Over the years most backbench MPs come and go. They try to represent their constituents as best they can, but on the national stage they are largely invisible and the work they do is unrecognised. Their voting record is publicly available, but is generally ignored. When they give up or lose their seat they mostly return to the life they had before being elected and are then forgotten.
This is perhaps the only chance I will ever get to bring the actions of my wife, Linda Perham, who was the labour MP for Ilford North from 1997 t0 2005, to a wider audience and thank her for showing massive resilience in voting against the invasion of Iraq in 2003. She and 138 of her colleagues resisted intense pressure from the party whips and the most senior members of the cabinet to support the government, but she stood by her guns. In the light of the Chilcot inquiry report I would just like to say that, 13 years after the event: “Linda you were always right and the government was wrong.”
Ray Perham
Ilford, Essex
Chilcot took seven years, much too long and it doesn’t indict Tony Blair as a war criminal as it should, but it is a damning indictment of both Blair and Labour over the war. It’s clear that Blair had decided to go to war on Iraq with Bush, whatever happened, and that he then spent all the time making up the case to go to war including lies, deception, and exaggeration of the evidence on weapons of mass destruction.
What is also clear is that under Blair we didn’t have democracy but a form of elected dictatorship, where the key decisions were made by him with a few friends on his sofa. There was no effective planning on what happened after the war other than to ensure that the oil assets were protected. And the warnings of the intelligence services that foreign invasions lead to terrorism at home and abroad were ignored.
As recent bombings in Iraq show, things are much worse in Iraq than under Saddam and the rest of the region has been destabilised as a result of the war. As one of the family members of the dead British soldiers said at their press conference, “our sons died in vain”. Given the commitment of all the prospective Tory prime ministerial candidates to further warlike expeditions, the sooner Scotland cuts itself off from the British state the better.
Hugh Kerr
(Labour MEP 1994-99), Edinburgh
Mistaken decisions to go to war are more terrible than other mistakes (Editorial, 5 July); except perhaps mistaken decisions not to go to war: Rwanda, 1 million dead; Syria unknown, but awful and not getting any better. Do we just stand and watch or do we intervene? It is by far the most difficult decision to make in politics. I would like to think that the Chilcot report will enable us to have a more rational debate about how and when the world intervenes, and how we handle the post-conflict situation, otherwise we will relive the horrors time after time.
Clive Soley
Labour, House of Lords
While the Chilcot inquiry was not a judicial inquiry, as it should have been, Joshua Rozenberg (The Iraq war inquiry has left the door open for Tony Blair to be prosecuted, theguardian.com, 6 July) points out a way forward in relation to Blair (and others). The British public and the Iraqi people, especially those who lost sons, daughters, fathers and mothers, deserve no less. If our representatives, our government, are not held to account, where is the justice in that? The Bloody Sunday inquiry, Hillsborough, the ongoing investigation into the Birmingham pub bombings and the inquiries into child abuse, have all failed to give families of the deceased, the survivors and their families, a sense that justice has truly been served. Chilcot, though going further than many expected – and probably as far as its non judicial framework allowed – follows in that sad tradition of so far, but no further. The world is watching intently at the moment. Wrongdoing on a massive scale requires more than strong words and statements of regret. Where is the accountability, where is justice?
Mike Loveland
London
The Chilcot report concluded that flawed intelligence for the Iraq war should have been challenged. Justification for the war was based on evidence obtained by torture. In February 2003, US secretary of state Colin Powell told the UN that Iraq was supporting al-Qaida. This was based on the statement by Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, imprisoned by the US in Afghanistan and Egypt, which was obtained under torture. Al Libi withdraw his evidence before his death in prison in Libya. He said he told his torturers what they wanted to hear to stop the torture.
In February 2003, the US defence intelligence agencies knew he was probably a liar. UK intelligence agencies must have known this. They must have told Tony Blair. Blair ignored this and lied that Iraq had WMD and was continuing to develop nuclear weapons that could have been transferred into the hands of terrorists, such as al-Qaida. We went to war on the basis of torture and lies. The Chilcot report should be followed by an independent judge-led inquiry to establish if the UK agencies were complicit in the use of torture by the US. We should learn from the Chilcot report that the UK and its intelligence services must not be supine in their support for the actions of the US.
Joy Hurcombe
Worthing, West Sussex
We should have no truck with unpleasant talk of war a crimes trial for Tony Blair. It was a political decision, however misguided. If people are demanding justice, they should turn their wrath on Blair’s lieutenants in the parliamentary Labour party, who went along with everything he did for career reasons, only gradually distancing themselves from him when they ceased to perceive him as an election winner. These same people managed to keep control of the Labour party until last summer, and at this moment they are trying desperately to wrest back that control before they see their future careers too damaged and lose all the rich rewards which once stretched before their eyes, all the way to their eventual peerages and lucrative consultancies.
I was never a supporter of the old left in their time, but better them than New Labour. The appropriate epitaph to Iraq should be the termination of the careers of those who made it possible. Only then should we start contemplating a more sensible alternative to the old left.
Roger Schafir
London
In 1971, Richard Crossman described secrecy as the “real English disease and in particular the chronic ailment of the British government”. Since then, the country had to wait 39 years for a full investigation into Bloody Sunday and 27 years for an honest account of events at Hillsborough. We need insights into the machinery of government, rather than the role of this or that individual. If Chilcot provides this, then real lessons might be learned: about leadership, cabinet government and accountability of the executive to parliament.
Mike Sheaff
Plymouth
Days before the invasion of Iraq, Mohamed ElBaradei told the UN security council that the IAEA had “found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq”. Hans Blix, head of Unmovic (United Nations monitoring, verification and inspection commission), said there was “no evidence of prohibited weapons programmes”. George Bush and Tony Blair went ahead anyway “to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger”.
Dr John Doherty
Vienna
John Chilcot has said of his Iraq report that: “The main expectation I have is that it will not be possible in future to engage in a military or diplomatic endeavour on such a scale and of such gravity, without really careful challenge, analysis and assessment.” Just like Brexit then?
John Whitehead
London
During the EU referendum campaign, many of right and left argued that leaving the EU would reduce British influence in the world. Now that Chilcot suggests that the Iraq adventure was not entirely benign, would they now like to reconsider whether a reduction of British influence might actually be a good thing?
John Bevan
London
I am surprised that Steve Richards (Why did Tony Blair go to war in Iraq?, 5 July) did not mention that the former PM could have followed the example set by Harold Wilson in the 1960s. While, from the left’s perspective, controversially refusing to condemn the US invasion of Vietnam, Wilson refused to join in by sending British troops. History proved Wilson made the right decision. Iraq was effectively destroyed and the region savagely and dangerously destabilised. Blair’s reputation has also been destroyed, sadly, as he did many good things in other areas.
Nigel de Gruchy
Orpington, Kent
The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, has a photograph of former US defence secretary Robert Macnamara with the following comment from his book, In Retrospect: “We were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.” Is it too much to hope for the same humility from Tony Blair in the coming days?
Simon Medaney
Bedford
The similarities between the political and military leadership of the Iraq war and the Battle of the Somme beggar belief.
Frank Landamore
Lewes, East Sussex
The Chilcot inquiry report has confirmed what the ordinary thinking person already knew both before and after the war in Iraq, but what we still don’t know is what exactly happened to Dr Kelly? Will we ever know?
Ted Prangnell
Ashford, Kent