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

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Friday 14th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, it feels strange to be speaking at the end of a week in this House that began as it did. The ironies are considerable. Perhaps I may resort to a biblical image in order to explain how I feel. What right do we have to observe so meticulously the speck in the eyes of foreign and distant peoples without noticing the plank in our own, at a time when reconciliation is so manifestly needed? Like other noble Lords, I am most grateful to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for this opportunity. It might be judged that, in my case, it was to vent my spleen but, oh boy, we have had some magisterial input. This will be a debate worth reading in Hansard when it is all over.

I will take from this debate a number of things which focused on culture and heritage. I was not expecting these, but I am glad to have them. So much of all that we are, emotionally and psychologically, is tied into the ways we have expressed ourselves over the years. There are very powerful illustrations of that in Coventry Cathedral. My noble Friend, Lady Andrews, has given us others from across the world and that was enlightening to me. I loved the moving, personal remarks by the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, who reminded the House of some special moments in the recent history of Northern Ireland. His story of the Queen in Enniskillen is another thing I will take away. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, reminded the House of the service in which the sons of Rommel and Montgomery were asked to read lessons. They embodied a hope that was the opposite of what we must have been able to think about when their fathers were engaged otherwise.

Turning to the speech of my noble friend Lord Boateng, I speak as an honorary Ghanaian chief. I am Osofu Nana Kwezi I, and he is one of my boys. The adinkra, which he mentioned, the mpatapo—he will help me pronounce that correctly later—and ubuntu from the rest of Africa remind us of what is tied up in language and culture. It helps us to shape our identities and bring the riches of our accumulated experience to the negotiating table and to our witness in public life. I have learned some terrific things which I will take away and think about further.

Some noble Lords have concentrated on the grand themes of international relations. I have neither the mind nor experience to contribute at that level. Others have focused on areas such as Kashmir, Syria, South Africa and, of course, Northern Ireland. So I hope that the House will indulge me if I focus on something altogether humbler and in the margins of normal consideration. It is nearly 50 years since I went to Haiti in the Caribbean and spent 10 years there. In the world of safeguarding—which we have become much more aware of, for all the wrong reasons, in recent times—there has been a process of historic cases: looking back over history to recognise that some things have never been buried or dealt with but need to be brought constantly to mind. I say that of the republic of Haiti, the first black republic in the world. I could expatiate for a long time if I thought that noble Lords had the patience for it—I see from their faces that they do not—about the asset stripping and political oppression of the United States of America and France. They have ripped the heart out of Haiti, taken its assets and used them for their own pleasure, then blamed Haiti for not having them or the resilience to stand up in a more robust way in the world in which it finds itself.

That is, indeed, historic abuse but it is not just then: what about now? The United States of America, because of its enmity and hostility to Venezuela, has applied sanctions, in an effort to make its case about what it considers to be the poor record and life of that South American republic. It has also demanded that its vassal states, of which Haiti is one, observe the sanctions too. Venezuela was supplying Haiti with heavily discounted oil to help it pay its way. Haiti has been obliged to stop that and to take oil from the United States of America at undiscounted market prices. The result is that there are now people on the streets of Port au Prince, where the Government are likely to be toppled yet again. This is all because of somebody else’s policy, imposed willy-nilly on a fragile state.

I also point to the United Nations. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell, who is not in his place, mentioned the United Nations peacekeeping forces. In 2004, an escaped prisoner and murderer—I knew him well—and a gang of his fellow criminals came to the north of Haiti simply to overthrow the properly elected Government of Haiti at that time. I do not say that they were a perfect Government, but they were elected and legitimate. The United States gave covert and then increasingly open support to that body of people, which led to President Aristide having to flee from office for the second time. He is a good friend of mine, and I have followed him over the years. A Roman Catholic priest who became president, he is not a perfect man—he is a very mysterious man—but he is to my knowledge the only person in the history of Haiti who, at the click of a finger, could command the support of 90% of the illiterate and marginalised people of his country. He had an astonishing rapport with ordinary people. He was a liberation theologian of the first generation, and he knew his people to the core. He was ousted from office by gang of criminals, in the wake of which the United Nations sent in a peacekeeping force, to a land where there is no war, and kept it there for 12 years. When I went to the Foreign Office to ask, “Isn’t there anything you can do to help this poor, fragile country out there in the Caribbean?” I was told, again and again, “We put considerable resource in; we support the presence of the United Nations peacekeeping force”—which was a load of rubbish from the day it went in. It was not needed.

When I led a parliamentary delegation to Haiti with my noble friend Lord Foulkes—I wish he was here—I remember wanting to deviate by 50 yards from the plan that we had to agree the previous day with the United Nations, just to see the new Parliament building they were beginning to construct. I was not allowed to do so unless the United Nations cleared that 50 yards of deviation. I could have taken them down the street and talked to the merchants, engaged with the people and had fun on the roads, but I had to go in that wretched convoy to travel 50 yards. All those troops came, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, said, from places that do not have a clue where Haiti is, but whose budgets for their military exercises were subventioned by grants from the United Nations. But there it was—suddenly I was a foreigner in a country that I loved with all my heart.

My noble friend Lord Boateng mentioned linguistic ability. I dream in Haitian Creole, and I speak French. I can engage at will with the lowest and the highest of people, and I will tell your Lordships how much you can do when you do that. We used to have experts come in to work on irrigation programmes and community development. They were experts from around the world, with qualifications and diplomas—and salaries to match. What did they achieve? I could have achieved it with 100th of what they were spending on it, and I did—all the thousands of trees we planted, the wells we sank and the microfinance we organised. It was community development in its richest and widest sense: literacy, primary health—we did the lot, and on nothing, with Haitian people. I was able to get alongside them because I spoke their languages and had read about their culture, and I could sing their songs and tell their jokes. It is not difficult to know these facts, but we ignore them at our peril.

I will give one last personal illustration. I remember on that parliamentary visit sitting with the President of Haiti at that time, President Martelly. He had been a pop singer; you may think that Graham Greene’s The Comedians could now be updated and called The Pop Stars, but there you go. I was talking to him, there was a television camera in the room, and we were trying to make sense of things at that time.

Let us remember that Haiti suffered an earthquake in 2010; more people died in five minutes in Haiti than died in five years in Syria. That is a statistic. Let us remember also that the United Nations contingent from Uruguay introduced cholera to Haiti; we remember the effort we made against Ebola in west Africa, but more people have died of cholera in Haiti than ever died of Ebola in west Africa, and what has the world done? It has done nothing, absolutely nothing.

Haiti raises for our consideration very serious matters of principle, however marginal it is to our thinking. I return to President Martelly. I said to him, “They won’t give you any money, President, because they tell me you’re corrupt. How will you answer that allegation?” He replied, “I am not perfect and my Government are certainly not perfect. For every dollar I get, I’m not sure I could account for more than three-quarters of it. What happens to the rest? You will have to find out”. He continued, “I tell you that because every dollar I spend is matched by $99 that the international community spends in Haiti.”

With the massive number of NGOs that flooded in after the earthquake, Haiti was a republic of NGOs. A commission was set up to administer all those billions of dollars, but almost none of it went directly to the Haitian Government or its people. I have long been of the opinion—I take an opposite opinion to that of the noble Baroness who spoke from the other Benches earlier—that you need to have institutions through which a people can administer its own affairs, make its own decisions and prioritise its own policies. You must have that. There is no ministry of health; the earthquake wiped out many ministries of government.

We tried to get interest in building capacity in the legislature. I am talking to the Law Society to see whether it can do something about the judiciary and the crime system. There is so much to do and, until people have any kind of competence to handle these complicated matters themselves, the rest will be charity; it will be nothing more than a vassal state, and its poverty will continue for a long time yet.