Syria

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for tabling this debate. She spoke about her concerns that arose both during and subsequent to her visit to Syria. My own interest and concerns with Syria go back considerably longer, and long before the war. When I went to see if there was at the time any possibility of rapprochement between Israel and Syria, it was clear that there was. I came back and told the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, but when he sent out Sir Nigel Sheinwald, what was engaged in was the kind of finger-wagging diplomacy that informed the President that if he did not do what Britain wanted, it would be the worse for him. I mention that because it seems to me that the attitude of Her Majesty’s Government to Syria and the regime there has been part of the problem rather than part of the solution, going back a very long way. To come to the view in almost any conflict, particularly in the Middle East which I know quite well, that there are good guys on one side and bad guys on the other, simply lines you up with one side or the other so that you become part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

When the war itself broke out subsequent to a failed attempt at revolution—indeed, apart from in Tunisia, none of the attempted revolutions in the Middle East has been positive and successful—I urged Her Majesty’s Government not to engage militarily or make any intervention. Of course, the House of Commons subsequently made doing so impossible. However, I agreed that support should be provided for our allies on the front line, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, because without supporting them the situation would get worse. The Government were not able to engage militarily because of the decision of the House of Commons, but that did not mean that we have not engaged through military training, materiel and intelligence operations which have merely made the situation worse. I recall having discussions in 2012-13 with some of my Liberal Democrat colleagues and one of them saying to me at the time, “John, you say it could be worse, but I don’t believe it could be any worse if we were to intervene”. I replied by saying, “Not only could it be worse, it will be much worse because what we are seeing is a descent into chaos that will not be restricted just to the Middle East”.

We are already some years into a third global conflict and we are merely contributing to the difficulties around it. It is not really a Sunni-Shia fight because there are Sunnis on both sides. We are contributing to something which, if we are not careful, will ensure that Christians who have been living in communities in the country for two millennia will be driven out.

My question for Her Majesty’s Government is in many ways a simple one. When will the Government understand that the policy they have been following through several Governments has failed? Continuing with it is not going to help the situation either for the people in the region or for this country because of how it is perceived in the wider region and indeed by some within our own communities. I have just a little hope, given the Statement made recently by Prime Minister Theresa May that it was not for the United Kingdom to engage with the use of force in order to change the way other people run their countries, that perhaps some reflection is beginning to take place in Her Majesty’s Government.

Outcome of the European Union Referendum

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, as a lifetime committed pro-European, I have spoken increasingly over the past five or six years on my concerns about how things were developing in Europe and in our relationship with Europe. First, it seemed to me that the fundamental purpose of the European project was being forgotten. The purpose was not economic prosperity. It was not to provide a seat at the top table of world affairs for European politicians. It was not even the extension of democracy and human rights on our continent.

All these were instruments, but they were not the purpose. The purpose was to ensure that we never again descended into deep division, conflict and violence on our continent. The more we forget about the purpose and focus on the instruments, the greater is the danger that we will fail in our purpose and return to the kind of division and conflict that existed in the 1930s—and before and after.

I spoke about these things because I could see quite clearly that people were becoming more and more disenchanted with Europe. It was forgetting about the importance of local identity and national culture and history in its fever to develop something at the European level, not recognising that to do this at European level could provide instability locally and for ordinary people in their own communities if it was not properly attended to.

I said on a number of occasions that I believed that a referendum was almost inevitable, but we needed to work much harder at persuading people that the European project was so important. When eventually it became clear that the referendum was coming sooner rather than later, at home in Northern Ireland we developed a public conversation which we called EU Debate NI. I pay tribute to Eva Grosman and Conor Houston, the two folk from the Centre for Democracy and Peace Building that I run in Belfast. This became the major initiative in Northern Ireland: a public conversation, not campaigning for one side or the other, but enabling people from all sides and with all views to come together in public and engage on the legal, constitutional, educational, agricultural, industrial, economic—all aspects of the question.

It meant that in Northern Ireland the debate was able to be conducted without some of the rancour and vitriol that there was over here, and the outcome was an accepted outcome for remain. In a part of the United Kingdom so used to partisanship we were able to find a way of debating this difficult question without deep rancour. That was not the case on this side of the water, which is a serious warning that, not just in this country but more widely in Europe, the subject of our co-operation and collaboration in Europe is descending into vitriol, rancour and great danger.

On the afternoon of the referendum count, Charlie Flanagan, the Foreign Minister of the Irish Republic, was able to publish a contingency plan for all departments of the Irish Government on how they were going to address the problem of Brexit—Her Majesty’s Government, take note. The Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, quite properly paid tribute to Prime Minister Cameron, because one of the first people whom the Prime Minister rang was Enda Kenny to thank him for his support and to make it clear that there was a preparedness to co-operate in succeeding days. Indeed, in Ireland north and south, there is an appreciation that, whatever happens, we have to find a way of working closely together.

Of course, that is for the sake of the Good Friday agreement, although I am encouraged that, rather than the Brexit result producing polarisation, it has been treated as a problem to be addressed rather than a dividing line among our people. But I ask the Minister to give an undertaking that Her Majesty’s Government will see it as a top priority, because it matters within the United Kingdom to ensure that the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly are involved in the conversations with the Irish Government to ensure that the Good Friday agreement continues to work effectively and efficiently.

There are many Irish people living here in Britain. They, too, wonder how relationships with the Irish Republic will be conducted. I trust that I can also seek an assurance from the Minister that Her Majesty’s Government will see the Government of Ireland as being what they are: the closest and best friend in Europe and in the European Union that this country has, and that they will be regarded not simply as one of 27 with whom we have to engage but rather the closest possible friend with whom we must work directly to ensure the best outcome for this country, the best outcome for Ireland—which, whether in spite of or because of our historic difficulties, is very close to us—and the best outcome for the United Kingdom.

I have much less concern than many of my colleagues about the economic survival of this country. It will go through difficult times, of course—not only because of Brexit but for other reasons—but I remain deeply concerned that what is happening is not just a cause but a symptom of deepening division not just in this country but across Europe and more widely. I plead with the Government and others in your Lordships’ House to spend time not focusing alone, although it is so important, on how we deal with the best interests of this country over the next few years in Europe but also on analysing and understanding more clearly the geopolitical developments which are leading us to a very dangerous place—in this continent, in North America, in South America, in sub-Saharan Africa, of course in the wider Middle East and in fact across our world. These are difficult times, but we must not focus only on ourselves as we try to address them.

Universal Declaration on Human Rights: Article 18

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Alton of Liverpool for bringing this debate to us and introducing it with his usual passion and eloquence as he spoke about the problem of religious intolerance and intolerance of belief across the world. I am grateful, too, as I am sure others are, for the slip of the cursor that ensured the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bengarve, made a contribution. Indeed, I want to pick up from her contribution where she spoke about the troubling confusion that seems to be around in the UK about these matters. It seems that there is now a pervasive lack of knowledge and understanding of what religion is about. Indeed, the religious affairs correspondent of the BBC said in one of the broadsheets some months ago that it would no longer be possible to successfully make a satire like Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” because there are not enough people around now who understand what the satire was about. That seems to me to be something of a condemnation of the BBC, in that it has failed in that aspect of its educative mandate and to ensure that people do understand the importance of these matters. But the result has been that many in the establishment—our universities, our Government and our Civil Service—do not really understand what religious faith is about and what it means. They then lack sympathy for these matters, so that freedom of religion is relegated much further down the pecking order than freedom of many other principles, orientations or interests. It is not considered as a serious matter by many of those in authority.

Much of this is to do with a lack of understanding of the psychology of large groups and how they function and, in particular, of how groups think. For example, people will talk about all religions talking about the same thing or having the same views. They do not. That is just nonsense which can be maintained only by somebody who does not know anything much about any of them. Religions are different and have very different results in the lives of the people who believe and follow them. However, there is another fundamental difference, between fundamentalism and other ways of viewing religious faith. This question of how religious faiths are held and the way in which people think, whether they are religious or not, is perhaps the most important one, because there can be atheistic fundamentalists just as much as religious fundamentalists. In many ways, those with different religious faiths who hold their beliefs in a non-fundamentalist way are often closer in understanding than so-called coreligionists. The failure to understand this and that fundamentalist ways of holding religious belief are not actually congruent with multifaith and multicultural societies means that we have, in many ways, been much too tolerant of intolerance, including among some of our allies.

I want to finish by remarking on this question of whether or not economic freedom is now regarded by the Government as more important than religious freedom. Our tolerance of the intolerance of our economic partner, Saudi Arabia, led to massive amounts of money going into fostering fundamentalism in the Islamic world, and the price we are paying is horrible. Can the Minister tell us whether or not Her Majesty’s Government regard economic freedom as being of a higher and more significant order than that of religious freedom?

Freedom of Religion and Belief

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, we have all been done a great service by the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, in obtaining this debate and giving us the opportunity not just to speak but to listen and think about these matters.

I, too, start by declaring interests. One is the research work that I do at Oxford University and the other is that of being, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, a practising Christian—practising for many years but seemingly no nearer to expertise, but that is the way of these things.

I want not to go back over the many things that have been said by other noble Lords but to refer to some of my own experience in these matters. Very understandably, noble Lords have outlined the horrible evidences of religious intolerance and radical political belief which have led to horrible violence and which continue, seemingly ever worsening, all around the world. It is understandable that we focus on that because it raises our emotions of fear, anguish, hurt and sometimes even hate, but of course what we are speaking about there is the right to life, not just the right to a belief or a religious faith. In a way, we are both very privileged and a little disadvantaged by working in this place, where there is an enormous amount of tolerance. People are prepared to listen to each other and to accept great differences of belief of different kinds.

In passing, I say that we are foolish if we think that there is religious belief and unbelief. The truth is that people who do not have religious beliefs have beliefs of their own. Perhaps there has tended to be the notion that we can resolve a lot of these matters if we simply put religious beliefs into a private box and have a society where some other kind of belief—whatever it is—runs the show or has a prevailing effect. However, the truth is that religious faith, like any other kind of belief, impacts entirely on your way of being in the world and on your community and its way of being in the world. Thinking that somehow or other it is possible to say, “Well, that doesn’t really matter”, says something about your kind of belief; it does not say anything about whether you are a believer of some description. You cannot not believe: you have a set of views, and it is very important for us to understand that.

I come to this with my own background in a particular part of the United Kingdom. Sometimes people would like to forget that it is part of the United Kingdom because of some of the symptoms of behaviour there, particularly in relation to matters such as this, but I am afraid that it is. Maybe it reminds the rest of the United Kingdom of its history and background. Many of the things that are still troublesome in Northern Ireland were troublesome in the rest of the United Kingdom not so very long ago. Noble Lords would not expect me, from these Benches, to speak out particularly strongly in favour of the presence of an established church, although I have to say that in these last decades the Church of England has had a markedly positive effect, both in this Chamber and elsewhere. I particularly want to acknowledge the contribution of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester over many years. When I was Convenor of these Benches, I very much appreciated his work as Convenor of those Benches. I also want to mention the work of the most reverend Primate, who has taken a very strong line on these issues.

I got to know the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in his role as Liberal spokesman on Northern Ireland. Back then, we had to face up to the fact that people had sets of beliefs which led to very intolerant behaviour and attitudes to each other. If I had gone to university in this part of the United Kingdom in the latter part of the 19th century, before the Liberal changes to universities legislation, I, as a dissenter, would not have been able to take a degree at Oxford or Cambridge.

Therefore, on the question of how we deal with these matters, we have progressed in certain ways but I fear that we have not progressed as much as we would like to believe we have, because there is a certain liberal intolerance towards people with various kinds of religious belief. That is clear—it has been mentioned—and it is absolutely true. I have seen it among a number of colleagues in various places. The view is, “It really would be much better if people just piped down about those kinds of things because they can be put in a private box”. However, they cannot. It may be inconvenient and difficult but the fact is that these are matters that drive people and are of profound importance to them. We have to struggle with these questions. As we try to struggle with them, what kinds of things can we take into account?

We must understand that, when it comes to tolerance in these matters, we face a very difficult challenge. The challenge is to differentiate between matters that we usually consider all together. The question of fundamentalism transcends all kinds of beliefs, religious and otherwise. I would find it much easier to reach agreement with people of different religious views, and people whose views are not religious, who had a liberal perspective on these matters. I would find myself much more different from Christians, or others of any description, who took a fundamentalist approach to these things—including those who are fundamentalist atheists. This notion of the way in which we hold our beliefs is extremely important. The noble Lord, Lord Sacks, picked up an extremely important part of this, which is that secular authoritarianism has led, as a reaction, to religious fundamentalism. We must acknowledge and understand that, and that has not been easy to deal with. An example is Turkey, where it was easy to support a secular regime and then be astonished at the reaction.

Secondly, we must differentiate between fundamentalism and radicalisation and the use of violence and terror. These are not the same thing. The vast majority of fundamentalists may well be intolerant of the religious beliefs of others—fundamentalism and conservatism are very different things—but that does not necessarily mean that they support violence. Indeed, many of those who support violence, including people in Daesh, do not come to it from a religious perspective at all. When His Holiness the Pope came to Ireland and said on bended knee to Catholic nationalist republicans, “Stop the violence”, they took no notice of him. They did not pay attention because the actual driver was something quite different. In a long conversation with a leading figure in al-Qaeda many years ago, I was talking about religious tolerance and he said, “Wait a minute. My issue is not about religion. It is about political identity and political problems”.

So, as we try to explore these questions, we must hold back our emotions—because they are very strong—and think more deeply about these issues across the religious differences and across the differences between those who have religious faith and those whose set of beliefs is different. Therefore, to me, the most important question to the Minister is this: can the Foreign Office, DCLG and other departments of government give more attention and resource to thinking and research on these matters? That would deepen our understanding, so that when we respond—in all the difficult circumstances inside and outside our country—we may do so with a depth of understanding that helps us to add to and make a difference to wider thinking about these matters, rather than simply reacting from our very understandable feelings.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Thursday 28th May 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, it is a genuine pleasure to see the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, continuing in her place in the Foreign Office and on the Front Bench, and a positive delight to see the noble Earl, Lord Howe, taking his place as Deputy Leader of the House and in defence and, in that sense, foreign affairs. I have got to know him very well in dealing with health matters over the years, and I can only assume that the Prime Minister looked at the situation and decided that if there was one area that was complicated, difficult, contentious and in need of the attention of the noble Earl, it was defence and foreign affairs. I have no doubt that we are going to be glad of the noble Earl’s presence as well as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay.

I shall first pick up defence because I welcome the Government’s commitment to continuing continuous-at-sea nuclear deterrence. It is necessary because we are in an increasingly dangerous world. It will not solve all the problems, but removing it would simply add to instability. I also welcome indications that the upcoming SDSR will be different from the last one, which was dominated by austerity in the Budget with our requirements coming second. This time round, it will look much more at our national requirements and then address the need for funding. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, was right when he said that it may well require more funding than we expect at this point. It is an increasingly dangerous world and one of the primary responsibilities of government is the defence of the people. There are many other things we like to do, but that is an absolute requirement of government. He spoke about conventional forces, but I think we need to move beyond the conventional in terms of the issues we have to address—notably cyber and terrorism, of course—and in the kind of military strategy and doctrine that we espouse. Will the Minister give an assurance, if she can, that in the United Kingdom’s front-line development of NATO policy on what has become known as “understand to protect”—the approach that says that we need to deepen our understanding if we are to be effective in what we do militarily—we are taking the lead and that we will continue to do so with some energy?

When we come to international development, I of course feel that one of the great achievements of the coalition Government and of my right honourable friend Michael Moore was the legislation that embedded 0.7% as our commitment to international development. I hope that the funding available will not simply be used to maintain and build upon the kind of work that DfID has previously done and the kind of NGOs that have been involved with it but that DfID will understand, as I believe the MoD understands in its territory, that there need to be changes in the way we approach these things. It is no longer appropriate simply to have conventional forces, and it is no longer appropriate simply to have conventional economic ways of dealing with community development in the wider world. I hope that the noble Baroness can assure me that DfID will be looking for new ways of addressing things, not merely the conventional ones.

When it comes to the European Union, I have long taken the view that our people need to have a say on this question because otherwise it will continue to niggle away at relationships within these islands and beyond. I want to emphasise something which the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, commented on and which was referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman. One hundred years ago in your Lordships’ House, there was a sense that not moving forward on some of the Liberal commitments of the time, notably Gladstone’s approach to what we now call devolution but which was called home rule in those days, would provide stability and unity for our United Kingdom. That was not the result; the result was that 27 counties of Ireland seceded. If we do not find a satisfactory outcome in terms of our relationship with Europe, it will endanger the union. Let us be absolutely clear about it: were we to leave the European Union, the likelihood would be that Scotland would choose to leave the United Kingdom, and I fear there would be instability in my part of the United Kingdom because we would be so distanced from England and Wales, as it would be, and some of the historic loyalties to England are much less than the historic loyalties to Scotland. This question of Europe does not involve just our relationships outside the United Kingdom; it involves the very integrity of the United Kingdom, and I plead that your Lordships’ House takes that into account more than it was taken into account 100 years ago in this House.

I will focus the latter part of what I have to say on foreign affairs. One of the advantages of the debate on the gracious Speech is that each year we can look back at what we said the previous year and decide whether we were pointing in the right direction or understand things differently and better now. As I looked back in preparation for this speech at the things I said last year and in 2013 I was sorry to see that all the warnings that I had given about the worsening international situation have been entirely fulfilled and built up but that the warnings about what we need to do have not been taken forward. I shall comment on three particular areas. First, when the question of Syria arose, I warned very clearly that the United Kingdom and its allies were very foolish to hitch their whole strategy to the notion of getting rid of President Assad. I said it was understandable, but unwise, and would not lead to success. It has not led to success. Among other things, we now find ourselves in the extraordinary position where our stated policy is to get rid of President Assad and to get rid of Daesh—as most Muslim countries prefer to call IS—at the same time. In other words, we are going to fight a war on two fronts and do not have anybody left in the middle. This simply does not make sense.

We have to look again at how we deal with Syria. This is where “understand to protect” comes to the fore because it says that we need to look at what we are doing in these situations before we decide that we are going to react to them. The development of Daesh has been outlined very clearly by my noble friend Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon. It is a very dangerous situation. We may be past the post now, but we have probably seen the development of a war which may well continue for longer than any of your Lordships in this House. It is a hugely dangerous situation, and we must see what we can usefully do.

One of the key difficulties is that our relationship with Russia has continued to deteriorate; therefore, at the level of the Security Council and every level below we do not have any way of working together on some of these key questions. That is true in the Middle East. It is true that those questions are spoken about with regard to Israel/Palestine. The position of the Quartet has never been a united one. Russia has always talked to Hezbollah, Hamas and everybody else, while the Quartet maintained that it was not talking to those people. However, the fact is, as many of us have been warning over the past few years, that the two-state solution is as good as gone, and we now have a Prime Minister elected on a mandate—whatever he said after the election—that says that there will be no two-state solution on his watch. There is no possibility of any simple negotiation of the kind we are used to unless we change the situation, and the only way I can see of changing the situation and permitting the emergence of serious discussions on a two-state solution is if this country—and even more particularly the United States—recognises the state of Palestine, and then we move to implement it. Anything else is only fiddling in the wind and, actually worse than that, creates a situation where people such as Hamas are regarded as wishy-washy liberals by young Muslims in the Middle East, who say, “No—we must turn to IS because the only thing the West understands is the kind of force that is really frightening to them”.

In respect of Russia, we wrung our hands at Crimea and we worried about Ukraine. It is coming closer to home. If we look at the deteriorating situation in Macedonia, the foolishness of the EU about extending too far into Ukraine is mirrored by its foolishness at not accepting Macedonia in at a much earlier stage. Now Russia is getting involved in the destabilisation of Macedonia, a place I have had my eye on since around the late 1990s, because I saw that its problems were so similar to those that I experienced at home. We have to repair our relationship with Russia, however difficult it may be, because some of the difficulties of the region from which the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, and her family come will come back to us. Let us not forget that two Balkan wars in the run-up to the First World War were fought in the territory of Macedonia. It remains a key area.

However, lest I simply be the Jeremiah, there are two positive developments, one small and very local to ourselves, and one of geopolitical significance, which could improve things a little. First, I strongly support the initiative taken by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, and by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for the establishment of a permanent committee of your Lordships’ House on international affairs. That is absolutely critical. Nothing else is more important than trying to find a peaceful way forward in our world. On that front, there is one bright hope, which is that there will be some kind of reasonable treaty and understanding with Iran. That is the one thing in the short term that could begin to change the geopolitics of that whole region, and I plead for some reassurance from the noble Baroness that our Government are committed to doing all they can to achieve an understanding with Iran and to build relations with that historic community and nation. That is the one positive development for the next few months which could change things for the better.