Tag: Emily Thornberry

Below is the text of the speech made by Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, in the House of Commons on 25 September 2019.

I thank the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of his statement.

We have been summoned back here due to the unlawful actions of the Prime Minister, attempting to avoid debate on one vital issue, but it is important that we debate other vital issues, including the threat of war with Iran. First, Mr Speaker, may I take the opportunity of this discussion of vital issues in the middle east to apologise publicly to my Liberal Democrat colleagues for my crass throwaway “Taliban” remark in an interview last week? I am sorry for what I said. I believe that our politics is better when we are honest and apologise for our mistakes—a lesson that our country’s Prime Minister, Her Majesty’s Prime Minister, would be well placed to learn.

I do not have a scintilla of doubt that Iran was responsible for the drone attacks in Saudi Arabia and the attacks on oil tankers in Hormuz. I totally agree with the Foreign Secretary that Iran’s actions are utterly unacceptable and must be condemned by all sides. Sadly, this was all too predictable, because just like during the tanker wars in the 1980s, there is a reckless and ruthless logic being applied by the Iranian hard-line theocrats who are now in the ascendancy in Iran, and it is this: “If you stop our oil supplies, we’re going to stop yours.”

That development has been inevitable since the United States reimposed sanctions on Iran. There are absolutely no excuses for what Iran has done, but there is also no excuse for the Trump Administration wilfully wrecking the nuclear deal, destroying the chances of progress on other issues, and handing power back to the Khamenei hard-liners, who have always wanted to reverse the Rouhani Government’s attempt to engage with the west. What are we left with now? With a Trump Administration agitating for war and Iranian hard-liners actively trying to provoke it—war with a country that is nine times the size of Syria and has three times Syria’s pre-war population. That leaves us with a choice to make as a world and, even more important, a choice to make as a country and as a Parliament.

In an era when we can no longer rely on the United States to provide any global leadership on matters of peace and war, or anything to do with the middle east, we need the EU and the UN to step up, to do our job and to demand that, after working so hard to negotiate the nuclear deal, we will not let it be thrown away and allow the spiral into war to continue. As the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday, real security does not come from belligerent posturing or reckless military interventions; it comes from international co-operation and diplomacy. Let me add that it does not come from what successive Governments have done by committing to military intervention with no planning for what comes next, creating chaos in the aftermath and opening up ungoverned spaces in which the evil of jihadist death cults thrives.

If war with Iran is where the world is headed and we cannot stop it, we have a choice to make as a country, and we should have a choice to make in this Parliament. That choice is whether our country is involved and the lives of our servicepeople are put at risk as a result of a power struggle between Tehran and Riyadh, as a result of a power struggle between Khamenei and Rouhani, and as a result of a power-crazed president in the White House who wants to start wars rather than end them. In that climate, there is only one thing we should be doing now, and that is working to de-escalate the tension with Iran, getting the nuclear deal back on track, and using that as the foundation, which it promised to be, of addressing all the other concerns that we have about Iran, not least its continued detention of Nazanin and other dual British nationals.

Instead, at this crucial moment, we have a Prime Minister openly talking about sending troops to Saudi Arabia, in an apparent bid to please Donald Trump. As the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday, have we learned nothing? On a day when we are also rightly focused on the powers of Parliament and the abuse of power by the Government, let me close by asking the Foreign Secretary one simple but vital question. Will he guarantee that, before any decision to join Donald Trump in military action against Iran and to put British servicepeople in harm’s way, this House will be asked to approve that action and given the chance to save our country from the disaster that war with Iran would be?

Below is the text of the speech made by Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in the House of Commons on 23 April 2019.

I thank the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of his statement and for the tone of his words, with which ​I wholeheartedly agree. I join him in commending the work of the British high commission in Colombo. Once again, it has demonstrated that in the very worst of circumstances for British nationals abroad, our consular services offer the very best of support. I am sure the high commission will continue to ensure that the families of the British nationals who have so tragically been killed in the attacks get all the support they need at this time of unbearable shock and sadness.

I have full confidence in what the Foreign Secretary has said about the assistance that the Government are ready to offer to the Sri Lankan authorities, whether in relation to security and intelligence, or in relation to help for the forensic services. He has our support and our thanks for that.

I know that there are many questions to be asked about who was responsible for the attacks and what could have been done to prevent them, but today is not a time for those questions. On this day of national mourning in Sri Lanka, as the first of those who were killed are buried and as the death toll continues to mount, it is simply a time for this House and this country to stand with the people of Sri Lanka, with the British families and with those from around the world who have lost loved ones and to express our shared solidarity and grief at the devastation that they have suffered. It is a time to stand in admiration at the way in which the Sri Lankan people and their Government have responded to this attempt to divide them by instead coming together in peace and calling for the unity of all communities. We in the west must do our part to help Sri Lanka to recover from this horror by continuing to visit that beautiful country and showing the terrorists they will not win.

It is sadly apt that on St George’s day, when we mark both the birth and the death of Shakespeare, we are confronted with the latest example of what he once called “mountainish inhumanity”. That is the unspeakable inhumanity and evil of men who would walk into a group of peaceful Christian worshippers at prayer or happy foreign tourists having breakfast and blow these innocent people up, killing at least 320 people, including 45 children and an eight-year-old cousin of our good friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq). Dozens are still fighting for their lives in hospital and hundreds more have received life-changing injuries.

When we ask how anyone’s mind could become so warped and depraved as to commit such an act, just as we did about the attack on Muslims in Christchurch last month and on Jews in Pittsburgh last October, we must not make the mistake of blaming religion. There is no religion on this earth that teaches that the way to salvation is blowing up innocent children or shooting people at prayer. We must also not make the mistake of saying that one act of evil begets another, that somehow this atrocity happened because of the atrocity in Christchurch. I believe that that is an entirely false narrative, one that excuses terrorism. We should never indulge it. Instead, we should call it out for what it is: an act born of pure, vicious mind-polluting hatred perpetuated by sickening, despicable individuals who do not worship God but death; whose only religion is hate and whose fellow believers in hatred and in death must be wiped from the face of our earth.

But in these dark and terrible moments, I see one shred of light and one piece of definite proof that the narrative that says that evil begets evil and we reap what ​we sow is indeed a false one. That was the deeply moving statement made by Ben Nicholson, confirming the loss of his wife and two children in the blast at the Shangri-La hotel. I do not think there is any one of us who could understand what that grief would feel like. We would all have understood if Mr Nicholson’s reaction had been one of anger and hatred towards the people who had destroyed his family, but instead his response was filled with love for his wife and for his beautiful children. He rejected hatred, the hatred that had killed his family, and he responded to it with mountainish humanity: a humanity that no act of evil could corrupt, because, as Shakespeare also wrote:

“unkindness may defeat my life, But never taint my love.”

Below is the text of the speech made by Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, at the International Parliamentary Conference held in Paris on 8 November 2018.

Thank you, your excellencies, ladies and gentleman. It is a very great privilege to stand before you today representing Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the United Kingdom’s official opposition, and to say without equivocation – to Keith Vaz, to Kamal Jendoubi, and to all of the Parliamentarians and NGOs here today – that we not only agree with every word of the pledge you will agree today, but that a future Labour government in Britain will commit to implement every word of that pledge from the first day we are in power.

I want to thank Kamal Jendoubi, and the panel of UN experts he has chaired, for blowing through the smoke which so often clouds these discussions, and making clear that every single day which passes in Yemen is another day when blatant crimes against humanity are allowed to continue, and are going uninvestigated and unpunished.

I want to thank all the NGOs gathered here today for the tireless, dangerous and all too thankless work you do to help the innocent victims of this war, especially the nine million adults and five million children not just facing starvation, but before the eyes of the world, now dying of starvation.

And I want to thank all the Parliamentarians here today, who for the last three years have been trying to turn the heads of the world and the heads of their governments towards this brutal, awful war, and saying: “Do not look away, stop ignoring this war, stop allowing this war, and stop arming this war”.

But I make no apologies for singling out one man, one son of Yemen, who has led that effort in my own country, who I know has inspired others across Europe and around the globe, and who is responsible for gathering us all here today. I want to thank Keith Vaz, who has done so much to drag the crisis in Yemen from two column inches on Page 26 onto the front pages of newspapers all across our world.

But Keith would be the first to admit one thing. The eyes of the world would not be so much on this conference, and the pledge that will be agreed today, if it were not for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and the spotlight that murder has shone on the current government of Saudi Arabia and its total disregard for human rights, the rule of law, and the sanctity of human life.

And this is something that many have been willing to comment on and express outrage about in the last few weeks, but which so many of us in this room have been warning was happening not just once or twice, not just a hundred times over, or a thousand, but millions of times over, during the blockade and assault on Yemen.

And that is why, amid all the acres of news coverage, all the commentary and quotes, that have followed the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, there is one sentence that I cannot erase from my mind. It was spoken to reporters from The New York Times, by Dr Mekkia Mahdi, who works in a health clinic in Northern Yemen crammed with malnourished children escaping the bombardment of Hodeidah. A doctor with dozens of children starving and dying all around her every day as a result of this brutal war and the criminal closure of the supply routes from Hodeidah.

And Dr Mahdi said this: “We’re surprised the Khashoggi case is getting so much attention, while millions of Yemeni children are suffering and nobody gives a damn about them.” And as she said those very words, she sat by the bed of a 7-year old girl – a girl named Amal Hussain – and according to the New York Times reporters who brought the images of Amal’s suffering to the world, Dr Mahdi stroked Amal’s hair, but also tugged at the skin covering her emaciated body and said to the reporters: “Look, no meat. Only bones.”

As many of you will know, Amal Hussain, that 7-year old girl, died last weekend and her mother Mariam said it was not just that her heart was broken by losing Amal but she now had to worry about her other children suffering the same fate.

And yes, we can feel deep sorrow for Amal and her mother just as we did for the parents of the 40 children killed by a Saudi air-strike on their school bus in August, but I have to tell you this: I am sick and tired of sorrow. I am exhausted by crying over what happens one month only to see even worse happen the next.

And when it comes to Parliamentarians and NGOs like us, the children of Yemen have a right to demand more than sorrow and sympathy and tears. They are calling out for action. And we must listen to those voices. We must demand action.

And we must all stand up and condemn governments like Britain’s, governments all around the world, and the UN Security Council as a group, for not listening to the Expert Panel, for not taking action immediately, for not doing everything they can – for not even trying! – to bring this war to an end, and get relief to the children who need it.

Because wherever we are in the world, for all of us who have been involved in these debates for the last three years, the true questions we must all start to ask are these: how bad do things need to get before our governments will take action? And what does the Saudi coalition need to do before our governments will say ‘Enough’.

Because we cannot continue with the same debates that we have been having for the last three years and hearing exactly the same answers, seeing the carnage and the famine get ever worse, and seeing more and more children die, whether from air strikes, from the fighting in their streets, or from starvation.

But that is why today’s gathering matters so much. Because when facing situations like this, it is very easy to become jaded in our horror at what is happening and become pessimistic that it will ever change, pessimism that eventually leads to inaction, and inaction that eventually gives way to inattention.

And yes, the essential role that we must all play: Keith and Kamal, all the Parliamentarians and NGOs, and the journalists who are here today, is to stop our governments, and our parliaments from ever simply turning away. But we must also continually confront our governments and the UN Security Council with the individual faces and stories of the children whose blood will be on their hands if they delay action any longer.

Amal Hussain’s face will live long in my mind but I am also haunted by the story of an 8 year old called Imad interviewed by PBS in America a few months ago. He was just five years old when a missile hit his home and took both his legs above the knee. A year later, he was given prosthetic legs but he finds them too heavy and painful to wear so, he has had to learn to walk on his hands instead.

And PBS talked as well to young girls like 14 year old Gamaa, who had to leave school last year after her father died, and left the family without support. “I loved everything about school,” she said, “but teachers asked for money that I didn’t have. So I had to drop out.”

To try and help her family, she married a 16 year old boy. “I thought that, if I left, maybe it will help.”, she said, “but then I discovered that my husband doesn’t have a job.” Her new husband is kind to her, she says, but his family is just as poor as hers. A 14-year old girl.

And we all know that for every Imad and Gamaa, there are millions more children with stories just like theirs and thousands of others whose stories ended when the air strikes came, or they picked up a cluster bomb, or when the Houthis put a rifle in their hands, or like Amal Hussain, when the deprivation of food became too much.

And when we say there is no military solution to this crisis, let’s be clear what we mean. Because I sometimes say that to people: “There is no military solution”, and they say “Well actually, look at the Saudi advances”. But what we really mean is there is no possible military solution without unthinkable human costs for Yemen’s civilians, the innocent people who ask no more than to be allowed to live their lives.

So, we desperately need an alternative. We desperately need a political solution. And that is why the pledge we will make today is so important. And this is no counsel of despair. This is no retreat into pessimism. If anything, it is the exact opposite. Because the pledge we can agree on today and carry back to all our parliaments and governments is a blueprint for effective action to stop the humanitarian crisis, to achieve a lasting ceasefire, and to enable a long-term political solution: six clear, pragmatic, achievable steps.

And of all the countries represented here today, there is a special responsibility on the United Kingdom as the pen-holder on Yemen at the Security Council, as the country that has had a draft resolution along exactly these lines sitting on ice for the last two years, to immediately stop ducking that responsibility and bring forward that resolution.

So Keith and I will continue to make demands inside the UK Parliament for our government to do its job, and bring that resolution to the table, and I hope you will support us in that.

Because frankly, if we do not, if we do not act on this pledge as a world, then I am afraid we face the prospect of being gathered here again in another year, when tragically it may all be too late, and what Keith has always warned about will have come to pass: Yemen will have been allowed to bleed to death. That is a prospect, which – to me and to all of you – is I believe not just unthinkable, but utterly unacceptable.

The pledge we will sign today sets out the alternative, and it is one we must all embrace together.

Below is the text of the speech made by Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, at the Labour Party’s conference in Liverpool on 25 September 2018.

Chair, Conference, it’s a privilege to be opening this debate on behalf of my good friends Nia Griffith and Kate Osamor, their shadow teams, including Liverpool’s own Dan Carden, and my own superb ministerial team: Liz McInnes, Khalid Mahmood, Fabian Hamilton, Helen Goodman, Ray Collins, and my PPS Danielle Rowley.

And it’s wonderful to be back in Liverpool: a city we really thought couldn’t get any more Labour, but where last year, we won 37,000 more votes than in 2015, our biggest ever vote in this city. And next time round, under the inspirational leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, we’ll go one better.

It’s been 35 years since we kicked the last Tory MP out of Liverpool. And next time round, we’ll win Southport as well, and kick the Tories out of Merseyside for good.

———–

Conference, as we all know, this is a year of important anniversaries in the history of the socialist movement – a movement always based on the unstoppable momentum of the masses, the incredible inspiration of courageous individuals and a core belief that injustice done to any of us is injustice done to all of us wherever we are in the world.

And in this year of anniversaries, we start by celebrating 150 years of the TUC: 150 years spent fighting for workers, not just in Britain but all across the globe, and stronger than ever today thanks to the leadership of Frances O’Grady, and thanks to a Labour leadership which now respects the representatives of our workers, rather than treating them with deliberate contempt.

And in this year of anniversaries, Conference, let’s recall it’s 130 years since a thin, humble, bearded socialist – it’s funny how those men can change the world – a Frenchman called Pierre De Geyter sat down and wrote a new melody for some old lyrics, and created the song we know as ‘The Internationale’, which inspired the working class of Europe and shook the ruling class, because it rejected war, rejected exploitation, and urged the human race to unite.

And of course, conference, it’s 100 years since the first women in our country won the right to vote and won the right to stand for Parliament. And don’t let anyone ever say that we were ‘given’ those rights, because the women who came before us weren’t given anything! They fought for those rights, they suffered for those rights, and some died for those rights. And everything we now enjoy was won for us by those brave, brilliant women.

But it’s also 100 years, Conference, since a young woman who never got the right to vote gave birth to her only son: a son who was refused permission to attend her funeral 50 years later because he was in a prison cell on Robben Island. Nosekeni Mandela never got to see her son freed. She never got to see him change his country and inspire the world. But he called her “the centre of his universe” so we owe it to her that he did.

And Conference, we also this year celebrate the anniversaries of some of Labour’s greatest achievements: 70 years since the Attlee Government created the NHS; 50 years since the Wilson Government helped create the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; and 20 years, Conference, since Gordon Brown brought in the Tax Credits which the Tories are trying to dismantle; 20 years since Tony Blair secured the Good Friday Agreement which the Tories are trying to jeopardise; and 20 years since a Labour government started the Devolution Revolution which the Tories are trying to ignore as they hurtle towards a false choice between the ‘Chequers Deal’ and ‘No Deal’, either one of which will kill jobs and growth all across our country, and neither one of which we will accept.

————-

But Conference, it is also a year of solemn anniversaries.

100 years since the end of the First World War, when young men from every corner of the human race united across Europe, Africa, The Middle East and Asia, not in the spirit of The Internationale, but – in the words of Keir Hardie – “to fill the horrid graves of war” in the name “of selfish and incompetent statesmen” who had failed to preserve peace.

And it is 70 years too Conference, since the assassination of Gandhi and 50 years since Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy: three men of peace, three men of hope, all shot dead because they believed in an alternative to violence and hatred and war.

And there is a final anniversary we must pause and remember today. Because Conference, it was 80 years ago this very week that the International Brigades were disbanded after their brave struggle against fascism in Spain, and their heroic final stand at The Ebro. And we pay tribute today to those brave men and women, including one of this city’s greatest sons, the legendary Jack Jones, who were prepared to sacrifice their youth, their futures and their lives to try and stop the rise of fascism in Europe.

And we need that same spirit today, Conference, because make no mistake, those dangerous forces are on the rise again in our world on a pace and scale not seen since the days of the International Brigades.

And it is not just the scenes from Charlottesville to Stockholm of masked thugs marching under Neo-Nazi Banners. It is also – far more dangerously – the rise of leaders projecting a form of nationalism not defined by love of one’s country and one’s people, but by hatred towards everyone else; by the erosion of democracy and free speech; and by the demonisation of any minority, any religion, and indeed any media outlet deemed to be ‘the enemy’.

And everywhere we see those governments today, we know they are contributing to the creation of a world which is the opposite of The Internationale’: a world where the human race is more divided, more drowning in hatred than at any time since the 1930s. And a world which is therefore utterly unable to deal with the problems that we all collectively face.

That is why our world leaders shrug their shoulders as the Climate Change crisis reaches the point of no return. That is why governments like ours continue to sell arms to Saudi Arabia even when it is proven that those weapons are being used to murder innocent children in Yemen. That is why the war in Syria too remains so intractable and destructive, with the dozen major countries involved not striving to stop it, but playing their own lethal power games with other peoples’ lives.

That is why North Korea can happily continue developing their bomb; Iran can keep Nazanin jailed for a third year; Myanmar and Cameroon can slaughter their own citizens at will; Russia can act with impunity not just in Syria but in Salisbury; and Donald Trump can tear up treaties it took other leaders years to agree.

All because Conference, the world order has been turned into a global free-for-all, and the leadership to fix it is simply not there. But Conference, it’s here in this hall, it’s here on this stage, it’s here in Jeremy Corbyn. And we as the Labour Party in government must strive to lead the world in a different direction.

So with Nia Griffith’s leadership, we will support our forces, maintain 2 per cent spending on defence, invest more in peacekeeping, respect our international treaties, and never hesitate to defend ourselves, our allies, and our citizens abroad. But equally, we will never as a party go back to supporting illegal, aggressive wars of intervention with no plans for the aftermath, and no thought for the consequences, whether in terms of the innocent lives lost or the ungoverned spaces created within which terrorist groups can thrive.

And with Kate Osamor’s leadership, we will also rise to the challenge that Nelson Mandela set this Conference eighteen years ago when he told us that “one of Labour’s major political and moral tasks in the 21st century” was to “become once more the keepers of our brothers and sisters [all around] the world.”

And with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, we must and will lead the world in promoting human rights, in reforming the arms trade, in pursuing an end to conflict, in supporting not demonising refugees, and in turning the promise of a nuclear-free world from an impossible dream to a concrete goal.

And with the leadership of every single one of us, Conference, we must also honour the memory of the International Brigades, and lead the fight against the forces of fascism, of racism, and prejudice, and anti-semitism. Because that is what we have always done both at home and abroad, and that is what we must always do.

————–

We were there in Spain fighting Franco in 1936. We were there in Cable Street that same year fighting alongside the Jewish community to stop the Blackshirts. We were here in Liverpool a year later, when Oswald Mosley tried to speak in this great city and was forced out without saying a word. And we were there in the 1980s – I was there myself – when we marched against the National Front.

And let’s remember Conference, we won all those battles! We beat the Blackshirts, and the NF, and the BNP, and the EDL, and whatever they call themselves today, however they dress up their racial hatred, we are there in the same streets telling the fascists: ‘No Pasaran’.

And when we look back on all those battles, stretching back 80 years, I make a simple point, it hasn’t been thousands of Tories assembling in the streets to fight the forces of fascism. It’s been the men and women in this room. It’s been Jack Jones and Jeremy’s parents. It’s been Jon Lansman and Len McCluskey, Diane Abbott and Dawn Butler, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. So while I make a point of never disagreeing with John on anything, I disagree with him on this: we don’t need a new Anti-Nazi League, because the Anti-Nazi League is in this hall and on this stage.

————

But Conference, let me speak to you from the depths of my heart and my soul and say something I never thought I’d have to say in my lifetime as a Labour member and activist, and it is simply this: that if we want to root out fascism and racism and hatred from our world, and from our country, then we must start, we must start, with rooting it out of our own party.

We all support the Palestinian cause, we are all committed to recognise the Palestinian State, and I stand here with no hesitation when I condemn the Netanyahu government for its racist policies and its criminal actions against the Palestinian people.

But I know as well, and we must all acknowledge, that there are sickening individuals on the fringes of our movement, who use our legitimate support for Palestine as a cloak and a cover for their despicable hatred of Jewish people, and their desire to see Israel destroyed. Those people stand for everything that we have always stood against and they must be kicked out of our party the same way Oswald Mosley was kicked out of Liverpool.

—————

And Conference, there is something more. Because if we truly want to realise the dream of The Internationale to unite the human race, and re-unite our country, then again we must start with uniting our own party, and ending the pointless conflicts which divide our movement, which poison our online debate, and which distract us from fighting the Tories.

Because as Gandhi said: “We but mirror the world so if we could change ourselves, the world would also change.” But if we can’t show the strength to change ourselves to change the way we behave to each other, how can we ever hope to change the country, and aspire to change the world?

But if we can do all that, just think what we’re capable of. Think what history we can create in government. Think what we can achieve that future Labour Conferences will remember as great anniversaries.

————–

And I want to close with a story told by Dolores Gomez about the siege of Madrid in 1936, when every day she and her fellow citizens expected their streets to fall to the fascist forces surrounding the city. And sure enough, one day, they heard a huge army on the march

“Iron clad boots”, she said, “Men marching silent, severe, with rifles on their shoulders and bayonets fixed, making the earth tremble under their feet.” She and others crouched on balconies overlooking the street, rifles cocked and grenades ready to be thrown, just waiting for the order to attack.

But then she said, the army began to sing. “A thrill goes down the spines of the people, `Is this a dream?’ ask the women, sobbing.” But no, it was not. The men marching down the street had begun singing ‘The Internationale’, each in their own language – French, Italian, German, and English – the men of The International Brigades, all singing different words, but all with the same meaning, that when any of us is under attack from the forces of hatred, prejudice and exploitation, we are all under attack and we must unite and fight back together.

And if we can show that same unity today in our party, if we can root out prejudice and end division in our own ranks, then we can heal our divided country, we can unite our fractured world, and we can show that the greatest achievements of our socialist movement lie not in our past, but in our future. That is the kind of government we need for our country and that is the kind of Britain we need for our world.