Hilary Benn’s Speech: An Analysis

Hilary Benn’s Speech: An Analysis

“Don’t believe the hype” – Public Enemy

 

Abstract: Hilary Benn MP’s speech got such high praise by the media, so I had a look. It fell well below deserving of the praise it got, and here I explain why. Benn’s argument was full of emotional appeals, in what I believe was an attempt to obscure and misdirect from the substantive defects in the case for bombing. He bases it on our self-defence, but does not explain (and nor is it this case) how this bombing will make us any safer. He argues for an opposition in principle to Daesh, but this argument is illogical, again full of emotional appeals, and still does not explain why this bombing action is a method of opposition which is good. I also question the way that the media fling praise at this speech, pointing out my suspicion of the “mainstream” and how this angle on the speech fits with narratives they support.

This is the sort of analysis that I wish journalists might attempt, yet is so lacking from any reports about Benn’s speech, from discussion of Cameron’s case for bombing, and the way that journalism now is much more about reprinting press releases than having a proper ‘public watchdog’ approach to challenging what those with power are saying and doing.

Introduction

Hilary Benn – a Labour MP who was made shadow foreign secretary in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet – gave a speech at the end of the Parliamentary debate about air strikes in Syria. I was watching the news coverage for the vote, and the reporter who was on afterwards commented a couple of times on how good the speech was. In the following couple of days, it was lauded all over the place: according to this Guardian comment piece, “The shadow foreign secretary’s electrifying speech not only gave Labour MPs permission to vote for extending military action, it also positioned him as a serious leadership challenger” and “it led unerringly to a climactic argument – that the right thing to do in Syria is to stand up to Islamic State’s fascism“.

I’m a fan of his father, the late Tony Benn, who was an MP for some 47 years – I only know him because I’ve seen a few of his speeches, which lived up to the high standards I would like from politicians (such as telling the truth and actually dealing with the issues).

Link to HB speech video
Link to HB speech text

A couple of days later, I came across one article which said that “Hilary Benn’s ‘Extraordinary’ Speech for Bombing Syria Was Disingenuous Bullshit” on VICE – it seemed to be the only critical article out there. I thought it a good read, as it went outside the narrow window of discussion in the typical media outlets, commenting on the fact that MPs were cheering (when hearing the vote outcome) that they would be killing people, and that “it’s not surprising that as the eternal war continues to spin out forever, all anyone wants to talk about is how great Hilary Benn’s speech was.” This article gave lots of good criticism, such as the use of empty cliche phrases by Benn and describing it as “familiar invocation of the just war doctrine“, though it didn’t give a full analysis of the speech – so I thought I would do that myself. Though I am a couple of weeks late in this, I still feel it important to write given that the media seems intend on solidifying this speech as part of the history of Parliament, such as the above-linked Guardian article saying that the speech could ‘transform labour’ (transform it what, into a party that goes to war illegally… oh that’s so 2003!) and making Benn a ‘serious leadership challenger’ (which as far as I can tell, was made up entirely by the media).

It is worth noting that Hilary Benn was for the bombing motion, which was the opposite position to Labour Party Leader Corbyn. I was strongly against the motion, and wrote about that in this post.

I’ll say at the outset that I did not think much of the speech. It did not address some of the reasons I am against the bombing; it did address a couple of the reasons, but inadequately; it’s main reason was based around some form of “self-defense”, which I don’t think the bombings do much about; and it was full of emotional appeals, some of which didn’t make sense. I’ll substantiate each of these points.

Meta-point: It would be wrong to dismiss my analysis because of some sort of “bias”, by saying “well Alex is against the motion and Benn is for it, so of course Alex didn’t like it”. This would be like thinking that it rains because there are puddles on the ground; it confuses the causation and logic. I don’t start from the dogma of being against the bombing; that is the conclusion I come to from thinking about the issue with intellectual rigour and morality. I don’t like his speech because it falls below these standards.

Analysis

The first paragraph of the speech is a praise to Corbyn – “I am proud to speak from the same despatch box as him” – and a call on Cameron to apologise for calling Corbyn and anyone opposing his vote a “terrorist sympathiser” (which Cameron avoided addressing, whenever anyone said “you should apologise” he dodged with “there is honour both ways”). The third paragraph of his speech was praise for other speeches of the day. That’s those paragraphs dealt with.

Woven into Benn’s arguments seem to be to be two reasons he gives for interventon: self-defense and opposition in principle. There are some other standalone sentences, such as in paragraph eight about “the importance of bringing an end to the Syrian War”, and that paragraph also says that we want “a transitional government and elections”, so that Daesh can be defeated and Syrian refugees can return home.

Yet despite these scattered references, there are only two key reasons he gives for intervention. His second paragraph – which is his introduction to the substance, given that the first and third are comments on other speeches – starts by saying “we have had an intense and impassioned debate and rightly so, given the clear and present threat of Daesh” (Not because going to war should only be embarked upon with rigour?), then mentioning (without later expanding upon) the gravity of the decision, the conscience of the MPs, and the lives held in their hands. In his fourth paragraph, he frames the question as being “What should we do with others to confront this threat to our citizens, our nation, other nations, and the people who suffer under the yoke of Daesh?”. These quotes show that Benn’s key reason is about self-defense, not primarily protecting Syrian people. He also makes emotional appeals along this line, mentioning “the carnage of Paris… it could just have easily been London, or Glasgow, or Leeds, or Birmingham, and it could still be”. Later on, he references the “deadly serious threat we face from Daesh”, and paragraph eleven frames the issue as all about “our national security” and “self-defence”.

In this thread, he repeatedly uses the phrase “clear and present threat/danger” to reference the threat we face from Daesh. This is somewhat Orwellian: not in the usual sense of the word with reference to a totalitarian regime like in 1984, but in the way that Orwell discusses language and political thought (such as in his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’). I’m not sure that the threat from Daesh is that clear and present, and the use of this fluffy phrase is to obscure concrete discussion.

As discussed in this earlier post, we characterise the “threat from Daesh” in a way as if it is an enemy state, but it is not. The Paris attacks were not “from Daesh”, and nor was a recent attack in America; they are from “home-grown jihadists”, people who are looking to do something and are inspired by Daesh. If they were white instead, they might do an attack based on white supremacy or nationalism or some other ideology such as revenge on society for personal treatment (as school shootings often are). Daesh might fund or help them somehow, but they are not “from Daesh” really. If it was known of a particular planned attack (which for some reason we knew about but couldn’t stop) then perhaps ‘clear and present’ would be a fair description… but otherwise it’s more like a ‘potential threat’.

But even if they were “from Daesh”, Benn does not make the logical link between how the particular action of bombing Daesh in Syria helps to make us safer. This leaves a huge hole in his reasoning, showing these passages as just being emotional appeals and fear politics. Would bombing Daesh make us safer? Given that the attacks are from individuals or small groups of people, and in general are not “from Daesh” strictly speaking, I don’t’ see how it will make us safer. If he means that the bombing will help us move forward from conflict to resolution in Syria, then perhaps – though it still isn’t explained how it will help – but his emphasis is on “clear and present threat” instead of discussing the benefits of the bombing to the longer-term strategy in Syria (THERE ISN’T ONE).

His second key reason is one of “principled opposition” – which is a sort-of argument that we should oppose them (and so bomb them) because it is right to do so (whereas the “self-defence” argument is because it is to make us safer to do so). I’ll address this next.

The first problem with this argument is that it while it argues that it is right to oppose them, it does not explain why this bombing campaign is a good method of opposition. Of course I am against Daesh – but that does not mean I think that bombing them is a good way of opposing them. Benn doesn’t address this link; it is simply missing. As I say in a previous post – and many others say (Corbyn, Commentator) – cutting off suppliers of weapon and purchases of oil would be better to starve the Daesh fire of oxygen, instead of just throwing a bit of water at it.

It could be suggested that he does give examples of where bombing is successful, in a paragraph which begins with the line: “It has been argued in the debate that airstrikes achieve nothing. Not so.”. He does indeed give examples: but he does not explain why this new campaign would be of any good. He examples of airstrikes being good in saving Baghdad, saving Sinjar and Kobani. Yet as Benn says, the strikes made strategic sense. To save Baghdad, the strikes supported the Iraqi army. To save Sinjar and Kobani, the Kurds were supported. The bombing campaign in Syria does not have a clear group to support: it is a mess of different rebel groups. The omission from Benn of explaining the place of the new bombing campaign in an actual strategy is probably because there isn’t one – which brings us to the “70,000 troops” figure.

Benn does discuss the “70,000 troops” who we should be helping, but he discusses it in an odd way. He points out issues with Camerons case, saying that “the government must explain that [the figure of 70,000]” – yet it is already the end of the day of debate and he has committed to voting for the motion – and he says that “we know that most of them are currently engaged in fighting President Assad” – which means they are of zero use as opposition to Daesh.

Despite these gaping holes, he follows by saying that “whatever the number… the longer we leave taking action, the longer Daesh will have to decrease that number… to suggest that airstrikes should not take place until the Syrian civil war has come to and end is to miss the urgency of the terrorist threat that Daesh poses to us”. This is not convincing: just because the threat is urgent does not mean that issues with Cameron’s case, which Benn himself states, disappear. The urgency does not eradicate the defects

(Also worth noting that this 70,000 figure was commented on by the Tory Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, who said that“Instead of having dodgy dossiers, we now have bogus battalions.”; it was opposed by the Ministry of Defence as being unsupported, see this source and this source, and other commentators have described it as phantom – for example, this great article by Robert Fisk, one of the few worthwhile commentators on the middle east)

The “principled opposition” argument can be seen with Benn’s historical references, which I will discuss shortly, and other comments in his closing paragraph. This paragraph is terrible: lacking in meaningful substance but full of emotional claims. It says that “we are faced here by fascists. Not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to [us and our people]… They hold [us and our values of tolerance, decency and democracy] in contempt… And what we know about fascists is that they have to be defeated.”*

*I’ve edited this with the [square brackets] because, as it’s a speech, it’s done with multiple sentences and lots of pauses, so I made shortcuts.

I hope it is clear that this paragraph is devoid of substance and a terrible base for a case of war. Just because someone holds us and our values in contempt does not mean that we should bomb them. While fascists might “need to be defeated”, that doesn’t mean that we should bomb them. It comes across to me as a form of ideological fascism in itself: the unsaid part is that because they hold us in contempt and have different values, they deserve to be killed. Would this not also justify Daesh attacking us? We certainly hold them in contempt.

This is simply an emotional appeal which does not make logical sense and does not make up for the defects in the case for bombing – though making up for actual reason is its purpose. It is comparable to the thinking behind Cameron’s statement that those who oppose the bombing are “terrorist sympathisers”. They are fascists and we must bomb them! No? Hm, maybe you are a fascist… The emotional and ideological appeal is to move the debate away from whether the motion makes any sense: they are empty words, as nobody disagrees with the principle of combating evil, the opponents of the motion are instead opposed to this particular action as being a way of doing so. So restating these principles is little more than a cheap trick which obscures what the actual point of discussion is.

That is the two main points of Benn’s speech discussed. I have a few more comments on particular things he mentioned, which I will do in bullet-points to make it easier to read.

• He says that “it is not a contradiction” to bomb Daesh while also cutting off Daesh’s support, giving humanitarian aid, and sheltering more refugees, and rebuilding Syria post-war. Yet the government is not making any particular moves to do any of these things – so while it is not a contradiction in principle, this is to invoke a hypothetical possibility which is far from being a reality. This is not the government’s position, and Benn should not state this without pushing for these modes of action too.
   

• The legality of it. He says that we have a “clear and unambiguous UN Security Council Resolution” which “calls on member states to take all necessary measures” against Daesh. Yet I noticed that one of the reasons the SNP gave for voting against the motion was that the legality was not made out.
  The resolution does indeed have these words, but it is NOT clear and unambiguous. In a following paragraph, he instead gives the basis as that “such action would be lawful under Article 51 of the UN Charter – because every state has the right to defend itself”. There is a contradiction in Benn’s speech (the legal basis is either the Resolution or the inherent right to self-defense; they are independent), and this is because he is wrong.
  As someone with a law degree and knowing a bit about international law – and having not seen or heard any proper discussion of the legality anywhere – I did a bit of searching. My view is that the Resolution does NOT authorise this use of force: this might be odd to a layman, because of the way legal language is used, but to a lawyer it is quite clear. The Resolution does indeed contain the words ‘all necessary measures’, but the full sentence is that member states should “take all necessary measures, in compliance with internatonal law”. To me, this is clear that it is not of itself legal authority for the use of force. If it were, it would explicitly say so. Use of force under international law is only in specific circumstances, and one circumstance is indeed when the force is authorised by the UN. But this is governed by Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and if a resolution is authorising force, it explicitly says: the Libya Resolution (to establish a no-fly zone in 2011) includes the words “Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations”. These words are absent from the Syrian Resolution, therefore it does not authorise this force.
  You might ask what the purpose of the resolution is, if it doesn’t authorise additional force. My guess is that this was to build and show international consensus against Daesh, for some sort of diplomatic foundation for moving forwards in Syria. Because, lest we forget, a few years ago we were bombing the Assad regime and giving weapons and training to ‘rebel groups’ fighting it, such as Al-Nusra (an Al-Qaeda branch of some sort), some of which later joined with Daesh.
  This is, I think, why Benn also calls on Aticle 51 and Self-Defence as the legal basis – because he knows that the resolution is not the basis. This is also woefully inadequate: as I have said, Daesh is not planning to attack the UK and this bombing campaign does little against that. The Resolution is being used, emphasised especially by the Conservative party, because it knows that the self-defence case is both unlawful and weak.
   

• The comment about civilian casualties. He says that he “shares the concerns”, but that “unlike Daesh, none of us today act with the intent to harm civilians. Rather, we act to protect civilians from Daesh – who target innocent people.” The references to Daesh are another example of emotional appeals to try to distract from the substance discussed: the question of whether there will be civilian casualties from our action is clearly unrelated to what Daesh is doing. There will almost certainly be civilian casualties from the bombing. Every other bombing campaign has it, and this report about coalition airstrikes says that hundreds of civilians were killed in the first year of airstikes, and condemns the coalition for not monitoring this themselves. The point about civilian casualties was not made well anywhere, and it is for those defending this point to establish this. David Cameron, when asked about civilian casualties, did not address the substance but instead said that the RAF is world-class and we are using state-of-the-art weapons.
   

• My final comment is the misportrayal of history that Benn makes. I will make it quickly – I am not an expert historian and others have made this point in more detail – but his portrayal of the fight against Hitler and Mussolini in WW2 is at best rose-tinted (years of appeasement, we watched from the side until we had no choice but to act when there was an invasion of Poland), and his portrayal of the Spanish Civil war is omitting a crucial detail: sociaists and trade unionists did indeed join the international brigade to go and fight, but not only did the House of Commons (and the Labour party) not support this, it actively opposed it.

  Post-Analysis

  It must be questioned why the speech was lauded so much, with support across the range of corporate media, given that it is poor in its substantive reasoning and not a great example of good oration.

It fits with the general media position of being pro-war and anti-Corbyn to portray this speech quite positively. I saw much more of the media being in favour of war than I did being against it, and not enough criticism of some issues with the pro-war position, as discussed in previous articles on this blog (such as the robustness of Cameron’s claims, lack of mention of the historical record of failure of this type of intervention, and the legality of it). This speech was, in my estimation, well below deserving of the praise flung at it – and I doubt that whether there were a wonderful speech opposing the motion it would have got such praise.

The media was also trying to much much of a “split” in the Parliamentary Labour Party. The post-vote interviews on the BBC were about this as much as they were about the motion itself. To me, this looks like a clear continuation of their anti-Corbyn spin (which even Nick Robinson, BBC Political Correspondent, has complained about!): although it was claimed beforehand that “over a hundred” MPs would “rebel”, only 60 or so did; ~75% of the MPs voted against the motion, which was nicely in line with the ~75% of the respondents to Corbyn’s consultation who were against; it was less than the rebellion on the Iraq war against Tony Blair; and the media seems to take the position that the leader should have complete control of their party (fitting with the trend of increased centralisation and concretisation of power into Downing Street), and not understanding that democracy is about plurality and disagreement.

Some outlets even went as far as to run pieces which suggested that Benn might be the next leader of the Labour party when Corbyn gets ousted. It is partly because of these that I decided to write this analysis, because in his future career no doubt this speech will often be referenced.

Given the general pro-war and anti-Corbyn position in the media, it is little surprise that this speech and the narrative of a difference of opinion between the party leader and foreign secretary was made so much of. Yet it is a deficient media in which there is little substantive criticism of the many defects of both the speech and Cameron’s case for war. This is not the media which there should be in a high-functioning democracy, and it is not a media we should be content with. I have a suspicion that it might go even further: to what degree might there be collusion between different media outlets about stories they run and angles they take? It was striking that every outlet was in favour of this speech.

A few more closing comments. It is also interesting to see how Benn’s position changed (see this article): two weeks before this speech he did not advocate bombing Isis in Syria, saying that “the vacuum in which Isil/Daesh [Islamic State] in Syria thrives is a consequence of that civil war” and that “They have to come up with an overall plan, which they have not done. I think the focus for now is finding a peaceful solution to the civil war.” Why did he change his position in the two weeks, no longer mentioning the lack of overall plan?

It is also worth noting that nobody seemed to think to ask the Syrian people involved what they wanted. No surprise that the West’s geopolitics is still imperial and (neo-)colonial. There is a group of activists reporting out of Raqqa, reported as Daesh’ strongest city, and not only are they risking their lives (and being killed) for their reports, this article reports that they were against the French air strikes two weeks before.

If we actually wanted to find a praiseworthy speech, there are some out there. I’ll finish by quoting one I came across, by Sir Gerald Kaufman MP (can be found here). It was about one minute long, and it said that “There is absolutely no evidence of any kind that bombing Daesh, bombing Raqqa, will result in an upsurge of other people in the region to get rid of them… What it will undoubtedly do, despite the assurances of the Prime Minister, is it will kill innocent civilians. I am not going to be a party to killing innocent civilians for what will simply be a gesture. I’m not interested in gesture politics.”