16th September 2003 - Held in The Grand Committee Room, Houses of Parliament.

 

I am definitely at the "see it can be done" stage because we have our man (John McDonnell) who is going to do it for us!

Turning to tonight, as John said, a small group recently met to work out the practical details of how to make this meeting as effective as possible. The first part of this evening will involve all of you talking to one another in small groups of four/five people. The idea is that the time will be split into segments of around 5-10 minutes for each of five themes:

Then we’ll have contributions from the floor and John has heroically agreed to write them up on the flipchart. You will already have received on your table a questionnaire, these questions are on there to help you in the small groups. The questionnaire will also be sent out by email so if you want to make notes on this version tonight you will be getting a clean copy in your inbox to send back. The questionnaire will also go out to all those groups on the mailing list who were not able to come along this evening."

(The small group session lasted about 45 minutes then contributions from the floor.)

What has stimulated you to become involved with this?

John McDonnell: "In the group I was in we all showed our hands and agreed that it was political ambition! (Laughter) But we won’t dwell too much on this! I want to move straight on to the next theme, if that’s all right with everybody. There is a lot to get through in just under an hour."

Aims/scope of the Ministry for Peace

Deborah King: "10,000 people got together in The Hague in 1999 for a conference on global peace. This was under the auspices of the United Nations and some other sponsors, particularly the Bangladeshi Government. They came up with a fifty point plan with steps on how to abolish war and create a culture of peace. They basically established that peace was a human right and we thought it might be a sensible idea to encourage people here to look at the Hague peace website, particularly the agenda, and the Movement for the Abolition of War website. The latter is essentially a re- wording in plainer language of some of the Hague peace website headings.

One of the very good things that came out of that under the press section of some of the conference reports, was a quote from World without Wars that proposed there should be a deadline of the 6th June 2012 for the abolition of war. This was described in the Philadelphia Times as being "an optimistic timescale" but I think it is really important that this meeting decides that it wants to set a date for the abolition of war because it will inform any strategies - political, economic or media etc that the group comes up with. Without a date it will be like all those meetings we have been to time after time where the energy dissipates because people wonder what’s happening? If there is an end date that is agreed globally then you will start to have a lot of interlocking ideas that can be cross-referenced by the internet around the world and this will give people a vision. It will, of course, put the fear of God into lots of politicians because they will start to wonder how to react to this and they will have to come up with a response. Let’s not reinvent the wheel, let’s look at these websites and let’s set a date for the abolition of war."

Deanna Douglas: "Something that was also started in 1999 was the Human Security Network. This was started by Canada and Norway. Ten other countries have now joined it and the Network is composed of Foreign Ministers, or their cohorts in various countries, talking about human security. The UN is also using the term "human security" about a holistic approach to security. If the UK government were to join the Network this would be a good idea - working with the Austrians, the Swiss and various other countries. Something of that would be connecting with others and working with countries that have been involved in this for a couple of years now. They already have Departments of Peace, if not Ministries, which are doing some of this exact work. There are policy documents developed on this and it would again help us not to reinvent the wheel."

? "On the theme of not reinventing the wheel, we need to support the work of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade because billions of pounds/dollars are made through the arms trade."

? "Twenty years ago there was a very small and feeble department in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for defence and disarmament. At one time we even had a Minister for Disarmament. They were totally ineffective. In fact the Minister was one of the hawks of the time. One point we have talked about is that it should be a free standing ministry, not within another department so that isn’t only an adjunct to another agenda."

? "We should talk about the idea through grassroots group such as women’s groups, faith organisations, students, teachers, scouts, guides etc. We also should define what peace is. We also thought we should check the funds for it and how much the Government could put into it and that we should look at a different approach to the armed forces. An example was given of the Indian army that has an section that does environmental work, e.g. planting trees."

Chris Coverdale: "We have five things. First, we felt we have to change the constitution and the law of this country. It seems to be a barrier that the Prime Minister and others are allowed to take this country into war without the say so of anybody else. The second thing is that we ought to put the main focus on preventing war and preventing military conflict. Then there should be the reconciliation of conflicts that are currently in place. The fourth one was that we should educate people about the issues at all levels of society. Finally we need to focus on spreading the word."

Sophia Newsome: "We are talking about organisations that are involved in peace. I’m sure that some people here have heard of Dr. Matthias Rath, who was cited by the late Linus Pauling, the two times Nobel Prize winner. He has created a huge organisation to bring about peace, health and a just world. His website is www.dr-rath-health-foundation.org."

Nike Williams: "Speaking as a journalist I would like to make a point about TV. There are interactive programmes like Big Brother, there could be a programme format where the Ministry of Peace would have people phoning in from around the world in their millions."

? "It is important to use peace language. We should "create" rather than "eliminate."

? "It is important to remember where the power lies - with political parties and the government. We can all play our part in that by becoming active in our political parties. In this country we have mayors for peace, we have cities of peace. I think they could be brought into the campaign and we could use their influence. "

Lisa Shend’ge: "We need peace to be "in power" instead of always speaking "peace to power" it should be "power speaking peace." This is why we want to have a free standing government department that carries the establishment seal of approval. We would like to see peacemaking and peace work as tasks that are owned by the establishment. We are not pushing the establishment. Many of us are in the establishment and I think it is wonderful that this is beginning to happen. Look where we are sitting, look at who is taking notes on the flipchart. We spoke to our own MP, Rudi Vis, and he is now working on this.

Vas Shend’ge: "In our proposal we spoke of six major areas to take peace forward. One is conflict related - that includes prevention, resolution, and post-conflict reconciliation. The second is the promotion of a culture of peace. It is essential that we change the culture of violence to a culture of peace. The third one is peace that is education related whether in schools or universities, e.g. postgraduate courses like Bradford University’s Department of Peace Studies. This would also include think tanks that would study ways of avoiding war and positively promoting peace. Then there is the international development aspect of peace. International wars happen because we are robbing the poor of the world and that needs to be corrected. The next one is arms related. This is a huge subject covering the production, distribution, export and verification of arms. Lastly there is policy in relation to peace. I think the Ministry for Peace needs to correlate with all the other government departments like the Human Rights Act does. This is now compulsory in the UK and all government departments have to take that into account . I would like to see the policy section of the Ministry for Peace doing that kind of work. Taking arms proliferation as an example, the Ministry would go to the Department of Trade and say this was against government policy. There is a list of these items that I could supply if necessary."

Ideas/ways of organising the Ministry for Peace

John McDonnell: "There are a number of options to put peace in power, to have power speaking peace.

Option 1: To have a free-standing Ministry that has the functions that we have designated and that would act as an adviser to other departments in their role. There would be a Secretary of State in Cabinet, a Minister for Peace, with certain functions to fulfil, commission research, identify issues around legality, work on international development issues, etc. This Ministry would advise other bodies, e.g. advise the Department for Education and Skills on peace studies research, on peace studies discussions in schools, on conflict resolution in the playground etc.

Option 2: The other option is to mainstream peace within the other departments and have a relatively small inter-departmental co-ordinating group with limited responsibilities. This is the way in the former GLC that the Women’s Unit, for example, tried to ensure that equality issues were mainstreamed by the various departments. It acted as adviser, progress chaser and as promoter to try to get those departments to mainstream gender equality.

Option 3: To have a Minister for Peace and to have this initiative run by the Prime Minister himself so that No. 10 becomes the body that ensures that mainstreaming happens in the other government departments. This basically says that No 10 leads and there is a Cabinet sub-committee and Cabinet resources.

The other issue to be addressed is where does that leave us in civil society? What is our role in this? One example: do we become, formally, part of the free standing Ministry, of the advisory group or formally part of No. 10? Do we, as a result, have statutory rights of consultation, access to information and so on?"

Comments:

David Solomons: Having a government Ministry lays it open to being transitory. Earlier we heard about a Ministry that some years ago had a disarmament function but this was abolished; a Ministry with its power base in the people rather than in government can be permanent and more internationally focused. The idea of it being a government department but without some form of partnership with people’s organisations, not only in this country but also around the world, could become a way that would turn people off. We need to create a way in which people really feel they have a voice and that it is a permanent, on-going voice not vulnerable to the vagaries of the political process.

Christopher Titmuss: "I have just been reading a book called "The Psychology of War" that states that in the past 1,000 years, according to the analysis of the Russian researcher, this country, and the English in particular, has engaged in war for 56 years out of every 100. We in this country have an extraordinary responsibility to take these kinds of steps and what we are discussing tonight is to make a significant and massive sea-change in the government and in the people. To make a shift away from the history of war and war making and giving support to it to a different kind of framework of relationship, not only within this country but externally.

Somehow or other this Ministry, I believe, has to address not only international war-making and all the violence and the subsequent violence that goes along with it but also violence domestically as well in our courts, our prisons, our homes, our streets. Our sports matches are filled with a culture of violence. And it is a bit rich to have a government telling us not to have violence in the homes and on the streets, when it actually perpetuates violence internationally. There has to be some kind of way in which we bridge this. Governments have to be more accountable to what civilians and the voters are saying.

I remember at the last meeting John McDonnell saying "we have to catch the wind." At the moment the climate of concern is probably at its highest level for many, many years. That time could well run out a few weeks after the Hutton Report as the media and the public’s attention goes elsewhere. I do feel there is a major urgency about this. There must be a major shift in the environment, in the culture and in the whole way of looking at this world and each one of us has a duty and a responsibility to keep this going forward very strongly because this is the time."

Chris Coverdale: "I would like to suggest two further options. One is to have a Ministry for Peace modelled on the current National Audit Office. This is independent of government and is appointed by Parliament and reports to Parliament. I think it is very important that it remains independent of government otherwise you have to take instructions from whoever happens to be in power at the time.

A second option is to have a wholly independent People’s Ministry of Peace. This reports to civil society and to Parliament and is controlled by civil society and is, therefore, an outside body."

James Thring: I would like to endorse that because I share some people’s scepticism about not exactly the MPs who represent us or even possibly the people in the Cabinet but there must be people behind government who are angling for war in their own interests. It hasn’t clearly been in the interests of anybody in this country to attack Iraq or Afghanistan. We must be aware of the possibility that a government-organised Ministry for Peace could be hijacked. They would change the definition and say they were moving troops into such and such a country in order to "keep the peace" and we’re having to kill people because they are getting in the way of this peace initiative. Aren’t we justified in being cynical about the way the government, on behalf of the people that pay their bill, are going to be manipulating our movement? For example, terrorism is going to be the next thing on the agenda rather than wars as such. That will be an excuse for doing all sorts of things like making armed Land Rovers to push into all the countries where we think there are people who don’t like us or who have a grudge against us. We have to be aware of that possible hijacking if it becomes a government organisation. I would suggest, as Chris Coverdale has put it, that we need to keep a high profile outside government in order to beat them with the real peace stick, in other words to represent the interests of the ordinary citizens in countries like Iraq who suffer when we decide that we are going to depose a dictator.

? "If we are talking about putting peace into power then unfortunately it has to be in government. If the government is going to introduce a Ministry for Peace then presumably it is going to be in favour of peace as well. I think a way of doing that would be to take certain governmental responsibilities away from other departments - a slightly different model from the one John McDonnell mentioned earlier. You could take citizenship away from the Department for Education; you could take diplomacy away from the Foreign Office; you could take the Export Credit Guarantee Department out of the Department of Trade and Industry so that export licenses that are given are in the interests of peace not in the interests of corporate profit. That is what we ought to be doing. I know this is ambitious. Perhaps I am being sceptical too but if we have a People’s Ministry for Peace outside government then why would the government listen to that any more than it listened to two million people in Hyde Park on February 15th?"

Debbie King: "Do we mean to have a Bill that once it is passed requires a report and a set of proposals to be put forward for the next general election, as distinct from necessarily thinking that every aspect will be dealt with immediately? Unpicking areas like the ECGD requires a lot of research, economic planning etc and what would be done with economic investment. It is potentially more feasible to have a duty to create a series of reports about how a Bill for a Ministry could be implemented. Areas like education could be done relatively quickly but, for example, unpicking the arms economy, where something like 12% of the global arms trade involves the UK, isn’t going to be as straightforward as saying "here’s the departmental responsibility." If there were a statutory duty to report back to Parliament and also a Peace Commission that represented civic society - running in parallel to a Minister who reported directly to the Prime Minister (but with a duty to report back to Parliament in a defined time-scale) then the public has got the potential capacity to vote on the whole set of proposals and they might be ones that straddle more than one general election anyway. People would at least be voting for a programme that was about the abolition of war and changing the economy. Essentially this option is about a reporting back requirement rather than expecting everything to be dealt with in this type of bill."

Vas Shend’ge: "The resources that a government can command for a Ministry for Peace would never be matched outside the government. We still need NGOs outside government to keep the government on its toes and bring in fresh ideas but these now have, and will probably continue to have limited resources. The problem of resources is an important one."

Deborah King put forward a number of alternatives to the name "Ministry of Peace:" These included "Department of Peace;" "Department for Peace Culture;" "Department for a Culture of Peace." From 2000 - 2010 the United Nations had declared a UN Decade for a Culture of Peace although there was very little publicity about this. Other suggestions were made. John McDonnell said that on the Parliamentary agenda the wording was "Ministry for Peace" and this could not be changed now but it could be changed subsequently. A strap line was proposed: "Put power into peace."

John McDonnell: "To sum up, there is a clear difference of view about whether the Ministry for Peace should be IN or OUT. Clearly there can continue to be discussion on this between now and October 14th (10 Minute Rule Bill debate). The fundamental point is that, from my own point of view, and this reflects what was said earlier, if we are to win the government to do this, whether it is IN or OUT, isn’t going to make a lot of difference. By voting it in the government would, by definition, be signed up to it. I think you also need an external body. Other models of this like the Commission for Racial Equality (OUT) and the Home Office (IN) haven’t worked particularly effectively but they are 100% better than what existed before.** I think you have to edge towards that combined role but in reality this isn’t going to work unless there is a very dynamic and very strong commitment from government itself. People have said things before like catching the wind. In the current situation we’ve got an ideal opportunity and potential to convince politicians that if they do sign up for this they can play an historic role. The hand of history could be on them."

 

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Appendix

Organisations represented at the second Ministry for Peace meeting, 16 September 2003, House of Commons

Adlerian Society
Anglican Pacifist Fellowship
Artists Peace Network
Avatar
Building for the Future
CND
Conscience the Peace Tax Campaign
Coventry Peace House
Earth Emergency World Future Council
Farnham Labour Party
Friends of the Western Buddhist Order
Insight Meditation
International Institute for Peace Studies and Global Philosophy
Labour Action for Peace
Lawyers against the War
MEEFA - Middle East Arab Friendship
Methodist Peace Fellowship
Movement for the Abolition of War
National Justice and Peace Network
New Economics Foundation
Peace Brigades International
Peace Child International
Peaceworkers UK
Quaker Meeting (Bedford) Peace Group
Shend'ge Trust
Sokagakkai International
Spiritual Women
Sutton Labour Party Campaign Group
Sutton Socialist Campaign Network Group
The Gandhi Foundation
Through Heart to Peace
United Nations Association
United Nations General Assembly Link - UK
Watford Labour Party
Women for World Disarmament
Women to Women for Peace (formerly Mothers for Peace)
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
World Peace Prayer Society
Worldwide Consultative Association of Retired Generals and Admirals
Young People's Trust for the Environment

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