply—in the absence of any serious human rights issues, there is a chance to have a stable, secure society. If there are human rights issues of any significant nature in society, you are on the road to instability, extremism and tension. Therefore, we must stop seeing human rights as a possible option; we must see them as an absolutely indispensable cornerstone of stable society. That is why the international approach to human rights is so important and any talk of repatriation of human rights is nonsense, because what matters is that these are rights of mankind across the world. They are not just British rights or French rights or German rights but the rights of people wherever they are. If we start to dismantle that principle, which Eleanor Roosevelt, Churchill and others regarded as being so important in the aftermath of the Second World War, what on earth are we doing to the cause of peace and understanding in the world?

The Government are coming to terms with interdepartmental co-operation and are to be commended for that. I am very interested in the concept of the new Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, which is to be introduced in April next year. However, we need to make sure that this is not just—how shall I put it?—a formal response to an issue that has been identified but is an effective muscular response. As my noble friend Lord Boateng said so well, this means that departments have to stop thinking as departments and start to think about being part of a common cause, and of how one carries that common cause forward.

An issue that I do not think has had much attention today is that of arms control and the Arms Trade Treaty. We have to stop thinking that arms are part of our export business and that we can get on with making money for Britain and providing employment in Britain unless there is an overriding reason not to do so. Surely everything we are experiencing in the world demonstrates that arms in the wrong hands are immensely dangerous. Arms are dangerous things to make and you should export them only where a cast-iron guarantee can be given—if that is possible—that they will be used to maintain peace with close allies who can be trusted and that people will be accountable for what happens with them. The whole balance of the assumption behind the operation of the arms industry has to change in that context.

I always thought that one of the finest assets of the BBC was Bush House, as the quality of what was broadcast across the world was due to the quality of the work that was done there. The quality of the community in Bush House reflects what I said about universities in that great experience and learning came together to back up the quality of the journalism. I hope that we will manage to maintain that tradition under the new arrangements. I am not always sure that that is the case. I get worried when I receive letters from the BBC saying, “You will be cheered to know that our audience has increased by this amount”. Of course, I am cheered; I am glad to hear that. However, sometimes the value of the BBC is demonstrated in areas where there may not be a very high listening audience but where the listening audience that does exist is crucial. The BBC, with its objective reporting and wide understanding of the world, is a lifeline for sane, decent people.

As regards the contribution of the British Council to education and cultural exchange, cultural exchange enables us to understand others’ backgrounds so much better. The way in which people across the world have loved Shakespeare as the result of the British Council’s efforts is not to be underestimated.

I conclude by referring to the observation that I was so glad the most reverend Primate the Archbishop included in his interesting opening speech. In all this we have to look at ourselves and what is happening in Britain. Whenever there is a miscarriage of justice, or an unjustifiable action or manhandling in the forces, police or border authority, it is storing up insecurity for the future. It is essential, given the personal experience of people’s treatment by one of these authorities, that standards of decency, care, concern and compassion are there all the time. They are important for the people concerned but if they are not there, we may have bright people going home, alienated and aggravated, and becoming potential recruits to extremism and the rest.

Perhaps I may make one important—for me, anyway; I am sure it is for others— point about all this. We must be very careful about slipping, under pressures and provocation that I do not underestimate, into the concept that somehow the Home Office, which is the equivalent to the ministry of the interior in many countries of the world, is moving into positions of responsibility in our universities. This matters not only in terms of academic freedom, which we have treasured in our society, and the autonomy of universities in that context, but what is the example we are setting to the world? To the world, it is quite normal for interior ministries and the Home Office to do that. Of course the issues are huge, but let us pause for a moment and ask ourselves what we are really doing.