John McDonnell
FREEDOM TODAY RT HON JOHN REDWOOD MP
The capture of the sailors and marines by Iranian guards and their subsequent release was a defining moment for this government. It represented the denouement of all that they have been doing. It was a cameo performance which played out all their weaknesses and mistakes, and revealed what is wrong with the way this government goes about its daily activities.
The government’s love affair with the UN and the international stage led directly to our sailors being at risk in the dangerous waters off Iraq and Iran. Ever willing to play its part in a multinational operation, the Blair government did not stop to sort out the detail of the rules of engagement. As a result, when a marauding party of Iranians turned up whilst our sailors and marines were performing their UN approved duties, the officer in charge judged the best course of action was surrender.
Our forces have been starved of helicopters, flak jackets, armoured vehicles and other necessary equipment in their Middle Eastern operations generally. Apparently, the latest Secretary of State has been persuaded of this, and has done something to remedy the shortcoming.
This did not sort out the problems with the task of intercepting and searching vessels using HMS Cornwall. The Cornwall was too large to stay in close support of the boarding team on 23 March. She only had one helicopter on duty, which departed at 7.53 with the two small boats, but returned to the mother ship by 9.00 am , leaving the boarding party without air cover. It took half an hour to get the Lynx airborne and into contact with the boarding party after hearing that contact had been lost between the boarders and the Cornwall. It is not clear that the boarding party and the Lynx had all the necessary armaments to take deterrent action if they had wished to do so.
Any self respecting Secretary of State for defence would have sought advice on what equipment and vessels were needed to undertake these type of operations, and would have ordered beefing up the forces used if something had gone wrong before – as it had. Once the hostage crisis began the government suspended further work in these troubled waters, giving the Iranians freedom to move weapons and take other actions that could worsen the position of our forces in the Middle East. When the Secretary of State made his apology on 16 March he told the House that he did not know when the UK would resume its search operations, as he was awaiting the view of the services on this matter.
You would have thought he might have instructed the armed forces to resume these searches quickly, and would have sorted out what changes they needed to equipment and the rules of engagement promptly to make it a safer task for them. But no, we have ministers who meekly await official advice.
All too often in this government we see Ministers rushing away from decisions or responsibility. They love to hide behind EU competence, strengthening the powers of the EU whenever they think they can get away with it, or to give powers of decision away to so called independent quangos which nonetheless they influence and control in other ways. The Defence Secretary’s first thought when the hostages were taken was clearly to stress the Navy’s responsibility.
He followed this approach in the first instance when challenged over the mad decision to allow the hostages once returned to sell their stories to the media. He said that the decision had been taken by the navy, and he had merely noted it when he was informed. Subsequently he thought again and decided it was wrong, so he overturned the judgement, leaving us in the position where two had successfully sold their tales and the others had not.
By the time he got to the Commons he appreciated he had to take responsibility for the decision, as clearly he could and should have turned down the Navy’s proposal to sell the stories when it was first put to him. He did so carefully and like so many Labour Ministers in trouble, worded his apology as a lawyer might. The pressure of the House forced him into doing the simple straightforward thing of just saying the word “Sorry”.
It is one of the crowning ironies of the Blair years that Ministers should make such a comprehensive mess of handling the media, when they have defined the job of a Minister as doing precious little other than handling the media. Tony Blair has gone hoarse explaining how much more difficult the job of PM is today because there is a 24 hour a day 7 days a week media interested in what is going on. Yet one of his senior colleagues was unable to see the obvious, that allowing a few public servants to sell their stories whilst remaining in post would be unfair and full of danger for the government.
Extending the Des Brown original doctrine of selling the stories to its logical conclusion would allow Ministers to sell their next statement on policy to the highest bidder, on the similar grounds to the hostage stories that there would be considerable media interest and great pressure to get the first call on the story. Was there no thought for how the families of the dead and seriously wounded from previous conflicts would feel when they saw sailors who had come to no physical harm make money out of the r experiences when others who had suffered for their country got nothing? How would you like to be part of a military team in a world where the person next to you on whom your life depended as his on you might be phoning a press agent at a crucial moment to check out the price for live action?
We have a government obsessed with media relations, to the detriment of getting the underlying problems sorted out. Most of what a Minister should do is time consuming detailed work, checking out and determining the resources, priorities and efficiencies of the public services they command. Presentation of the results or of changes of policy is much easier if the government has done a good job in delivering the services in the first place. If the government had got the rules of engagement and provision of forces right to patrol the seas off Iraq there would have been no hostage crisis that needed media handling.
If the government is going to carry on bungling its way through so many badly managed situations, then it will find media handling very difficult. It becomes impossible if the government also shows such lack of understanding of the ways of the media when it has made a mess. Des Brown was in a hole, so he carried on digging. He is by no means the worst of this cabinet. It could so easily have been the Health Secretary or the Pensions Secretary or the Environment Secretary or the Home Secretary doing the same, for the manifold mistakes made by their departments in recent years. A 7 day a week 24 hour a day media is only a problem if you let it be one. If you run the government efficiently and well, you release stories when it suits you, preferably to all the media at the same time by means of a statement to the Commons. There is a lot to be said for this traditional way of doing things. It is perfectly feasible to do in the modern world, but it does require Ministers who know what they are doing and are reasonably competent.
