Syria: British Armed Forces

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie]

I should say to the noble and gallant Lord that the United Kingdom enjoys a very good relationship with the Republic of Cyprus, which includes a cordial relationship as regards our sovereign base areas. Of course, our sovereign base areas have been critical to our capability to endeavour to take action against Daesh in Syria.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not clear that, as a result of President Trump’s decision, we are witnessing a major geopolitical shift in the region in favour of Russia? What protocols or understandings are there with Russia to ensure that there is no clash between Russian planes and our own?

[Baroness Goldie]

I can reassure the noble Lord that we have set procedures for handling the airspace above Syria. He is right that, given the number of parties operating over Syria now, the airspace is congested, but that is no different from the conditions during earlier counter-Daesh operations. There are procedures to ensure that air activity is appropriately deconflicted and handled in a safe and professional manner. Those are the rules by which the United Kingdom abides, as do our allies.

D-day: 75th Anniversary

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Earl, who put the Normandy landings so well in context. It is right today to mark the D-day landings and right to pay tribute to the meticulous planning of General Morgan and his team, based on Lord Mountbatten’s earlier planning. It was quite a feat—apart from the soldiers, the land forces—to organise 12,000 aircraft and 7,700 ships in the greatest amphibious operation of all time. It is right to recognise the success of the measures of deception and the work of Bletchley Park. Above all, it is right to salute the bravery of our air, sea and land forces. We should remember the sacrifice of so many lives, which will be commemorated in that memorial to be unveiled on Thursday at Ver-sur-Mer. With hindsight, of course, we can see hesitations, blunders and miscalculations, as shown by Antony Beevor in his perceptive Sunday Times article—but this happens in any military operation. Overall, the longest day was a total success; some say now that the victory was inevitable, but that is with the benefit of hindsight with 20/20 vision.

Paris was, of course, liberated by August. Casualties were severe on all sides. We should remember that 20,000 French civilians died in the fighting. They suffered then, and many also suffered as so much of the infrastructure was destroyed, such as the Seine and Loire bridges. The SS Division Das Reich came from the Mediterranean and up through France, wreaking havoc on so many French civilians, such as those in the Martyr village at Oradour-sur-Glane, the village of Dunes, and others. They left a trail of destruction en route to Normandy. There was so much destruction of towns—Caen, Saint-Lo, Falaise and Villers-Bocage. The terrain, the Bocage landscape, the Normandy farmhouses, the hedgerows and the ditches were ideal for defence. Above all, it was, as the noble Earl has said, an allied victory. Nine countries provided ships and nine provided aircrew, apart, of course, from the land forces. Perhaps President Trump should be reminded of this triumph of multi-nationalism when he visits Omaha beach and sees that magnificent US memorial at the cemetery there.

At the risk of appearing self-indulgent, I have two personal memories to recall. In 1957, after sixth form, I worked for three weeks on a farm near Caen. Everywhere, there were still memories of the war, particularly the cemeteries, maintained so well by our War Graves Commission. I recall that in my village, the annual fete was preceded by a parade to the local British cemetery, where more than 200 men were buried. What struck me as a 17 year-old was that many of the men who died were roughly the same age as myself, perhaps a year or two older. I was proud to be invited by a group of villagers to head the procession with the French veterans, with their berets and medals. In spite of the deaths and enormous destruction in that part of Normandy, what was clear to me was that there was nothing but immense gratitude and good will among the people for the contribution of our British forces to the liberation of France.

Fast forward 50 years. I was taking a school party from my native Swansea around Parliament. Present was the head of the West Wales branch of the Normandy Veterans’ Association, Doug Gausden. When he saw in the Royal Gallery the memorial to Dunkirk, he remarked, “What about us Normandy boys?” I promised to do my best to remedy the omission. A year or so later, with the help of the then Black Rod, whose father-in-law I think took part in the landings, we had a ceremony with a piper to mark the gift from the West Wales Normandy Veterans’ Association of a casket made by a local woodwork teacher with sand from each of the five beaches: Omaha and Utah for the US forces, Juno for Canada, and Gold and Sword, our British beaches. That casket is still there to remind us of the 22,000 and more British men and women who died during the Normandy campaign. I hope noble Lords will visit that casket and reflect, as I have just done.

I cite these stories to give some small personal tribute to the veterans and those who took part in those Normandy landings 75 years ago.

“At the going down of the sun and in the morning


We will remember them”.

We will remember them.

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

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Friday 14th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, I warmly congratulate the most reverend Primate on the third of his excellent speeches which I have heard over the past weeks—first, in the Abbey on the plight of Christians in the Middle East; then at the start of our Brexit debate; and now on the good Christian theme of reconciliation. The Epistles talk of ambassadors for Christ with the gospel of reconciliation, and Christ himself spoke of peacemakers as blessed, so I gladly give a few random reflections on his theme.

First, it is absolutely right that he mentions the interlocking and complementary roles of the three departments—Foreign Office, Defence and International Development—in pursuit of reconciliation. Attempts by us to solve conflicts often require a combination of these three and others.

A good example is the western Balkans during and after the bloody wars of the 1990s. Think of the horror of the massacre of 7,000 or 8,000 Muslim men at Srebrenica. The three departments had been involved in seeking solutions to these conflicts, mostly in coalition with the European Union and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has said, with the United Nations. Now the FCO and the Ministry of Defence, with their substantial reduction in resources, must view with envy the fixed financial commitment available to DfID. There is surely a need for a debate on rebalancing and redefining the role of the three departments. For example, our military was used, properly, to combat the Ebola outbreak, a development crisis.

Often, early military intervention can save lives. I cite the Rwanda genocide in 1994 when, over three months, 800,000 people were killed. A simulation exercise by West Point concluded that 500 or so military at the outset might have prevented the carnage. I had the honour of chairing two reconciliation meetings of Hutu and Tutsi representatives at the Christian Centre at Ashburnham, near Battle in Sussex, at the time, and learned at first hand of the horrors.

Surely there is no lasting development without peace and stability. Well-judged military intervention and skilful diplomacy can lead to peace, as we saw with the excellent military intervention of our forces in Sierra Leone. We should also not forget the role of arbitration mentioned by the most reverend Primate—for example, the arbitration by the Pope over the Beagle Channel dispute between Argentina and Chile.

We should be encouraged by recent progress on conflicts which earlier appeared incapable of solution. I look forward to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, and listened with appreciation to the excellent speech of the noble Lord, Lord Trimble. After Sharpeville and Soweto, the South African problem appeared intractable, as did the problem in Northern Ireland, but Churches, the private sector and the civics—the community groups—played a key role in bridge-building at the time.

This raises the question of the role of Governments as against individuals and communities. Governments cannot forgive injustices—only the victims can. Governments can, however, provide encouragement and facilities for individuals and groups to promote reconciliation. Governments can also learn lessons from the past—lessons for good and for ill. Contrast post-war Germany and Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. In Germany after 1945, yes, the leaders of the Nazis were disposed of at Nuremberg, but the great majority of people, such as Konrad Adenauer, who played such a key role in democracy-building, were given the opportunity to build the structures of the very democratic Federal Republic of Germany. By contrast in Iraq, after 2004 the neocons in Washington overruled the State Department and Colin Powell and demobilised the Iraqi army, unpaid and keeping their arms, and destroyed the structures of the state, which led to the chaos that followed.

There are limits to the possibility of reconciliation, often not recognised by Church leaders. However worthy the cause, however strenuous the effort, some world problems may indeed be without solution and our best efforts must be directed at preventing the worst—or, in despair, redrawing national boundaries, as happened, for example, between Ethiopia and Eritrea and is now in prospect between Serbia and Kosovo.

Perhaps also the Arab-Israeli conflict may fall into this category. Much valuable work has been done at a micro level and I applaud the work of the noble Lord, Lord Stone, and bodies such as Tracks of Peace. The best efforts of President Clinton—and what US President has made as much effort on a particular foreign problem as he—and the shuttle diplomacy of Secretary of State Kerry failed even though there is, among most people of good will, a broad consensus over the outlines of a solution. Bottom up, yes, and top down. Solomon would no doubt have found a solution but, even if the effort is worth while, alas, our diplomats cannot find one.

Similarly in Cyprus—on which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, played a significant and excellent role—the broad lines of an agreement are clear in the Annan plan, but this is the Mediterranean, with all the passions of the Mediterranean, and even moderates such as President Anastasiades of the republic and Mr Akinci in the north, with strong personal chemistry, have failed to reach an agreement.

Further, it may be misplaced to seek reconciliation with some leaders. It would be impossible to seek reconciliation with a Hitler or a Pol Pot, however good one’s intentions. Think of the frozen conflicts around Europe, mostly the result of Russian adventurism in Georgia, Crimea, Transnistria or Nagorno-Karabakh, which defy the best international efforts at reconciliation.

There are, however, some signs of hope in the gloom, making a search for solutions worth while. I was co-founder and senior vice-president of a body called AWEPAA, the Association of West European Parliamentarians for Action against Apartheid, in which the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, of the Liberal Democrats, and my good and noble friend Lord Boateng played a significant part. For over a decade from 1984 I visited South Africa regularly, mostly under Church auspices. I recall in 1984 that whites were avidly reading Alistair Horne’s excellent work, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-62, and fearing the worst. Horne had described how, after a number of terrorist outrages, the middle ground between the Muslim majority and the French minority collapsed, which led to a mass exodus to metropolitan France of the Pieds-Noirs as the infrastructure of Algeria was destroyed.

The whites in South Africa feared that this might also be their fate but, of course, as the white tribe, most of them had no homeland to return to. North of the Limpopo in Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s policies of retribution led to economic collapse and political chaos, but in South Africa, south of the Limpopo, the middle ground largely stood firm. Christians such as Archbishop Tutu, Bishop Hurley, the South African Council of Churches and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference built bridges between black and white. Christians in this country such as Viscount Brentford of the Newick Park Initiative brought communities together.

Civic community organisations flourished, as my noble friend Lord Boateng knows very well personally. Individuals can make a difference for good or ill: a Mandela—Madiba—or a Mugabe. We should also remember that reconciliation can be dangerous. I recall the fate of the Afrikaner leader, Johan Heyns, the moderator of the Dutch Reformed Church. He invited Nelson Mandela to speak to the congress of his Church and for his pains was assassinated shortly after. I think of the poisoning of Frank Chikane, the head of the South African Council of Churches, and other Christians such as Dean Farisani. I criticised government policy at the time. It was labelled as constructive engagement, but it was a very one-sided engagement that often protected the apartheid state from international pressure. Eventually the release of Nelson Mandela avoided the temptation of retribution by the black majority.

I will make two brief final comments. We in the UK are not Norway or Canada, essentially soft-power exponents. We have at our disposal many instruments across the range in the form of first-rate military and intelligence skills, an experienced Diplomatic Service and a major aid programme. Let us also not forget the diaspora communities in our own country, which in my judgment are not used sufficiently. We have Tamils in terms of Sri Lanka and we have Kurds in terms of Iraq and Kurdistan.

Of course, as colleagues have said, we should not overlook the work of the British Council in the Middle East and over many years in South Africa, educating under apartheid. I was invited by the trade unions of the British Council to debate with Father Huddleston of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. He was a great man, but he was an absolutist. He had closed the Church schools in 1954 and he wanted to withdraw the British Council from South Africa as if he expected new black leaders to arise like Chinese terracotta soldiers after liberation. Happily, the unions of the British Council decided against him. We won the debate and the British Council stayed on to play a significant role.

I recall the words of the Prophet Micah in chapter eight: yes, we should walk humbly with our God, but what does the Lord also require of us but to seek justice and love mercy? Let us think of Archbishop Tutu’s justice and reconciliation committees. By all means let our government departments across the board seek reconciliation, but we should recognise the limits. More importantly for us is that our Government should search for justice to underpin that reconciliation. Finally, I would submit that without justice, efforts at reconciliation will be built on sand.

Royal Navy: Staffing

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the depreciation of the pound is certainly an issue that we are wrestling with. To a certain extent, the Ministry of Defence hedges against currency devaluation but we cannot do that indefinitely into the future. We are protected to a large degree at the moment. But it is one of the reasons why we need an NSCR exercise such as the one going on at the moment, which is about not only investing in capability wisely but doing it in a cost-informed way.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, there has recently been good news about co-operation with the French on naval capability. Does the Minister anticipate any further developments of this sort, where we co-operate with our close allies?

UK Defence Forces

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating my noble friend on his initiative and on a Motion which begs many questions. For example, have we adjusted sufficiently to our important but diminishing role in the world? Can we afford to be, or indeed not to be, a global UK punching above our weight in defence matters? What is the state of our defence readiness?

Sir Richard Barrons, the former commander of Joint Forces Command, told the Commons Defence Committee on 14 November—the transcript of that debate is well worth reading—that currently we have,

“a Navy that is structurally underfunded, an Air Force that is holding together a bunch of very good equipment but is really at the edge of its engineering and support capacity, and an Army that is now broadly speaking 20 years out of date”.

For example, today’s Times reports that HMS “Diamond”, our Type 45 destroyer, is aborting its mission to the Gulf for engineering reasons, when its five sister ships are in Portsmouth for maintenance, shortage of staff and engine failure.

Have our people recognised the scale of the changes since the Second World War in our potential world role? Nostalgia and myths clearly played a role in the referendum debate. It is perhaps relevant that the Chancellor did not mention defence in yesterday’s Budget.

It is relevant also that the Government have just replaced a Defence Secretary who knew his job and was highly respected by the military with a man who has apparently shown little or no interest in defence and security matters and whose expertise lies in party management. The pressures on the Chancellor were shown in yesterday’s Budget, with the financial context, including the cost of equipment, worsened by the dollar/euro/sterling exchange rate post Brexit, and hard choices on whether to buy more cheaply off the shelf from the US or develop national capabilities.

As a number of noble Lords have mentioned, key questions include deciding how vital to our core interests amphibiosity is in general, the future of the Royal Marines and the potential loss of HMS “Albion” and HMS “Bulwark” in a trade-off with the Navy. Technical developments, such as artificial intelligence, have changed the debate, and of course the nature of the debate is changing so rapidly that the 2015 SDSR already needs a review.

Last week I had the opportunity to discuss the current problems with a group of Welsh Guards. They all agreed that they were being asked to do too much with too little. Are our military being asked to do too much? They spoke of too many peripheral tasks, such as training others countries’ forces, and questioned whether our 20 current active overseas missions are justified.

Does our military have too little? That depends on the role that we assign to it. A key question is: should our military be expected to have excellent capabilities across the full spectrum? Where do we seek to link with our allies, particularly with France, after Lancaster House and St Malo? What about our EU and NATO alliances? NATO is challenged by Trump’s ambivalence on the Article 5 commitment and by Turkey’s pivot to Russia, as evidenced, for example, by its purchase from Russia of an air defence system which is non-NATO compatible. Our EU critics may question the added value but, in response to the US President and Brexit, on 13 November 23 of the 28 EU states began a process of permanent structured co-operation in the defence field, which could include the development of a new combat aircraft to replace Eurofighter and Rafale. Where does all this leave us? Should we just remain on the sidelines, or do we become more reliant on the US?

As a final reflection—this was said by my noble friend Lord McConnell—clearly hard power will not defeat terrorism. We need also to rely on our excellent soft-power facilities, but we also need to constantly evaluate the relevance of all our current commitments and not ask our military to do too much with too little.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, I adopt many of the wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, and indeed of his mentor, Bill George. As always, Shakespeare had the right words for it. In “Macbeth”, Macduff admirably sums up the state of our nation:

“Confusion now hath made his masterpiece”—

or “turmoil”, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, has said.

The Queen’s Speech comes in the wake of two failed government gambles: first, the EU referendum and, secondly, the recent and unnecessary general election. The Government proposed; the people disposed. As we start the EU negotiations, we now have what Mr Osborne, the former Chancellor, described as “a dead woman walking”, yet further weakened by the insensitive response to the tragedy at Grenfell Tower. I understand that there will be a Statement on that later. That tragedy is a further sad illustration of the state of our nation: a widening social divide and government complacency. The Government have sacked the chief executive of the local authority, but, despite accepting mistakes, all their Ministers remain in office.

I have lived in Swansea all my life, but I have also been a resident of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea for almost 60 years. I was a councillor in the neighbouring, adjoining ward of Golborne, which also suffers from multi-deprivation. I was a member of the first neighbourhood law council in the country there and of the first urban parish council. No borough has such extremes of wealth between north and south as Kensington. There is a difference of 13 years in life expectancy between the north and the south. There has been Conservative rule from time immemorial in the town hall. They are decent people but unaware of the realities of the north of the borough. The council has amassed huge and increased surpluses. It has kept council tax levels the same for years, and I and other council tax payers received a rebate of £100 in 2014. Last year, the council received a quarter more in local authority rent income than it spent on council housing. Faced with such glaring inequalities, is there anything in the Queens’s Speech, I ask rhetorically, which might reduce them? Brexit, which is obviously the main theme —the leitmotif—of the Queen’s Speech, will certainly mean higher food prices as a result of the depreciation of sterling. We know that the poorest people spend a higher proportion of their budget on food.

Mention is made of improvements in our housebuilding, yet in Kensington and Chelsea property prices rocket. Young people have no hope of starting on the ownership ladder but can only rent, often from foreign buyers who buy off plan. I commend the Government for their initiative in instituting a register of beneficial ownership of property for UK buyers and committing to a similar scheme for foreign buyers, in part to counter money laundering of the oligarchs and others. Often, the properties are simply investments and remain empty. Here, as everywhere, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Obviously, these inequalities did not start with this Government and are replicated nationally and internationally.

At least the Government have a good record on overseas aid. I join my noble friend Lord Collins in commending the continuation of the 0.7% of GNI. Like him, I question the possible danger of vacating the high ground: the Government are now seeking the agreement of OECD member states to revise the definition of aid so that certain military expenditure is included. I recognise that there is some merit in this—without security there would be no development. It is an arguable case. However, others fear that this will be the thin end of the wedge. What has been done? What has been the response from OECD members? What are the prospects of evolving a new definition?

The effects of the “confusion”, in Shakespeare’s terms, are apparent also in the Government’s approach to Brexit. The Government started on the wrong foot. Their objectives are not clear save, as in the first line of the Queen’s Speech,

“to secure the best possible deal”.—[Official Report, 21/6/17; col. 5.]

Is that Mr Hammond’s deal or Dr Fox’s deal? There is certainly no consensus in the government party. Should the priority be on jobs or immigration? The Prime Minister herself lacks credibility. Before the referendum, when she emerged from her fugitive and cloistered corner, she argued for remain, clearly seeing it then as being in the UK interest. Now she espouses Brexit with the zeal of the convert, treating our partners as though they were enemies.

On foreign affairs generally, we retain many advantages from the post-Second World War settlement. We remain members of the P5 of the Security Council and of NATO, which is ever more important, and we have excellent Armed Forces and intelligence communities. Yet let us be brutally realistic: whatever form Brexit takes, it will mean a much diminished international status. We will be weakened by ceasing to be part of the EU team at the UN, in international trade negotiations and by leaving the directoire of France, Germany and ourselves. We will be forced to move, inexorably, more into the orbit of the United States. We clearly must retain the best possible relationship with the United States, preparing for an eventual post-Trump US. We will be less relevant in the Middle East, Ukraine and Iran. Any lingering illusions about our role as a bridge between the EU and the US will be undermined by our withdrawal. No doubt the Daily Mail will trumpet that, at last, we have an independent foreign policy. That concept ended with our glorious retaking of the Falklands some 35 years ago. Now we increasingly need alliances. Even an associate status with the EU is not the same as being a full team member.

How do we best work closely with the EU and wider Europe? Perhaps the nearest parallel was almost 60 years ago. I was in the Foreign Office when the door to the Common Market seemed to shut. To avoid isolation, we hastily searched around for institutions that brought us together with the six. Coupled with the cul-de-sac of EFTA, we looked at the Western European Union, which was looking for a role. We used it in ways well beyond its original concept. The Commonwealth is only marginally relevant in this context. We have a similar dilemma today. Is there any equivalent to the Western European Union? EFTA may assume a new importance. Of course, an additional benefit for the Government is that the EFTA Court will allow them to escape from their undertaking to their right wing not to be subject to the European Court of Justice. Frankly, that is no more than a conjuring trick because the EFTA Court has broadly the same jurisdiction as the European Court of Justice. Let us look at the 47 members of the Council of Europe—obviously a weaker institution. It is puzzling that the Government flirted with the idea of withdrawing from the European Court of Human Rights, which would effectively mean leaving the Council of Europe as a whole.

Finally, the only case that at the moment proves difficult for us in relation to the European Court of Human Rights is the Hirst judgment on prisoners’ voting rights. I urge the Government to look again at this. There may now be a majority in the House of Commons that would allow the Government to follow what has been our excellent record so far in implementing judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and to accept one of the possible, pragmatic options in complying with the Hirst judgment.