David Blunkett: How does Britain respond to the cry ‘Will you help us?

Over 40 years ago, Vietnam was uppermost in politicians’ minds – as was the defence budget and the fact that it was completely out of kilter with any of our allies given our size and economic standing.

At that time, I was a young man in his 20s. Like most young men of that age, I had little truck – and still don’t – with the idea that Britain should be a slightly larger and more influential Sweden, or (God forbid, given the problems that we’ve had with the financial sector) a kind of non-Alpine Switzerland. But in my more melancholy moments I do ask myself, “What do we think we’re doing, with whose money – and why us?”

I suspect that I would err more strongly on the side of building a stronger Britain at home over being a world policeman if it weren’t for the fact that, as an internationalist, I still remember the horror of our failure as a global community to intervene in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

The same, too, in Bosnia where UN troops stood by as people were loaded into trucks and driven away for summary execution, simply because they were the wrong nationality and religion.

We knew what was going on, but it was a long time before we acted.

I believe that Tony Blair was similarly affected by those atrocities, which is why he persuaded Bill Clinton that action had to be taken in Kosovo – and why, contrary to his later stance, the late and much respected Robin Cook, then Foreign Secretary, decided that intervention in Sierra Leone was vital on humanitarian grounds.

Since those events, the UN has authorised it members to act with a “responsibility to protect” civilians.

That is why in the spirit of that changed UN stance, Resolution 1973, upon which a coalition of the “able” are acting in Libya, is a logical outcome – and were we not to act to protect those who have sought to free themselves from Gaddafi’s totalitarian rule, the UN would have diminished its standing and its relevance.

However, it is surely time for us to examine precisely what we think we are doing, why we are doing it and query: “Why us?”

This is not to withdraw from Britain’s historic role in taking action and responding to the call of those who have nowhere else to turn – far from it.

It is to challenge ourselves and our allies to answer the question that must surely be on the lips of those seeking freedom across the world: “If they encourage us to act, if they say they are behind us, will they be there when we’re being slaughtered?”

Unfortunately, it will not be possible to remove the contradictions of intervening in some countries while standing back from others. Geopolitics means that the world does take account of the impact of those major oil producers, or Kazakhstan with uranium reserves, or the military strength and therefore power of the country to be confronted.

Those we count as allies, including countering the international terrorist threat, are not always easy bed- fellows. Squaring that circle is at the more difficult end of the business of political possibilities.

If politics were a straightforward business, we could create some formula that we could all support; but we would find that, in the real world, the “ifs and buts” soon got in the way. In trying to sort out conflicting and competing pressures and priorities, we inevitably get our hands dirty.

Richard Crossman may have irritated a 21-year-old David Blunkett, but the question he posed is ever more relevant in the economic and political position in which we find ourselves. It is surely time to discuss how we might respond in future to the simple cry: “Will you help us?”

We do not live in history, but for the sake of us all we must surely learn from it.