Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

No worries. My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart of Edgbaston, for securing this important debate and for her clear introduction, which rightly highlighted Francis Fukuyama, who was always bizarrely hubristic with his end-of-history thesis and indeed now looks very far into the past. My contribution will have two foci. The first is to urge that we consider the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in the context of the behaviour of its second-most powerful member, Russia, and its allies in the continuing attack on Ukraine, and of other organisation members, including Iran and Belarus and, of course, China. My other focus will be somewhat in disagreement with the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, on one aspect of what has been described as the “Shanghai spirit” and one particular part of it: the so-called respect for the diversity of civilisations. To return to my first focus, I wish to report to the Committee a little of my experiences last week when I travelled with fellow parliamentarians—with financial support from British companies, which I will be appropriately declaring in due course—to Ukraine as part of a delegation from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Explosive Weapons and their Impact. The focus was on the clearing of mines and unexploded ordnance, something that the Ukrainians have to deal with at a totally unprecedented scale, at least in the form of risk. Some 29% of their nation, or 174,000 square kilometres, is at risk of being affected by mines and unexploded ordnance. We visited the State Emergency Service of Ukraine and the Mines Advisory Group and Halo Trust projects. We also saw the crucial efforts to treat those who have fallen victim to the mines at the charities Superhumans and Unbroken. We saw the human cost of the continuing Russian assault. We also saw close up the vicious, and sometimes internationally illegal, weapons that the Russians and their allies are using against civilian populations. Holding a submunition, a cluster bomb—obviously, once it had been rendered safe—and seeing a children’s storybook booby-trapped with explosives was an acute demonstration of the sheer difficulties that the Ukrainians face and the nature of the actions of the Russian-led alliance, many of whose members were in Tianjin. Understandably, in the face of the horrors of the Israeli assault on Gaza and the desperate desire to get the Israeli hostages home, the media and even the political focus have not always been on Ukraine. However, I want to stress the importance of continuing to provide the Ukrainians with practical support and moral support, both directly and through projects such as that of BBC Media Action, which is assisting in the vital task of explosive ordnance risk education. Behind that must be a strong, determined delivery of the message from the international community—or as much of it as we can bring together—that there is a principle that larger countries cannot simply decide to take chunks out of their neighbours. Further, that there are rules of war and breaking these must not just be called out, but must have genuine, long-term, serious consequences for the regimes responsible. The human race has a long way to go. It was back in 697 that the law of innocence was promulgated by Gaelic and Pictish nobles at the Synod of Birr. It extended what had been protection for monks and religious male figures to women and other non-combatants. That is a very long time ago and we still have failed to deliver that, as I saw in Ukraine. I come now to the to the second part of my contribution today, which is around the term “civilisations”, which, as I noted, is described as part of the Shanghai spirit. This language is increasingly penetrating many international settings, frequently from the influence of China. I note, for example, that on 7 June 2024 the UN General Assembly adopted 10 June as the international day for dialogue among civilisations. I agree with the words of the US representative during that debate that we should instead be talking about cultures. The US representative then urged vigilance over how words such as “civilisation” are used. This is a term in the form of western civilisation that we are hearing increasingly in your Lordships’ House, and I would ask those who are increasingly using it to consider how they are playing into the hands of dangerous forces which are using it in places such Tianjin. Making claims of exceptionalism, of the purity of one historical cultural formulation over another, is playing into the hands of the narrative that we are hearing from China and other countries that needs to be challenged, not accepted. I am pleased to say that there a growing reaction against that, against the idea of discrete, distinct civilisations, an international shedding of civilizational thinking. I note that on display today in your Lordships’ Library is the cover of Josephine Quinn’s excellent book How the World Made the West which addresses this issue. She notes Polybius’s remark that the Romans were a multicultural melting pot willing to substitute their customs for better practices from elsewhere. There is no such thing as pure Roman civilisation or indeed western civilisation. This book explicitly takes aim at Samuel P Huntington’s influential 1996 clash of civilisations thesis, which is effectively being adopted in this debate. It is deeply dangerous and a framing for a great deal of Islamophobic and other xenophobic rhetoric and action. Challenging this claim is an urgent task. Responding to the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, I point out that democracy and democratic elements have a very long history going back, of course, as is often cited, to ancient Greece, but much further than that to a millennia before in ancient Assyria.