LONDON, 6 June 2003 — Compare and contrast. Here is Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons on July 8, 1982, announcing the nature of the Falklands war inquiry: “The overriding considerations are that it should be independent, that it should command confidence, that its members should have access to all relevant papers and persons and that it should complete its work speedily.” Now here is Tony Blair, in the Commons on Wednesday: “I have answered the allegations.”
There is a further contrast. The 1982 inquiry had wide terms of reference to “review the way in which the responsibilities of government in relation to the Falkland Islands and their dependencies were discharged in the period leading up to the Argentine invasion”. The Iraq inquiry to be conducted by the intelligence and security committee will have a narrow focus on the intelligence issue. It will not, in other words, attempt to answer the real question, which is why we went to war when we did.
The difficulty in getting a clear answer to that question before the war has continued since — except that the fog has grown even denser — with assorted allegations swirling around, now including the extraordinarily serious charge by a leading Cabinet minister that there are “rogue elements” in the security services. Not since the 1970s, when plots by generals to take over the country were regularly rumored, have we had such excitements.
What does all this tell us about Tony Blair? He clearly does believe that he has answered all the allegations. He is irked, even affronted, that they should be made at all. “Absurd” is one of his favorite words. He does not believe that vultures should be fed or they will keep coming back for more. More than any previous prime minister, his style of governing is intensely personal. He routinely speaks of “my” rather than “our”. When things get rough, he makes issues into matters of personal trust and integrity.
This was Blair’s war. While many of us were anguishing about it, he was single-minded and resolute throughout. His narrative remained clear and honest. No serious link with Al-Qaeda or terrorism was claimed. Although the liberation of the Iraqi people from tyranny would be a happy by-product of war, it would not be its cause or justification. It all came down to weapons of mass destruction and the failure to disarm. Even when UN cover could not be obtained, this was why war was nevertheless necessary.
If there were difficulties with this argument before the war (was Iraq really a threat to anybody? Why abort the inspection process?), they are as nothing compared with the postwar difficulties of explaining why the basis for the alleged threat has not been established. No wonder those who saw Iraq as the George Bush re-election war, or the war for US strategic interests in the region, feel vindicated.
Perversely, as one of those who did not support the government, I take a rather different view. The only war I would have supported would have been one to remove a totalitarian monster. But this was expressly not the war on offer. Wars are a serious business and it is not surprising that people want to know the reasons for them.
This is why a full inquiry is needed. Here the prime minister will have to overcome his instincts. It is not an affront to personal integrity to try to establish in a democracy what happened. Notice how Blair often refers in a very personal way to his responsibility for what happens “on my watch”. This betrays an old-fashioned sense of public duty, a felt obligation to do some good while he is at the nation’s helm. If he has an ideology, this is probably it. He sometimes seems to have an almost Gladstonian sense of the need to account to history (and to himself, and perhaps to his God) for what he has been doing. It is also why one day, at a moment of his own choosing, he will stop doing it.
These are attractive qualities, at least to me. They are part of the sense in which he is not an ordinary party politician, certainly not the sort of politician who sits in a party bunker and only sees the world through the narrow slit of light that enters. In this respect, by the way, he is quite unlike Mrs. Thatcher. But these are also qualities that carry their own dangers. One of them is an irritation with the need to account to anybody else, and a restlessness in the face of procedural constraints. Yet this is what democracy requires. It would not be a sign of weakness, or an abdication of personal responsibility, to have “absurd” allegations properly inquired into. It would instead be a bold declaration of democratic strength.
— Tony Wright is Labour MP for Cannock Chase and chairman of the public administration select committee. His Very Short Introduction to British Politics is published this month.
