Ukraine

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Friday 25th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I agree with what other noble Lords have said about President Putin’s disastrous behaviour and the need for sanctions adequate to bring him and his cronies down, so I will not repeat it now.

But, if you want to know how you got to where you are, it often helps to look at where you have been. I fear that we have handled the Russian bear very short-sightedly since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. We would not be where we are today if we had behaved more generously toward the Russian people over the last 31 years.

I regard the Russian people as my friends because, during my teenage years in the 1950s, my mentor in life was Fred Cripps, Stafford Cripps’ elder brother, who had lived in Russia for several years before the revolution in 1917. He told me that the Russian peoples were rare because, like us and the Dutch, they had a sense of humour and could laugh at themselves—so they should have been our friends, even then.

I also had the huge privilege of meeting Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1983, six years before the Berlin Wall came down, so I was inspired to do what I could to support his dissident network inside the Soviet Union and help a number of Soviet Jews to escape to the West. One thing that you did not do within the hearing of Aleksandr Isayevich was to say “Russia” when you meant the Soviet Union, or “Russians” when you meant Soviets.

We have behaved very foolishly towards Russia since 1989 in at least two ways. First, it really seems that we broke the promise that we gave to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand to the east if the Berlin Wall came down. Secondly, we have turned down several offers from Russia to set up free trade agreements between us, from the Atlantic to the Urals, as Putin put it in one of his offers in 2014. The EU promptly replied to this offer by offering association agreements, leading to NATO membership, to Georgia, Armenia, Moldova and Ukraine.

I know that some now deny that we promised the new Russia that NATO would not expand to the east after 1989, but they should read an article in this month’s English edition of Der Spiegel, entitled “NATO’s Eastward Expansion: Is Vladimir Putin Right?” I will put a copy in your Lordships’ Library. They should also read an article in the Mail on Sunday on 22 February by Peter Hitchens, entitled, “Why I Blame the Arrogant, Foolish West” for the crisis in Ukraine. For good measure, they should also read “We Blew Our Chance to Befriend Putin”, by Mr Rod Liddle, in the Spectator of 19 February—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (Non-Afl)]

Noble Lords laugh, but they clearly do not know this. The article puts the crisis into its broader historical context. I will put copies of both these articles in your Lordships’ Library as well, and I trust that those who have been sniggering will read them.

I have time to mention one other point on why the Russian people have been uniquely disadvantaged since 1989. None of the countries that lived under communism had access to what we call civil society—no freedom of speech, no independent judiciary, no charities, no free market, no private insurance and no democracy. When we set up our know-how funds in 1990 to help the peoples thus enslaved to recover these vital things, I served on our initiative in Poland to help the newly liberated Poles to set up a free insurance market. I was lucky because we could find Poles who remembered civil society, including life and other insurance, for example, from before 1945—before the Iron Curtain cut them off from the civilised world. So, we were able to help them to resurrect it without too much difficulty. It was not so in the then-new Russia, whose people had been deprived of civil society for another whole generation—another 45 years. So, you could not find anyone there who remembered it. So, once again, the Russian people were on the wrong side of history.

I conclude by agreeing with noble Lords who think that Putin may have taken leave even of his KGB senses, that he is not supported by the majority of the Russian people and that, if we and others can impose sanctions that are stiff enough, we may be able to bring him and his cronies down. We could then work for a new and prosperous relationship with the Russian people, who remain our natural friends.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, your Lordships will be happy to hear that, in this debate on foreign affairs and defence, I propose to spend most of my allotted five minutes talking about Islam. I start by looking overseas, where the Uighur Muslims are being brutally treated by the Chinese, as are the Rohingya by Buddhist Burma, but the general picture is of a jihad advancing across the planet through west Africa, Mozambique, Syria, Ethiopia, Turkey and Nagorno-Karabakh. Coming closer to home, the French, the Swedes and the Austrians are waking up to the extent and effect of Muslim expansion in their societies. But if a large number of Written and Oral Questions from me to the Government over the last 12 years are anything to go by, Her Majesty’s Government are determined to ignore all this and to turn a blind eye to what is happening in this country, which brings me to our defence.

The Government’s central belief is that Islam is a religion of peace, of which Islamism is an aberration. In this they misunderstand Islam, which requires its followers to obey the Koran and to follow what Muhammad did and said. There is no separation of powers in Islam, as we know it—no division between parliament, Executive and legislature; it is a complete way of life. But the Koran contains a large number of verses which instruct Muslims to kill the Kaffir, or non-Muslims, and not to mingle with them. I have time to share only one of the former with your Lordships, verse 9.5:

“Kill the unbelievers, capture and besiege them and lie in wait for them in ambush”.


There are many such verses, which noble Lords can read for themselves, such as verses 4.56, 4.74, 8.12, 8.39, 8.60 and 47.4. As to not mingling or making friends with the rest of us, I give your Lordships verse 5.51, generally translated as:

“Oh ye who believe, take not the Jews and Christians for your friends. They are but friends and protectors to each other and he amongst you who turns to them is one of them”.


We must not forget that our Muslim population is growing 10 times faster than the rest of us so that, in 10 years’ time, on current trends, at least 10 of our local authorities will have Muslim majorities, including Birmingham.

To all this the Government intone that all such verses are capable of peaceful interpretation and that our Islamists have got it wrong. I submit—and this is my most important point—that, even if that were true, our Islamists can and do justify their evil deeds by reference to those verses.

Take, for example, the murderers of Drummer Rigby, in Woolwich, in 2013, who gave a memo to bystanders in which they quoted no fewer than 22 verses of the Koran, which justified their atrocity. It was produced in court at their trial, stained in Drummer Rigby’s blood. I have a colour photocopy here.

In conclusion, what could the Government do? First, they could require that all teaching in our mosques and madrassas is in English, so that we begin to understand what version of Islam is being taught to our Muslims and their children. Secondly, they could send home to their countries of origin all our imams who cannot speak English. The Government say that our immigration procedures weed them out on arrival, but they do not—not by a long chalk.

I look forward to the Minister’s reply to these suggestions. I hope that he does not tell me that the Government do not get involved in religions because, as I have mentioned, Islam is not only a religion, but a legal and political system, much of which is now dedicated to forming a world caliphate of which we will be part.