United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973

Jim Dowd Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

Obviously we are all constrained by time, but these are grave matters not only for the people of Libya, but for the people of this country and for our allies, and indeed for the future of the United Nations.

In framing my remarks, I am minded to use the words of a wily old operator of recent years in this House, the late, great Eric Forth, who once said that when there is unanimity between the Front Benches, it is almost axiomatic that they are wrong. I do not believe that to be the case, but I believe that it is incumbent on us to examine most carefully those who do not agree with the proposition that is advanced by the Government and supported by the Opposition. I will vote with the Government tonight, but like my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) and any Member of this House who has any sense, I have a number of reservations about the nature of the path on which we are embarking, where it will take us, how it will end—which a number of Members have spoken about—how we can measure success, and what it presages for future international engagement and involvement.

International experience of recent times may lead us to different conclusions. The actions in Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan and the complete inaction, for various reasons, in Rwanda and Zimbabwe have all had consequences for those involved. Otto von Bismarck, a politician perhaps not as great as Eric Forth, described politics as the art of the possible. In such issues, what matters is what is politically possible; I do not think that there is an abiding principle that unites them. It is a case of whether the ingredients necessary for international action and the will to undertake international action can be marshalled in the right proportion and with the requisite enthusiasm.

I can well understand those in this country who say, “This is nothing to do with us. Why, again, is it British armed forces—British servicemen and women—who are being placed in harm’s way when there is no direct British interest?” The Prime Minister referred to that point earlier. I agree that the interests of this nation and our people are not always directly connected to such matters. Sometimes there are dotted-line connections that have to be borne in mind. There are those who are asking, “Why should we get involved?” Somebody on the television last week, I think a former editor of The Sun, was saying that all the lives in Libya were not worth one ounce of British blood. I think that is a particularly brutal and unpleasant view of the world—that may be a prerequisite for being editor of The Sun—but I do not think many civilised people in this country share it.

The need to consider people’s reservations is important, though. We cannot offer all the guarantees that people would want, but as the Prime Minister pointed out and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition echoed, the fact that we cannot do everything does not mean we should do nothing. To those who want consistency and say, “You’ve made mistakes in the past,” the only answer is that that doctrine would lead us to believe that, for consistency’s sake, we must carry on making mistakes in the future, and that we should never do anything right if we have never done it before. More particularly, it would be to say, “Be a pioneer, by all means, but never do anything for the first time.” Sometimes there are cases in which we just have to.

The situation will be difficult, including in considering what the end will look like. There can be no end under Gaddafi, I am convinced of that. As the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) said, if Gaddafi were to scale down his operations and the UN were to say that resolution 1973 had been discharged and should be dispensed with, as soon as we were gone he would take up the struggle against his own people again.

I believe that the only previous no-fly zone was authorised against Iraq, and of course it was supplanted only by the invasion and the war. I am not clear what the end of the current situation will be. More particularly, I have grave concerns about how we will judge whether events are going well or badly. I assume that in the first instance it will be about whether the Libyan people are no longer being harassed by Gaddafi, at least not overtly. For as long as that is the case, we can claim some success. We can already, because the assault on Benghazi that was clearly intended did not materialise in the way that Gaddafi and his henchmen envisaged.

We have a difficult choice. I will support the Government in their motion to support resolution 1973, because I believe that is less bad than the alternative of doing nothing. It is also consistent with the type of nation that I believe the majority of the British people make up. We are not the kind of people who pass by on the other side of the road. Sometimes we have to put up or shut up. On this occasion I shall certainly now shut up, but I believe we should put up.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

We have heard 50 speeches tonight, and I have listened to the vast majority of them. Every single one has raised proper questions and issues. It will, of course, be impossible to respond to all of them in the 16 minutes that remain, but I will do my best to respond to the general themes and to some of the specific questions.

The debate has naturally focused on UN Security Council resolution 1973 and the situation in Libya, but many Members have pointed out that there are wider conclusions to be drawn, and a need to address our policy on the entire region. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), for instance, referred to the dramatic changes that have taken place throughout the region: changes that may already constitute the most important event of the early 21st century—even more important than 9/11 or the 2008 financial crisis—in terms of their possible consequences.

If many of the countries of the middle east turn into stable democracies and more open economies, the gains for our security and prosperity will be enormous. If they do not, the potential breeding grounds for terrorism and extremism will prosper. That is why it is so much in our national interest to address these issues, and why my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I have argued that the response of the whole of Europe must be as bold, as ambitious and as historic in its intentions as these events are in their nature. We should be holding out to the countries of the middle east the prospect of free trade, areas of customs union and a new economic area with the European Union. We should be providing it with incentives and acting as a magnet for positive change in that region.

We can be optimistic about the prospects for positive change in many of those countries. In Egypt, the Egyptian army’s decision to protect the people kept the spotlight firmly where it was supposed to be—on a Government who had to listen to people’s aspirations. In Tunisia, too, after deplorable violence against unarmed protestors, the Government crumbled, accepting the will of the people and beginning a transformation of the political system. The situation in Libya is completely different. In the past three weeks we have heard reports of soldiers being burned alive for refusing to obey orders to crush the protests. We have seen the use of mercenaries to slaughter civilians, the cutting off of food, electricity and medical supplies to population centres and the broadcast of televised threats to purge whole cities and to hunt down people in their homes. Just today, after the announcement of a second ceasefire by the Gaddafi regime, Reuters has reported that Gaddafi’s forces fired on a crowd of unarmed people late today in the centre of the city of Misrata. In Ajdabiya, there have been reports of body thefts, with military casualties being made to look like civilian casualties. Al-Jazeera reports that Gaddafi’s forces continue to shell the town of Zintan heavily and that they have given residents two hours to surrender or face total execution. That is what passes for a ceasefire according to the Gaddafi regime.

It is against that background that the House has today weighed carefully the arguments that we have presented for and against our military actions. There has been nothing gleeful or gung-ho about the atmosphere in the House and there is nothing gung-ho about the atmosphere in and decisions of the Government. The great majority of hon. Members who have spoken today have spoken in support of the Government’s actions and the motion, and many explained that they did so with reluctance or regret. The Government have approached this issue with the same sense of gravity.

It was fascinating to listen to my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), who spoke of the horror of violence. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster), who has served in three wars in the past decade, pointed out that nobody who has served in them ever wants to be involved in one again. Hon. Members have wrestled with their consciences. The hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) said that he was debating with himself and for a moment he did, indeed, debate with himself in front of the whole House, which was quite a spectacle. The fact that he should be wrestling with his conscience illustrates the difficulty of the choices we face and the general unity that the House has come to, which is not an automatic or unthinking unity but is because we think it right to act in this situation. We are conscious that any military action can involve loss of life, but we are clear that when our armed forces take action they take the greatest care to avoid civilian casualties. When our pilots were on their mission last night and thought that civilians were in danger, they turned back—what a contrast with a regime that turns its guns on its own people and regards the lives of its citizens as mere shields.

We are clear that we are engaged in this action to protect the civilian population and we were clear, as last week went on, that we had to act with all possible speed. That is why we moved heaven and earth, diplomatically, to pass the UN resolution on Thursday night. Yes, we took a risk in doing that because nine positive votes are required in the Security Council and there can be no vetoes. To have been defeated on that resolution would have made it hard to take any subsequent action, but any later would have been too late. Once the resolution was passed, we had to move with all possible speed. As the House knows, the Cabinet met on Friday morning to consider the UN resolution at length, with the legal advice of the Attorney-General in front of us for all members to read, and the Prime Minister came to the House at the earliest possible moment to state our intention.

Some hon. Members have asked whether the House should have sat on Saturday to consider the motion; of course, in future instances, that can be considered, but they should be clear that to effect the situation, we had to give the orders for military action on Saturday afternoon. Other hon. Members have asked that there be no mission creep. I am happy to assure them that if the Government ever fundamentally change the nature of the mission that we have described to the House, we will return to the House for a further debate to consult it again. We will also enshrine in law for the future the necessity of consulting Parliament on military action.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) quite rightly asked—the shadow Foreign Secretary echoed this—what debate we would be having today had we not taken action last week. How many people would now be wringing their hands? How many would be lamenting the fate of a proud city and the lives of people who live there?

[Jim Dowd]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Hague]

I will mention the hon. Gentleman in a moment, so he can intervene then, but I am trying in a very short time to answer the questions that have been asked. How many extra tens of thousands of people would now be streaming to the borders? We should be proud that our forces were able to respond in time. One of the reasons—the main reason—why people have heard of forces from only the United States, France and the United Kingdom going into action is that they are among the few countries in the world with the capability to act so quickly. It is not necessarily that other countries are unwilling; their capability is not as great.

The reason why we were able to act in that way and win such support at the United Nations is that the support—the call—of the Arab League for a no-fly zone and the protection of the people of Libya was unprecedented. That has had an enormous impact. The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) gave the other side of the argument, and asked why Britain should get involved. Given the background—we are one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, one of only three of those members who believed that it was necessary to take action, and one of the few countries with the military capability to do something about the situation—if we had not got involved in the resolution and the action, then such a resolution and such action would probably not have happened at all. That is our responsibility in the United Kingdom, as well as our clear national interest. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said, it is not in our national interest for a dangerous dictator with a record of violent acts beyond his own country to run a pariah state on the very edge of the European Union.