Arms to Syria

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Democracy was born in Greece some 2,000 years ago and has come to these islands in stages. In most sophisticated democratic states, they would regard it as astonishing that we are discussing whether the elected Parliament has the right to declare war. That is taken as obvious in most states. We have begun to debate whether we should go to war rather than who should take the decision, but that is what we should be talking about today.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that even those people who believe that we should arm the rebels ought to vote aye for this motion, given what the Foreign Secretary and others have said from the Government Front Bench?

[Paul Flynn]

I absolutely agree. The assumption is being made that Governments decide whether we go to war, but even that is not true. The decision to go to war rests with the monarch under the royal prerogative. That is a key point, particularly as we might well have a change of monarch in the foreseeable future—although it is a long way off, we all hope. The change of monarch would not strengthen the case for continuing the status quo when we know that the future likely monarch has written letters that we are not allowed to see because it might endanger his status and his future prospects as the Head of State. A decision was taken by the Government, after a freedom of information inquiry and a decision by a High Court judge that anyone who lobbies Parliament should have the contents of their lobbying letters published, to censor that correspondence. That person will be in a key position on any decision about going to war. We might say that that does not matter, but it does.

The same issue came up in a little-known practical example published by the former MP for Cambridge, Robert Rhodes James, who wrote of the fear in the Conservative party, when it decided to get rid of Mrs Thatcher, that she might call a general election. At that time, she was much more popular in the country than she was in her own party and she could well have come back. No one could have stopped her in Government, in the Cabinet or in Parliament, but one person could have stopped her calling a general election if that person had said that Mrs Thatcher was a Prime Minister who was acting in her own interests and not in the country’s. I think we all know that the present Queen had the strength of character to ensure that Mrs Thatcher did not act in her own interests.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman was diverted —or allowed himself to be diverted—by the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), but I know that he will now return specifically to the subject of a parliamentary vote on Syria.

[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.