Arms to Syria

Debate between Mike Gapes and Paul Flynn

Thursday 11th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Paul Flynn]

The reason we need Parliament to be supreme, and not the Government acting under royal prerogative, is the bitter experience we have had. In 2003, this House was bribed, bullied and bamboozled into voting for the war in Iraq.

[Mike Gapes]

I am very sorry, but some of us voted the way we did because we believed that it was right to protect the Kurds in Iraq and for the Iraqi people to be liberated from fascism. I do not feel that I was bamboozled or bribed and I hope that my hon. Friend is not impugning my integrity.

[Paul Flynn]

My hon. Friend is referring to Parliament and the majority here: 139 Labour Members voted against. Nearly 50 Labour Members who had already signed motions against the war and who were already opposed, were pressurised into changing their minds and abstaining or voting for the war. That is the truth of what happened then. It was on the basis of what was probably a lie or a misunderstanding. It was certainly untrue. We went there to defend our country against non-existent weapons of mass destruction allegedly held by Saddam Hussein. We proceeded to the second greatest error that we have made in recent times. That was in 2006 when we went into Helmand province, as has been said. The hope was that not a shot would be fired and we would be out in three years, having cleared up the drug trade. We now know what happened. At that time only two British soldiers had been killed in combat. The number is now 444. What were they doing in Helmand province? Defending the country against a non-existent Taliban terrorist threat to this country.

Around 52 terrorists have been convicted for actions within the United Kingdom. Not one of them is from Afghanistan. They are mostly people who were born and brought up in this country. So we have had two wars on which we embarked on a false premise, and it is right that we should ensure that the decisions are taken by the House on the best information that is available. While people are rehearsing what the argument should be in the future, we have to escape from the influences on this House. There are many influences, including the influences on politicians.

We know what happens to those in Government of all parties when the prospect of war is heard—with the drumbeats banging away, they adopt a Napoleonic posture, dig out the Churchillian language and try to write their page in history. We know the pressure from people in the arms industry. Frederick and Kimberly Kagan were at the side of General Petraeus in Afghanistan. They were at every secret meeting. They wrote part of his report to the Secretary of State in America and they constantly put pressure on to keep the war going and to discourage any peace initiatives. The Kagans were not employed by Petraeus. They were not employed by the American Government or the military. They were employed by the arms contractors in America.

There is a pressure for perpetual war. We know that millions were made in Iraq by the firms there after the Iraq war. We know that they will have contracts in the Syrian conflict. After those two great errors, pressure is on us now to prepare ourselves for war in Iran to protect ourselves from non-existent long-range Iranian missiles carrying non-existent Iranian nuclear bombs. We have to look to all these pressures, which have sent 623 of our brave soldiers to their deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those decisions are made here. We take them, we should be responsible, and there certainly should not be any Government pressure that settles those decisions. We should do it in future in free debate.

There should be alterations to our constitution. We have conventions now—the one going back to 2003. That should be our model for the way we face every armed conflict in which our troops might be employed.