First World War

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

My Lords, I had not intended to intervene in this debate, but I am prompted to do so very briefly by the two speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Davies. They were brilliant speeches in many ways and I have tremendous respect for the debating power of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and, indeed, for that of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. However, I profoundly disagreed with their conclusion. Broadly, as I understand it, it was that if we had had the European Union at the time of the two great wars, we would not have had any wars at all. I think that that is an accurate representation. They were saying that a process of centralisation and consolidation would have saved us from having these wars. Arguably, exactly the opposite is the case.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I did not say anything of the sort and I do not happen to think that either. What I said was that we now have the European Union and that we should not turn our backs on it; I did not say that if we had had it before the First World War everything would have been hunky-dory.

[Lord Spicer]

I exonerate the noble Lord. I think that it is fair to say that the noble Lord, Lord Davies, did argue that point. Arguably, it is the exact opposite. The thing that caused the wars was the centralisation and determination of one nation—the Germans—and the individual sovereign states were those that created the peace, winning the war, and there was a lasting peace thereafter. So it was the exact opposite of what the noble Lord, Lord Davies, was saying. One has only to look at the American Civil War to see the effect of the process of forced centralisation and so on in terms of creating wars. I wanted to set the record straight on that, because that was certainly the impression that I got from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay—it was pretty well irrelevant to raise the question of the European Union in the context today, if he did not believe that it would have had some effect on history. I think that it would have been the opposite effect in the wrong hands, and I just want to put that straight.