Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Thomas of Swynnerton Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Swynnerton]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my namesake. The army of Thomases in this House is not quite as large and impressive as it used to be in the days when we were led by Lord Tonypandy and supported by Lord Thomas of Gwydir, but all the same we have one or two cards left to play, I believe.

This is a very well educated and well read House, so I need not apologise for recalling Kipling’s novel, Kim. Noble Lords will remember that the hero, Kim, looks through the windows of an officers’ mess in Punjab and hears the colonel saying to the adjutant, “Remember, this is punishment, not war”. I suppose we are now seeing Colonel Obama dictating a similar statement to Major Cameron, who is clearly the adjutant at this present time. Punishment is something that Colonel Obama has mentioned on several occasions, and plainly it is an important matter for him.

I have one suggestion that I hope will commend itself to your Lordships. It is a new diplomatic approach. Once we have discovered or confirmed that President Assad was responsible for the use of these weapons, we should go back to the United Nations, certainly to the Security Council. Like my namesake, I think that in those circumstances it is conceivable that even Russia and China will support us if the evidence is not controversial. We should then adopt a procedure that was characteristic of what happened—and I think the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, will confirm this—during the Korean War. At that time, in 1950, the Russians were known not to be likely to support the idea of a task force sent by the UN to Korea, but the Governments of the time got round that by having something called the “uniting for peace” procedure, whereby the General Assembly was asked to take action by a two-thirds majority and, indeed, it did. The Korean War was fought by the UN under those circumstances. After that, having established ourselves well with the UN, we should then dispatch a mission of various representatives to President Assad. As this is a House of bishops, why not include in the delegation a number of churchmen? That might inspire the Syrian leaders to realise that at least we are capable of novelty, if nothing else.

I have many other suggestions to make, but unfortunately my four minutes are up.