Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Lord Thomas of Swynnerton Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Swynnerton (CB)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure, as another Welshman, to follow the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, and to be reminded of the superior grandeur of Llandudno.

Ours is a generation which has lived in the shadow of war and terrorism but more recently of terrorism. I am a survivor of Brighton 1984, when Anthony Berry MP was murdered by the IRA and the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, had his life ruined by its activities. I also recall the murders of such noble figures as Ian Gow and Airey Neave, both of whom I knew well. I heard close at hand, in my own house, the bomb in Campden Hill Square which was intended for Hugh Fraser but killed a cancer specialist. I was told by my wife not to slam the door; she thought that I was behaving badly, but it was the IRA.

In addition, at one time in my life I made a special study of the international anarchist movement, which in the years before 1914 sought maximum publicity for what it called “the propaganda of the deed”. It believed that if it managed to “strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest” a golden age would begin. It murdered three Prime Ministers in Spain, a President of the United States, an Austrian Empress, at least one cardinal and did a lot of other damage. The consequences were in the end nil.

Some fine novels explain and describe that era. I think of Conrad’s The Secret Agent, of Henry James’s brilliant Princess Casamassima and Pio Baroja’s La Dama Errante, which tells of what happened to those who tried to murder King Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria of Spain in Madrid when they were coming back from their coronation in 1905.

I venture to mention these matters to remind the House that, although they were different, we have faced similar challenges to radical Islam in the past—not perhaps as bad, as the noble Lord, Lord Green, reminded us—and have survived thanks to a variety of stratagems. We can recall past victories in the battle against terrorism as well as present woes.

The challenge posed now is, of course, an international matter. So was the anarchist movement. Anarchists were once known as “the Internationals”. Radical Islam—which I suppose is the right name and the right way of putting it—is rich. This makes it more formidable in many respects as there can be no weaponry which it cannot afford. Yet wealth can lead to decay faster than poverty.

Radical Islam now has a heartland in Syria and Iraq which we cannot ignore, just as we cannot visit it. There are also, as we have been reminded on many occasions today, many nests of ill intentioned radicals in all the major European cities. This makes everything much more complicated. In these circumstances, most of us see the need, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Evans, will agree, for greater security and greater willingness to give the police powers of investigation and oversight. I say this pace to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. It is sad that it should be so and it is understandable that such concessions seem to some, including my dear and very old friend the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, a threat to our ancient liberties. However, our ancient liberties are under threat and their preservation requires high spending on intelligence and interpretation. We must assume that our security services and police have the instruments and techniques that they ask for, since one will not be able to forgive anything that goes wrong if we neglect something that could have been done but was not because of a lack of wiser provision. We must try to relate the steps that seem to limit liberty to the time during which there is a real threat. In World War II, for example, people had no doubt about the benefits of temporary censorship and the control of information. Confiscation of passports is an extremely unpleasant idea, but all is a matter of time: if it is temporary, it does not matter. The word “repeal” is used by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, very effectively.

On these activities, I will say one thing: we ought always to aspire to seek to capture and then try terrorist conspirators or activists. The killing of the murderers in Paris was understandable and right, but I have always felt that killing Bin Laden in that very calculated way was a bitter response; I would have liked to have seen a trial, complex and difficult though it certainly would have been.

I will also seize on the use of the word “generational”. It is suggested that we are involved in a generational struggle that is going to go on for a very long time indeed. Surely that is very pessimistic. If we are going to win, we must win soon; it is a little pessimistic to think that it will take a matter of years, as the noble Lord, Lord Condon, and others spoke of.

The tone of our current propaganda needs to be measured: it should not be too heavy. We need to recall that what distinguishes our civilisation from others is that we have a sense of humour. When Disraeli referred to the Opposition Front Bench as a “row of extinct volcanoes”, he did not expect to be denounced, as indeed he never was. Would a modern Disraeli be denounced if he spoke of the leaders of the Arab spring in similar terms? Radical Islam has not yet shown many achievements of humour, any more than the IRA or the anarchists whom I mentioned did.