Freedom of Religion and Belief

Lord Thomas of Swynnerton Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Swynnerton (CB)]

My Lords, it may be appropriate—

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords—

[Lord Thomas of Swynnerton]

It is the turn of the Cross Benches.

[The Earl of Courtown]

Order. There is a speakers list for this debate.

EU and Russia (EUC Report)

Lord Thomas of Swynnerton Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Swynnerton (CB)]

My Lords, I feel very much in the minority since those who have spoken, often very eloquently, know so much about Ukraine, particularly the last speaker. It is a pleasure to take part in a debate to which the noble Earl, Lord Oxford and Asquith, has made such an admirable contribution. We look forward to hearing from him often in future.

At first sight, Russia’s behaviour towards Ukraine is not very different from the sort of conduct that great powers have always offered to smaller powers who are their neighbours, but first sight is practically always a mistaken concept. The present Ukraine crisis is quite different from other crises. First, all intelligent Russians know something of what the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, drew our attention to; namely, that before the First World War, the export of wheat from Ukraine made a substantial contribution to Russian wealth. The black soil of Ukraine was well known throughout the international agrarian world.

Secondly—this is perhaps more important—all historically minded Russians know very well that Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, was the first centre of Russia at the end of the 10th century. It was the motor of Russian Christianity, as many of us who have the privilege of living in West Kensington recognise every day as we pass the statue of St Volodymyr at the entrance of Holland Park. In those days of the remote past, there was a definite Russian concept in Ukraine. It took a very long time to be superseded by the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which was the centre of Romanov, communist and Putinesque Russia. I think Moscow was first mentioned in the chronicles in 1147.

Ukraine is now formally independent and is recognised as such by the signatories to the Budapest agreement, which include this country and Russia. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, was quite right to say that we should not forget that; nor should we allow Russia to forget it. A scrap of paper it may be, but it is scraps of paper that make civilisation. In this House, there seems to be a certain reluctance to be proud of the fact that we won the Cold War and to feel that we imposed a humiliating sanction on the new Russia. However, many of us must respect the victory. The average eastern European would be astounded to hear some of the speeches made in this House. Ours was a modest, quiet celebration; there was no ceremony in St Paul’s at the end of the Cold War. Can we honestly believe that that was a damaging thing which humiliated Russia? I feel that perhaps we did not do enough. To blame some of our actions for the later evils of Russia seems a false piece of historical writing.

If one is going to be serious, the entry of the Baltic states into NATO must be represented as a triumph. I remember a great friend of mine, Lord St Oswald—other noble Lords may also remember him—who every year used to insist on trying to put the capture of the Baltic states by the Russians on the agenda of the United Nations. He was always very politely told to delay his humanitarian gesture, which he did. He would have been delighted that Riga, Vilnius and Tallinn are now NATO capitals.

All the same, we all hope—this was a point made eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Jopling—that in the long run we shall be able to recover the possibility of friendship and collaboration with a civilised Russia. The long chain of great Russian novels and plays reminds us that Russia may in time be able to contribute to world civilisation as much as any other western country—indeed, many of us would say more.

There is a certain similarity between the present and the situation in Finland in 1940. We loved the Finns and admired their bravery, but we needed to be the allies of the Soviet Union—of Russia and Uncle Joe—and we made such an alliance, which was such a triumphant part of the last part of the Second World War. For details of the Winter War, as it was called, in 1940 between Russia and Finland, I recommend very strongly, as if I were your Lordships’ history tutor at university, the second volume of Harold Macmillan’s memoirs, The Blast of War, chapter 3 particularly.

There is one more point that we should address. It is frequently said that we do not want to see a repeat of the Cold War. Of course we do not, but that is not very likely because the Cold War was a war of ideologies, not a war of states. The great American ambassador Chip Bohlen said that we would not be able to deal with Russia sensibly until she had ceased to be a cause and had become a state. She has at least become a state and ceased to be a cause, and perhaps in that respect there is reason for optimism in the long run.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Thomas of Swynnerton Excerpts

Friday 10th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Swynnerton (CB)]

My Lords, I have been a supporter of Britain being in Europe ever since I was at Cambridge and I had the honour and duty of showing Mr Robert Schuman around the university. Mr Schuman wanted to talk about religion, while I wanted to talk about politics. We are not talking today about the benefits or disadvantages of membership of the European Union—we shall presumably leave that until later, to our campaign in relation to this referendum. Most of us are concerned about the need for radical revision of the rules and practices of the European Union, something which has not really divided us today either, and we look forward to having elaborate discussions on the matter later on. We are instead concerned with the very narrow issue of whether or not to have a referendum on the country remaining inside the European Union. We need to have more thought on this issue than we have had.

British politics has always seemed to me to be a garden, with many diverse streams, rockeries and rose beds, but also animals, including monsters. The referendum is the monster which we have now discovered, to our surprise, is in our garden. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, on the subject of referenda. He seemed to place the position of the monster of a referendum very clearly. I largely agree with what he said and regret that I also agree with, and realise the importance of, what the noble Lord, Lord Owen, said when he talked about the role of referenda in Northern Ireland.

A referendum is a curiously foreign concept to all political philosophers whom we know about. We talk of Burke, Peel, John Stuart Mill, Salisbury and even Churchill and Disraeli. None of them has anything to say about referendums—or referenda—and all of us are obliged, when we look up the subject in encyclopaedias, to rely on the Swiss or, perhaps, if we are lucky, Napoleon III. Noble Lords may say that the names I have mentioned are from very long ago but, nevertheless, most of us would think that the definition of the relationship between a Member of Parliament and his constituents was put better by Edmund Burke than by anyone else. Mr Callaghan—Lord Callaghan as he was known for so long in this House—said more or less the same thing in 1975 when he pointed out that Parliament makes decisions, not the people.

We have not discussed, in this debate, in what circumstances the adventure of a referendum should be embarked on. At some point, as the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, said, the British people have to be consulted. But is a referendum really better than an election? The noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, would not agree. The risks of a referendum in normal circumstances are very considerable. What would the public have said about the question of a referendum on capital punishment, membership of NATO, or support for Israel or Iran? All those are issues on which the public would be entitled to insist on a strong point of view.

I recall two statements made in relation to the referendum of 1975. First, Harold Wilson said that the decision in consequence of the campaign would have to be final and binding. We all realise that the reverse happened. Lord Callaghan said in his memoirs that, in the end, he looked on the referendum as a life raft on which both sides in the Labour Party might take refuge. In the end, they both did.

Nuclear Disarmament

Lord Thomas of Swynnerton Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Swynnerton]

My Lords, like other noble Lords I regard it as a privilege to be present at the last speech of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall. His presence here, like that of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, reminds us of the contribution that Chiefs of Staff and other soldiers, or people of military training, make to this House. For that reason a chamber like this is not easily found in any other legislature.

In this debate I speak as a dinosaur. I became interested in the question of disarmament and nuclear weapons in 1954, when I was briefly the secretary of the British delegation to the sub-committee of the Disarmament Commission. How optimistic we were in those days. We were led brilliantly by a lost leader, Sir Anthony Nutting. We had with us M Jules Moch, one of the most brilliant and eloquent French socialists. We also had Governor Harold Stassen, who had been a presidential candidate in the previous United States election. We also had the spiky and bureaucratic presence of Mr Gromyko and Mr Malik for the Soviet Union, but they were not as bad as they are sometimes cracked up to be—or, rather, cracked down to be. On one occasion, in May 1955, when I was there, the Soviet Union accepted the British and western disarmament proposals. This was an alarming moment for us. We had to reconsider everything about which we had been talking for a long time.

The Soviet Union also made the interesting observation that there were circumstances beyond international control that could not be guaranteed by any imaginable inspection agency. We had suspected this since an article on the subject had been written in the Spectator the previous autumn by the distinguished physicist Sir George Thomson. No one took much notice of it and we continued our deliberations.

I remember those occasions in the mid-1950s for several other reasons. There was a preoccupation with interweaving the question of nuclear disarmament with that of conventional disarmament. We put forward the idea that before we took any nuclear disarmament steps of our own, we would insist on a one-third cut in Soviet conventional forces. That was one important element. Another was that we talked a great deal about a control and inspection agency, which, even if it was not perfect, would be a great deal better than anything that we had at the time. If there were ever to be the kind of nuclear catastrophe that the noble Lord, Lord Browne, mentioned, our minds would come round immediately to the idea of something similar.

The United States began the Cold War with a proposal for the complete international ownership and management of nuclear activities. There was to be no distinction between peaceful and military uses. Both would be organised and owned by an international control agency that would have the unique capacity to deal with nuclear possibilities. That seems a very idealistic and improbable concept now, but I think that if there were to be a catastrophe, we would probably find ourselves going back to all sorts of interesting ideas that were rejected because they were considered impractical in the past.

What happened—I make no bones about citing something that happened over 60 years ago—was that at the end of the world war, there was a great deal of pressure among United States scientists to devise some method of putting the genie that they had unleashed back in the bottle. First, Dr Oppenheimer devised a scheme that was made political by two distinguished United States politicians, Mr Dean Acheson and the head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Mr David Lilienthal. The scheme was for complete international ownership of nuclear weapons. It was thought that the controllers would remain happy because they would have something to do. They would not just be checking that people were not making mistakes but helping to develop the nuclear industry of the world. That was put forward as a United States proposal by Mr Truman in May 1946, and the spokesman was the improbable figure of a businessman called Bernard Baruch, who was a great friend of Winston Churchill, as was Mr Truman. This scheme was considered to be the best way of scientists making up for what they had done by creating such a dangerous world with nuclear weapons.

It is not certain, fortunately, that there will be any kind of breakdown that would justify such extreme reconsideration. After all, gas was not used in the Second World War, although when people talked about war in the 1930s, it was thought likely that it would be used. Indeed, the self-control of states in not using nuclear weapons has been one of the striking elements of international politics since 1945. Nevertheless, it may happen. There may be a catastrophe and, if so, we should be prepared to take extreme measures afterwards to organise a method of survival.

Diplomacy

Lord Thomas of Swynnerton Excerpts

Thursday 11th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Swynnerton]

My Lords, in requesting permission to speak in the gap, I should like to draw attention to the fact that in the past locally employed staff sometimes made major contributions to the work of an embassy. I recall, for example, travelling in Spain in the 1950s. The ambassadors, who were men of great distinction, had the benefit of the services of a former schoolmaster called Bernard Malley, who knew everything about the country in which he was serving. He had an honorary position and did not allow his loyalty to his Spanish friends to cause any difficulties with his loyalty to this country. He ended up with a CMG, which he greatly deserved. I believe that there was a similar person in Paris in the shape of Sir Charles Mendl. Malley in Madrid, however, was a wonderful example. I believe that in future we should consider this sort of appointment in many other countries than those that I have mentioned. For example, I recently went to a Latin American country where the only person who remembered the previous elections was the ambassador’s chauffeur. He was a very good source, although I am thinking of someone more distinguished.