Libya

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Friday 1st April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, over my years in your Lordships’ House I have never forgotten the advice that a Chief Whip once gave me: “When you are very unimportant, always have three speeches ready for long debates”. I am not quite sure which of the three speeches I shall use today but I think it will be a rather personal one. I hate a number of words—words that end in “ism”, such as “fundamentalism” and “terrorism”. However, I quite like “tribalism”. Being a MacDonald of the Isles, although I was not there at the time, I think of the massacre of Glencoe.

I have had dealings with the Middle East. I chaired the Middle East trade committee for the Government for 10 years. I was almost always involved with the more difficult countries, which no one wanted to be involved with, such as various parts of Africa, not least Libya. I learnt that in the ancient world of the Mediterranean, you should look back to the past. Obviously, you should go back to the Phoenicians and their three cities of that period, the Numidians and, possibly—coming further forward—to the first aggressive acts that took place with the Barbary pirates. They were from Libya, Algeria and Morocco. In those days—the 1600s—the Barbary pirates used to invade us and the west coast of Ireland, where they would capture whole villages. They even got as far as Iceland, where they had mercenaries. One of their great successes, or so they claimed, was arriving in Penzance one Sunday in 1625 and capturing the entire church congregation, taking it into slavery. Looking at these areas, you find that many of these people from the ancient tribes have become quite important. In Libya, we have a scene of tribalism.

I am not saying that I dislike people who keep citing UN resolutions or talking about international intervention. The most important things about Middle East peace were the Harrogate speech of Lord Home and Resolution 242 for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. I point out that there are other prejudices. One we heard earlier was that women are not well treated. As your Lordships know well, there were two great women in the Middle East. The first was that remarkable woman, Gertrude Bell, who effectively made peace in Iraq. She was much loved. Rather like one of our great female characters in the Lords, there was Olwen Brogan, an archaeologist who went to Libya after the war in 1947. She remained there in the desert, where she found Leptis Magna and so on. She had the ear of Colonel Gaddafi, who had great respect for her.

How many of us speaking today in your Lordships’ House have been to Libya? Often we speak using second-hand information from other people, including excellent reports from the House of Lords Information Office. However, you often need to have been there to understand things. I hope I will not let myself or the House down in what I am about to say, but I want to explain how some of these things work. If you are a member of a tribe, you often cannot talk to the other tribe—you need an interlocutor. I have had the difficulty of being an interlocutor on these issues, unwillingly and unwittingly. Let us assume that among the problems with Libya is that it really was funding terrorism. This was partly because their flag was green. The colonel, as he was known, used to finance anything green. He financed the Greenham Common peace women when they were trying to get rid of nuclear arms there. I am told that he funded Greenpeace in the interests of peace but I have no evidence of that.

Your Lordships will remember that, as Alanbrooke wrote in his diaries, on 1 March 1941 we lost Benghazi. We then got it back at some point. Your Lordships will remember that we had troops in Libya until, I think, 1970. These are things that we have forgotten. Then Libya started to fund terrorism. There was no doubt that it was funding the IRA because Ireland is green. That may be an excuse or a reason. It was pretty serious stuff. That upset the United States no end, so what does it do? It gets permission from the British to bomb the Libyans from England. This caused a lot of upset and lots of reactions here. I declare an interest as I was in the hotel business and our hotel was empty because the Americans would not come to London. Discussions took place in a hotel in Geneva, or wherever it was, and the Libyans explained that Lockerbie was a reaction to the bombing of their country by the United States and that they intended to bring down an airplane full of American troops. I do not think they ever intended that the airplane should come down somewhere in Scotland. They came to see me to apologise, saying, “My Lord, we did not know that your house was nearby”. They were referring to Galloway House, my old family home that we left years ago.

When the Libyans in the Libyan embassy were attacked by people outside, they opened fire. However, they would not have intended to kill a woman. They apologised for that and wanted to pay blood money. They asked me if I could help in that regard as my mother was Lord Mayor of Westminster at the time. These may seem trite issues but those who think that we are dealing with fairly stupid people do not understand this part of the world—we come back to tribalism. One day I happened to be told that Libyans lived to a great age. My noble friend Lord McColl was involved in Libya in connection with humanitarian operations on his mercy ship, of which the Libyans were very appreciative. I said to him that I had heard that Gaddafi’s father had lived to be 106. At the time my noble friend wanted to talk to someone more important than me—that was perfectly reasonable—but he turned round and said, “Yes, Malcolm, I think if I remember rightly, he could have done. I last operated on him when he was 103 but I cannot remember whether it was the lunar or solar calendar”.

We really have to understand these people. There is tribalism and it will go on. Intervention has to be very carefully thought out. We should respect the fact that it is their country and it is their right to do what they wish with it.