Hazel Blears: Labour was wrong about Syria

Hazel Blears, the senior Labour MP, has said that Britain should have intervened in Syria. “I have reflected quite a lot on this,” Blears said, talking to Prospect about the House of Commons vote in August 2013 that prevented Britain from intervening in the country’s intensifying civil war. In retrospect, she said, “I would probably have voted for us to take action.” She added: “I know that there’s little appetite for military action in view of Iraq. But actually, I don’t know how long you sit on the sidelines.”

The Labour Party effectively shut off Britain’s ability to intervene in Syria by defeating a government motion that woud have permitted action by a margin of 285-272. The result of the vote was met with dismay in the United States, which was also debating intervention. Senator John McCain said at the time that: “I think it’s put [Barack Obama] into a very difficult and contradictory position.”

The New York Daily News was less measured, declaring: “The British aren’t coming.” In an editorial, the paper said: “Obama’s attempts to form a coalition of nations willing to attack Syria appear to be splintering.” The main cause of this was “the normally reliable Brits, whose parliament stunned Obama on Thursday by voting down Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposal to join.”

Blears is one of Labour’s leading security experts. She was Minister for Policing and Counter-Terrorism under Tony Blair at the time of the 7/7 London bombings in 2005, during which Islamic extremists killed 52 people in a coordinated series of suicide attacks. Blears now sits on the Intelligence and Security Committee, the parliamentary body with oversight of Britain’s intelligence agencies, MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. She is also part of the Prime Minister’s Extremism Taskforce, which was set up after the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby.

Her assessment of the Syria vote calls into question the decision taken by Ed Miliband to oppose British intervention. During the debate, Miliband said that: “We’re not going to be supporting a government motion which was briefed this morning setting out an ‘in principle’ decision to take military action. It would be the wrong thing to do and on that basis we will oppose the motion.”

In Blears’s analysis that position was a mistake, not only because of the consequences of non-intervention for Syria itself, but also the war’s effect on the attitudes of British Muslims. “The fact is that the [Syrian] regime has killed 100,000—at least—of its own people,” said Blears. “That creates an environment in which you can understand the motivation for young people to want to go out and do something about that.”

Blears also emphasised the extent of the threat posed by British fighters returning from Syria. “The sense in not just Britain but the west in general is that it’s nothing to do with us. Actually, if these young men go out, become trained and prepared to take that step to kill people—and they are going to come back—their world view could well be altered by the experience that they’ve had.”

Blears estimates that 500 people have travelled to Syria from Britain in order to fight. They will return radicalised and trained, “and they will also have kudos because they will have been in theatre,” she said. The intelligence agencies may struggle to follow all the returnees. “Our [intelligence] agencies have probably thwarted one serious plot—really serious plot—every year for the last 10 years. The threat is the same as it ever was. There are several thousand people working actively to do us harm.” She added: “This is not a theoretical thing going on. This is a real and serious threat to us.”

Part of the reaction to the extremist threat since 7/7 has been the “Prevent” strategy, set up by Blears when she was a minister. The aim was to divert young Muslim men away from radicalism in their early years, but the government has recently announced cuts to the programme, which Blears has criticised. “Following the coalition coming in, we seem to have reverted to just dealing with the people who are already radicalised and who are likely to tilt into violent extremism.” But by that time, Blears said, it is too late.