LFIQ Joint President urges other political parties to follow LFIQ lead

Extract from Commons debate on the Queen’s Speech by Harry Barnes MP

The Queen's Speech says that the "Government will continue to support the Government of Iraq to provide stability and security and ensure that elections can be held in January."

I am one of those who opposed the invasion, but I realise that once the invasion had taken place, new sets of circumstances began to be created. I would have preferred to give assistance and encouragement to the considerable forces of opposition in Iraq at different stages who wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein and change the system. When people struggle within their own system, they develop organisations and arrangements that are part of the transformation and have the potential to build a democratic society. That was not done. Such organisations—clandestine bodies—existed, but the invasion still took place.

We must now look to the development of a democratic Iraq, with civic provisions in a new framework. We must argue against unacceptable military action and try to prevent its worst excesses, but we must realise that terrorism cannot be allowed to rule the roost; it must be contained and people must be defended in order to build democratic provisions and arrangements.

There are considerable forces in Iraq that look towards those things—women's organisations, youth organisations, ex-prisoners organisations, community groups, trade unions and bodies such as the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, which has 200,000 members in 14 organisations—in a setting of 50%, unemployment, massive problems and difficulties about which forms of privatisation will take place. Will it be a rip-off, as it was when the regime changed in the Soviet Union? There are worries about those issues, but there are forces for a better and improved Iraq.

Democracy is not just about voting in a ballot; it is about civil liberties, organisations and people's rights and freedoms to press their corner and get involved. I am joint president, with Ann Clwyd of Labour Friends of Iraq, and I am keen that other political parties should establish similar groups.
Our joint presidency is symbolic, as Ann supported what she would call a liberation, but which I call an invasion, while I opposed it, so it shows that people can come together on specific items and work in current circumstances to try to determine a way forward and whom they should assist.