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Debate on the Address

My Lords, it is extraordinarily exciting to be playing cricket with the great, the good and the gallant, particularly when I have a feeling that my role in general is as the bad and the ugly, and that I may probably be defined as being part of the ““axis of evil””. I have already disclosed in the past my involvement in the Middle East, over now since 1974, usually in places where the Foreign Office felt it was not acceptable for a gentleman to go, such as Iran, Iraq, Libya and all the more difficult parts of the world. But I enjoyed it. I learnt an enormous amount, and I would prefer to tell noble Lords some of the stories I was told. ““Chinese Whispers”” is nothing compared with the whispering in the Arab world. Of course, it is not democratic. There is no word for ““democracy”” in Arabic or Farsi. In a way it is a form of theocracy, in that a leader is anointed by God, takes control and is accountable under God. I am accountable to no one, but I need to go back into the past to try to persuade your Lordships that ““plus ça change””. I shall begin, like the noble Lord, Lord Browne, with 1906. It was a great year, the year my grandfather first got into the House of Commons, an impressive year. It was also the year the parliamentary Labour Party was created from the representative body—I would not like to say that ever since it has not been representative. It is 100 years old this year. At that time, knowing how good we are at reacting to natural disasters, your Lordships will recall that there was a great earthquake in Ecuador, measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale and killing 1,500 people. There was also a big eruption of Vesuvius that overwhelmed a large chunk of Naples, but only 500 people were killed. Then there was the San Francisco disaster. That was the big one, an earthquake that measured about 8.8, with 3,000 people killed. In the same year there was a major tsunami in Hong Kong that killed 10,000. Two years ago, another tsunami, measuring nine-something on the Richter scale, killed 212,000. From time to time since 1906 there have been other natural disasters. Then we had a form of terrorism. Terrorism, as your Lordships know, means, ““government or rule by fear””. It is an ““ism””; I do not know how you would define it otherwise. In these periods we had the Baader-Meinhof, the Brigate Rosse, and the problems in Northern Ireland, where 3,500 people were killed. Then we had al-Qaeda. The latest American information shows that it has been responsible for the deaths of 3,457 or so, internationally. When you put all that lot together—I am now going to talk about life and death—suddenly strange things go through your mind. The United States lost 472,000 people in two world wars. We lost 1.5 million in two world wars. How many people have been killed as a result of our aggression in Iraq? More than all of that put together? I know not. Certainly, the United States has no full understanding of what deaths and destruction have been caused. Some 210,000 people were made homeless in the San Francisco earthquake disaster, but how many people have been made homeless and had their lives ruined because of one strange action? It was not the right action to take. I defended and will always defend the right of a Prime Minister to decide to go to war, and I believe this House wholly supported our troops and the Government, but now the days of reckoning are coming. What on earth can we do now? How can we get out of this extraordinary mess that we have got ourselves into? The military mess may get even worse. Going back before 1906, your Lordships will remember that General Roberts walked from Kabul to Kandahar to relieve our forces there with 2,700 troops, but he had more than 7,000 levies of Indian soldiers. That was a great march and a great success. Thereafter, we had the problem of Isandlwana, Mafeking and so on, but in each case we had a small number of troops with large levies. As Kipling said, we had the Gatling gun and they had not; we also had the Maxim gun. In those days, with a relatively small number of troops, we could maintain or re-establish law and order, but not today, because we are not working with the most sophisticated weaponry around, but we are fighting with people who will fight. Roberts had 35,000 Afghanis arrayed against him, and there were maybe 100,000 troops. As these battles go on so the numbers rise, because young men want to go and fight. I was doing my naval training on HMS ““Theseus”” prior to Suez, and I really wanted to go. Every young person who joins the Army wants to go. If you have not been there and got back, you are not happy. We have Armed Forces who want to do the best they can in the world, but not necessarily peace-keeping of this sort. It is a dangerous time. I am head of the appeal committee for the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. I have a point to make on behalf of the 52 former ambassadors and high commissioners who wrote a letter on 27 April 2004 to the Prime Minister, warning what was going to happen. There were 28 ambassadors who had held41 posts in the Arab world. They knew what they were talking about. In this capacity, I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, that he might be kind enough, if I were to write him a letter, to look to those people. If you want some wise men, ask if we can have a meeting with them. I leave noble Lords on the happy thought that I have used before. What is wrong with the Arab world and the Middle East? Three things: hashish, baksheesh and malish. Of course, a fourth one is the British, because they invented the other three.