Reconciliation: Role of British Foreign, Defence and International Development Policy

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Friday 14th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord. He said he was rather trepidatious about participating in this debate. He had no reason for that, but I certainly do. I can only reassure the most reverend Primate that I am not an expert, and certainly not a world expert. However, the magnificent sweep of his speech has led me to reflect on what I was intending to say, to see whether I can pick up some of the things he talked about.

Something often seen as contextual to reconciliation but which I think has a much more immediate and practical impact is the role that cultural heritage can play, both by making reconciliation almost impossible when it is destroyed and yet enabling it when it is recognised as the sort of difference that we must respect. The most reverend Primate talked about the need for respecting difference. This is a prime example and belongs in the arsenal of tools for reconciliation about which he spoke.

The first challenge is to ensure that both cultural monuments and the intangible heritage of different cultures, which in their universal values belong to the whole world, are respected as such and that we prevent their destruction, which fuels a rage and bitterness that crosses not only generations but centuries. The second is to restore and rebuild all forms of cultural heritage, not least as a work of reconciliation and resilience, as part of the holistic restoration of order and sustainable peace after conflict. Importantly, most of the innovative work in this field is now being led by the UK. It is an area of policy that faces its own challenges: not least how it can best be integrated as an effective arm of aid and development policy, as well as defence and foreign policy.

Noble Lords will know that the destruction of culture as a weapon of war goes back millennia. There has never been a more powerful act of propaganda than the way, throughout history, that culture and heritage have been targeted for destruction by those who hate others’ beliefs and ways of life. From the reliefs of the enemy warriors cut deep into the temples of Karnak to the destruction of Mostar bridge, it is clear that what aggressors fear most is not military might but the survival of the values and heritage of those whom they are intent on subjugating. Grotius in the 17th century wrote about that in his great work, On the Law of War and Peace.

Those beliefs are reflected in monumental history but are not contained by those monuments. That is why they are such a threat to an enemy who aims, in the words of Irina Bokova, the director-general of UNESCO, to wipe out and cleanse all traces of a counter-culture. We also know from long experience that lasting peace cannot be built in a cultural desert. History, identity and memory cannot be erased, but when they are threatened with annihilation, the fear and rage that persist poison generation after generation. The 20th century is a narrative of that.

Cultural heritage is also vulnerable to ignorance and collateral damage, as the Chilcot report found. It reported that,

“by failing to provide for the protection of cultural property, Coalition planners made it considerably more difficult for troops on the ground to win hearts and minds”.

Despite instinctively knowing that, it still took us 50 years to ratify the Hague convention. But when the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill was eventually passed, two years ago, supported by the work of the Blue Shield, there was universal rejoicing, not least because it was the signal for the MoD to move ahead on creating a new cultural property protection unit, which is now brilliantly led by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Purbrick. The work of this new unit in preventing the destruction of monuments and protecting art and archaeology will, I am sure, make a major contribution to the long processes of reconciliation by removing some of the most toxic elements of what inspires rage and fear.

I will focus the remainder of my speech on the work of the British Council—its proactive, local work—and the £30 million cultural protection fund, which is managed primarily by the British Council and DCMS. It is an inspired piece of policy-making and has a real role to play in reconciliation. The fund is, in essence, an agent for building peaceful and meaningful relationships with communities across 12 countries in the Middle East and North Africa: areas of great conflict. It does this through the promotion and protection of cultural heritage intrinsically linked to that place. It recognises in its work that there cannot be reconciliation without mutual respect for different cultures and beliefs, however they are expressed. Therefore, its priorities are to support the care and restoration of built heritage and intangible heritage, as well as museums, archives, archaeology and monuments. These are the storehouses of the world’s knowledge, as well as being of huge local significance.

The British Council says, quite rightly, that, through placing value on this heritage and enabling communities to play a pivotal role in its protection, we are contributing to the resilience of often extremely persecuted minority groups, including Syrian and Yazidi refugees. On the ground, it helps to train people to restore cultural monuments, and it helps to build local capacity to foster, safeguard and promote cultural heritage. Local partners on the ground can access grants of between £100,000 and £2 million for this work.

Many of the projects that are supported are for recording cultural heritage at risk of being lost for ever, for training local stonemasons or for embedding cultural protection in political structures. I am sure that noble Lords will have heard of the work being done by the British Museum and the World Monuments Fund to train Syrian stonemasons. There are other examples of projects where local groups are trained to document digitally the monuments that are at risk. In fact, they are funding archaeologists in eight different countries to use aerial detection techniques so that they can see from the air what they can no longer reach on the ground. Another project enables Yazidis to make films of their own culture. Others are rehabilitating heritage sites, such as the great Byzantine church in Jabalia in Gaza. The fund also supports the Turquoise Mountain Trust to ensure that the aims of the CPF are aligned with the objectives of the Afghan Government.

The fund is therefore about so much more than protecting or conserving culture and memory; it is about cultural resilience and capacity in fragile states, and about laying the foundations for sustainable peace. However, it also sits well within the wider dimensions of reconciliation, understanding that poverty and marginalisation breed despair and rage. It demonstrates how knowledge, skills, jobs and resources can build the elements of a sustainable peace. These ideas have now been developed by the British Council in its recent report on how cultural heritage can be a force for inclusive growth.

That links with our own country because it embeds our sense that what has made our past is also part of our future. It builds identity through an understanding of shared history and cultures. The Heritage Lottery Fund in this country, in which I should declare an interest, has played an important role in framing that work.

This is nothing but good news, but there could be better news. First, if the MoD leadership was picked up by the FCO and DfID, we could get the holistic approach to development through culture that is presently missing, and that would give enormous force and reach to this work. Secondly, the fund is running out just at the point when its impact is being recognised and demand is growing.

In conclusion, I have two questions for the Minister. Will he go back to his colleagues in those departments and insist that they work more closely with the DCMS to bring about that integrated role in development and aid in foreign and defence policy? That would really optimise the work being done through these cultural agencies so that we could build from the bottom up the sort of reconciliation that will remove generations from fear and hate and build something that will last. Will he also go to the DCMS and ask his colleagues there to consider, as a matter of urgency, extending the programme which has been so successful? Only then will we meet the message and imperatives set out by the most reverend Primate this morning.