United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973

Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Graham Allen

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I welcome the debate today. It is important that Parliament plays a key role in deciding whether this country is involved in wars. I endorse the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) made in an intervention about war-making powers. The House has a right to ask the Government many questions about the enterprise on which we are embarked and where it will lead. We should not be fooled by newspapers telling us, in a gung-ho and frankly offensive way in the case of The Sun and the News of the World, that the public are behind this. I am far from convinced of that. The public are concerned about public expenditure and the money that has been spent on the armed forces for the enterprise, and they are very worried about where it leads because they have been through the miserable experience of Iraq and they also have deep concerns about Afghanistan. It is therefore appropriate in today’s debate to have a serious discussion about where the action will lead.

An opinion poll in Metro this morning—I do not know how scientific that is—suggested that 58% of those questioned were against British involvement in Libya. Although I do not know how accurate that is, many people are very worried about the action. We must ask questions about the troops that we have committed through the Air Force. How long will they be there? What command structure are they currently under? That is far from clear. Several air forces are involved, and it is not clear who is co-ordinating them, who is in charge or who decides what targets to bomb at what stage. That is enormously worrying.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) asked several questions about cluster bombs and depleted uranium. Cluster bombs are illegal. Children are still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan because of the use of cluster bombs in the past. Depleted uranium was used in the Gulf war in 1991 and that has led to a high level of cancers in southern Iraq. I hope that no other forces are using depleted uranium weapons, because of the long-term effects.

What is the mission all about? Only three weeks ago, we were training Libyan forces and selling arms to Libya. British companies were happily trading with Libya and British universities were happily accepting vast sums of money from Libya until a few weeks ago. It is an awfully short time in our relations with Libya in which to go from hero to zero. The rest of the world may be concerned about that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) intervened on the Prime Minister to ask about the endgame. One hopes that there will be an urgent ceasefire and some kind of political settlement in Libya, and that Libya’s independence as a state will be preserved. However, there is another scenario: a client state in the east around Benghazi; and a pariah state in the west around Tripoli, led by Gaddafi, and a source of constant conflict, disturbance and danger in the region. That is eminently possible, with oil companies trying to get their hands on the huge resources that are there.

[Mr Allen]

Is my hon. Friend as concerned as I am about the composition of what is currently called “the rebel force”, which is a catch-all for anti-Gaddafi forces? Many of us could support that as a concept, but is my hon. Friend a little worried that we could end up with something even worse than the current regime? Libya is not a repressed democracy. We have not spent the past 30 years building up a democratic base there. It will not be Nick and Dave who take over, but unknown people. We are not sure about the endgame and we should be careful what we wish for.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. I do not know the politics, aims, ambitions or anything else of the people in Benghazi any more than I suspect he does. We should be cautious about going to war on behalf of a group of people whom we do not know or understand and of whose aims we are not aware. Many were Ministers in the Gaddafi Government, again, only three weeks ago. It is a very short time.

There is a danger that we do nothing about Bahrain because of close economic and military involvement, despite the US fifth fleet being there. There is a danger that we say nothing about Saudi Arabia because of the vast arms market there. The former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, felt that Saudi Arabia was so important that he stopped the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the al-Yamamah arms contract. In Yemen and Oman, people are dying. They thirst for exactly the same thing. I was at a conference this morning of Bahraini opposition groups who made strong points. They said that they were not campaigning about human rights in Bahrain yesterday, but last year, the year before, the year before that and so on. Indeed, I first met Bahraini opposition groups who were concerned about the overwhelming power of the king in 1986 at a UN human rights conference in Copenhagen.