Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Thomas of Swynnerton Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Swynnerton (CB)]

My Lords, in the 100 years or so since Britain gave up its proud policy of splendid isolation, we have been beset by a number of violent attacks. Some of these have been primarily murders of individuals, as in the case of the anarchists of the early 20th century and the IRA in the 1960s and 1970s. The bombing campaigns of the Germans in the First and Second World Wars were indiscriminate attempts to disrupt and kill, but as far as I know they did not target individuals. From the 1920s onwards, and intensely after 1945, we were beset by the revolutionary Bolshevik regime of Soviet Russia, whose interest was to subvert western civilisation by all means short of war. It is very satisfactory to think that that era has come to an end, and Russia has become a nation rather than a crusade—I echo the words of Chip Bohlen, the American ambassador to Russia, in 1962. The Falklands inspired a war but Argentina, of course, never threatened these islands.

Now, we respond to the new subversion of the caliphate, or Daesh, or ISIL—it seems that it is a movement with as many names as Chinese emperors. Their aim seems to be to kill indiscriminately, unlike the anarchists or the IRA, but all the same to shock the world by what the anarchists call the “propaganda of the deed”, and to force the West and Christianity out of the entire Middle East.

There have been similar violent movements in the Muslim world in the past, such as the Assassins in medieval Lebanon, but the difference is that there are now suicide bombers, which is a new development. Since we need to be in the Middle East for our own commercial and strategic interests, and because, after all, we have friends and allies there, the UN has agreed to react and encourages us to do so in strength. As a historian of military matters to some extent, it is hard for me to imagine that we shall be able to defeat this new enemy without some form of ground campaign. Those 70,000 Syrian soldiers of liberty in whom the Prime Minister urges us to have faith may turn out to be less reliable allies than the Kurds, whose success nevertheless would not be a recipe for peace in the Middle East in general because of Turkey.

Saladin, the great medieval Kurdish general who conquered Jerusalem, taking it from the crusaders, would have been delighted to hear that statement in this House. If noble Lords want to know more of Saladin, I recommend The Talisman by the great Sir Walter Scott, whose novel is the best investigation of the crusades.

In my final minute, I would like to say how much I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord James of Blackheath, when he talked about control of the media. However, what he has raised is a very difficult matter and such control would require a great deal of strength and intelligence. It is not a question of asking a newspaper editor to shut down critical cartoons, as was the case during the war in the era of Mr Herbert Morrison, the grandfather of the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson.