tony blair's address - 2 sep 2013

7/30/2019 Tony Blair's Address - 2 Sep 2013

1/8

Address by Tony Blair, 2 September 2013

[as transcribed from recording]

Thank you very much Dr., that was an interesting introduction. You

covered a lot there. Just for the record, no, I am not being paid; I amhere because you invited me. I am here also because I believe in theprocess of reconciliation. Many areas of the world that I haveworked in, reconciliation is a huge challenge a difficult challenge.Its one thats worth engaging in, and because I know that colors arevery politicized here in Thailand. I have got a blue tie on, so I will besafe. In my country by the way, I wouldnt be.

So, first of all its very important to say I am really delighted to beback here in Thailand. I am particularly honoured to be sharing aplatform with Priscilla Hayner and also someone whose long trackrecord on issues to do with harmony and reconciliation. And with mygood friend, former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari, who is aNobel Prize winner but also someone who I know from my timeworking with in office is someone with deep wisdom andunderstanding of this issue and has been a huge contribution toworld peace over the years.

Something we should just get out of the way at the very beginning:In the end Thailands problems will be solved by Thais, not byoutsiders. So we are here not to give lectures but to share

experience and in the end how these problems are resolved aregoing to be issues that you are going to have to tackle over here.But it seems to be very sensible as we often did, by the way,particularly in the process of peace in Northern Ireland, to simplylearn from the experiences of people from around the world. And Iwas heavily involved with the Northern Ireland peace process, in theMiddle East peace process as well. As the Dr. indicated, I just camefrom the Middle East this morning and also to a degree in whathappened during my time in office in the Balkans, both PresidentAhtisaari and myself are veterans of European council meetingswhich are a perpetual process of reconciliation, certainly from my

experience.

What I am about to talk to you about today are the lessons I cantake from my own experience and what, if you interested inlistening then, I would like to summarize for you. I am going to putbefore you five things, five principles of what I learnt from engagingin peace process reconciliation over the years. And the first is this:reconciliation happened when the sense of shared opportunity isgreater than the separate sense of grievance. In other words, yourrole is you are going to have a situation in which that sense of

grievance is there. Thats why there is something that is the subjectmatter for the debate about reconciliation. But the context in which


2/8

reconciliation works is a context in which that sense that there is atremendous opportunity that people want to share. That sharedopportunity becomes more important for people to achieve than todwell on past grievances.

And here for Thailand if I can offer this view as an outsider this isa country of extraordinary potential. Its economy is growing in anamazing way in these last few decades. Its a world leader in manyaspects of industry and services, automobiles, hard disks, tourism.In term of population, around 67 million, it is one of the largestcountries in the world today. A country that is rich in culture andhistory. And the challenges are very obvious: -- challenges to dowith inequality, poverty, particularly rural poverty, challenges thatwe all have on education systems and healthcare, and of course thechallenge of how the country reaches the next stage ofdevelopment. It has come a long way in these past decades, but Iknow from the friends I have here that there is a powerful sensethat the country has to aspire to a new stage of development. Butthere is no doubt that if you analyze the situation of Thailandobjectively, it is a country that could and should become a regionaland even a global power, so I would say that the shared sense ofopportunity and potential is extraordinarily large. But of course whatit needs is a united determination to overcome the strong feelingsabout the past in order to develop and exploit that shared sense ofopportunity. For example, in Northern Ireland what we found wasthat one of the ways in which we brought about reconciliation was

that people started to understand that the North of Ireland and theSouth of Ireland, they can actually do an immense amount togethereconomically within the European Union. There is a whole series ofpotential opportunities that were being squandered as a result ofthe disagreement, and that created a sense in which people felt,look, there is an enormous amount of opportunity, so lets find away of reconciling our differences so that we can grasp thatopportunity and move the island of Ireland forward. In Israel-Palestine right now, there should be that sense of sharedopportunity, but the question is: will it happen. As a result of theefforts of John Kerry, who has done this with remarkable vigor and

determination, now weve got the peace process back on trackbetween the Israelis and Palestinians. One thing that will be veryimportant is that the context of that peace negotiation has got to beone in which people feel: look there is a bigger prize here that wecan grasp before preparing to reconcile our differences. That is thefirst thing -- theres got to be a galvanizing sense of sharedopportunity that overcomes the separate sense of grievance.

The second principle is a situation in which you talk aboutreconciliation necessarily means there is a deep and profound

disagreement, a difference which has to be reconciled, and thesecond principle that I learnt from my experience is that the past can


3/8

be honestly examined, but it can never be judged in a way that is going to be to the

satisfaction of everyone. And so you have to accept there are going to remain two

sides with their own narrative about the past. That, in a way, youre never going to get

over. However, you can honestly examine the past in a way that allows you to move

forward for the future. So again here I would say that the hardest thing is to be able to

accept that that sense of grievance will never be fully healed, but nonetheless toaccept that you are going to move forward in any event.

So to give you some very obvious examples from my experience, one of the toughest

things in the Northern Ireland context and in the Middle East context is the release of

prisoners, because there are two separate narratives about Northern Ireland. One is

that the IRA were terrorists who were killing innocent people. And that is the view

that the Unionist Community had in Northern Ireland and has today, it has not

changed. And the other narrative, from the Republican side, is that these people were

freedom fighters, and they were repressed by the British, and by the Unionist

Community. And theyre not going to change that view of the past. So in other words,

reconciliation is never going to be about people changing their mind about the past. Itis really going to be about changing the mind about the future. And this is painful to

do, by the way. So [Dr. Thitinan] was talking about when you were there in the UK,

when I was Prime Minister, we brought about the Good Friday Agreement, which was

the peace deal that allow us then to move forward. One of the items of that agreement

was the release of IRA prisoners. And I have to say that when it actually happened it

was one thing to agree it, but when it happened, it very nearly destroyed the deal.

Because if you were the victim of an act of terrorism, then you see these people who

were responsible for it, especially if you lost a member of your family and you see

these people walking free, celebrating, you are going to feel angry about it, and there

is no way out of that. And one of the things that was most difficult for us was that

actually the worst terrorist act, and unfortunately, the last terrorist act, came after the

agreement, after the peace deal. And I remember going in and visiting, actually with

President Clinton, the families of the victims of this terrorist attack in which many

people lost their lives, and many people were scarred for life, and you felt the

intensity, the grief and the anger. Now, some of those families actually said to me,

and it was very moving that they did this: Youve got to carry on going for peace,

because I dont want this happening to someone else. You cant get that enormously

altruistic and sensitive response, but it would be crazy not to accept theres also deep

anger there. For the re-launch of the Middle East peace negotiations just a few weeks

ago there were prisoners released. Palestinian prisoners, but you know, the families of

the Israeli victims many of them were protesting very strongly that this was thebreach of justice to release these people.

So what I am really saying here is that -- and you can see this, by the way, in some of

the coverage and analysis for the Truth for Conciliation Commission of Thailand

here, when you study that report, you can see some of the same types of issues the

point is this: You can honestly try to examine and bring out the sense of grievance of

both sides, but you are going to have to accept that that sense of grievance will

remain. The task of reconciliation is not to try and abolish it, but to try and overcome

it, because trying to get rid of it and excise it from peoples minds is just not going to

be possible.

The third thing, however, is that if it is impossible to banish the sense of past


4/8

injustice, in order for there to be reconciliation, there has to be a future framework

that people will accept as just. In other words, whatever argument is carried on about

what happened in the past and who was to blame, the essence of reconciliation is at

least to be able to establish a framework for future cooperation that people regard as

just and objective, and where the root causes of the dispute or the conflict can be

addressed, and this is enormously difficult but of fundamental importance. So wewould never have achieved peace in Northern Ireland but for the Good Friday

Agreement, and the essential thing about the Good Friday Agreement was that it

provided a way in which two communities with irreconcilable past grievances were

able, nonetheless, to see there was a future way forward that was fair. And in the end,

the essence was a kind of compromise, really, where the Nationalists or Republicans

accepted that Northern Ireland would remain part of the UK for as long as the

majority of the people of Northern Ireland wanted it, which was a big compromise

because previously they had always said No, it is the people of Ireland as a whole

that should determine this. And the Unionist Community also had to make a big

compromise because they had always said that the majority should rule in Northern

Ireland, but because they were always going to be the majority, that was never goingto provide a basis for peace. So we had to develop a framework in which power was

shared, so you had the principle from the Republican side conceded that Northern

Ireland would remain part of the UK for as long as people wanted it to, and on the

other side, but whilst that happened, there was going to be some sharing of power so

that the Nationalist Community did not feel shut out or excluded.

In the Middle East right now, we have a framework if we can get to the details of it

that gives us a chance to move forward on what is a framework of two states. So in

a way you are accepting youre never going to be able to reconcile the differences in

the past about the creation of the state of Israel, the refugees that came from the

Palestinian side, or what should be the right solution to this. In the end, people have

decided that the only way this works is that alongside the state of Israel comes into

being the state of Palestine what we call the two-state solution. What Im saying is

that you can only create peace if people see, whatever the disputes about the past, the

future has a framework that is fair, and seen to be fair and just, and one that also is

capable of dealing with the root causes. Because usually with any conflict, there are

issues around which the conflict revolves. They could be issues to do with the

constitution, or issues to do with who took power and how. Those are the issues that

are on the surface but usually theres underneath some root causes, some things that

have given rise to these deep differences. And, you know again, the Truth for

Reconciliation Commission here discussed some of those causes and what they mightbe and how they might be dealt with. My point is very simple: that if you want the

reconciliation process to work, youve got to have a framework going forward that

allows those root causes to be dealt with in a way that is fair and which balances the

situation in such a way that whatever people say about the past and the future, they

think theres a better chance of doing it in a way that is accepted.

The fourth principle is this: that when the purpose of what is being created as a

future framework is that its anchored in democracy, then I would say that this

principle is extremely important. The fourth principle is a genuine democracy is all

that works. And a genuine democracy involves both the substance and the form of

democracy together. Now what do I mean by that? Countries I work probably nowin about in twenty different countries in the world in one way or another are often


5/8

divided by factions, by class, by religion, by race, by color, so its not uncommon for

countries to be one territory but within that territory for there to be deep divisions of

one sort or another. Thats why these issues to do with reconciliation are so important

the world over. So in a sense here in Thailand the divisions, you can analyze why they

come about, but its not unusual that you will have such divisions. Each situation is

unique but there are often common characteristics in those divisions. And right nowas was being said earlier, all over the Middle East, for example, youve got

experiments in democracy thats taking place. And around the world today, there are

examples of very old democracies, very new democracies, and countries that hope to

be democracies.

I think there are a couple of things that are very, very clear about genuine democracy.

The first is: democracy is not just a way of voting but a way of thinking. In other

words, democracy is not just about how the majority takes power. It is crucially about

how the majority then relates to the minority. If we look at the Middle East today, and

the work I do not just in Israel and the Palestine but elsewhere, you know part of the

trouble is when democracy is seen as a kind of winner takes all. Then you get thesituation in which the majority comes to power and the minority feels as if they are

kind of shut out and excluded. So democracy in my view works only as a concept that

is pluralistic in nature. Its not about domination by one party. Its about a sense that

you have a majority that comes to power in a democratic system but theres still a

shared space in which people cooperate and work together and actually share certain

basic values. So that idea of democracy as a way of thinking and not just a way of

voting is very important. And thats what I call the substance, not just the form of

democracy. And it is buttressed by a second element, which is the rule of law. The

rule of law is something that I think is constantly underestimated in discussion about

society, democracy, the economy, and a sense that there is a shared space of values.

And one of the things that I constantly talk about in different parts of the world, where

there are countries that maybe have emerged from a period of conflict and got over

the conflict and are searching for a way of anchoring their democracy securely,

alongside this idea that democracy is a way of thinking and not just a way of voting is

the idea that the rule of law is independently and impartially administered. And this is

important for society, for citizens to believe that if they go in front of a court, the

court will decide objectively. Its important economically because if people are going

to come invest in your country they need to know that there is a rule of law that will

be applied in an objective way. Its also important politically because in any system

youre going to get checks and balances, and one of the important checks andbalances is an independent judiciary. And this by the way can be very difficult for

political leaders. I remember when I was Prime Minister of the UK and I actually

introduced for the first time in the UK a human rights legislation, which meant that

fort the first time the Supreme Court in the UK, which we established, were able to

overturn decisions of the executive or Parliament on the basis that theyve offended

essential human rights. And this is a very big innovation. We have a common law

system it was more common elsewhere, in America or where they have a written

constitution or in Europe. We have no written constitution in the UK and so there

used to be a principle that if parliament said x then the courts couldnt intervene. But I

changed this balance of power. And what happens is, youre Prime Minister and you

pass a piece of legislation that you think is very important and the courts come in andstrike it down. Its a bit irritating when that happens from time to time. And I used to


6/8

have a debate sometimes when people say to me look, the judges are acting wrongly,

they shouldnt be doing this. And Id say no, weve given them that right and weve

got to accept it. So I mean which they didnt do it but we accept that theyve done it

and that they have the right to do it. But it only works on the basis, as I believe with

our courts in the UK, that justice will be independently and impartially administered.

So that doesnt mean to say I agree with their decisions; I may disagree with theirdecisions but I believe that there is an objectivity and fairness about the actual system.

So the fourth principle, I think, is this: that democracy works and works best as a

source of reconciliation when it is clear that it is genuine democracy based on a

pluralistic concept of society, a way of voting and thinking together, and based on

genuine adherence to the rule of law.

The fifth principle is one that is very practical but is often forgotten in todays world,

that reconciliation is easier to achieve if the politics of a country as a whole is seen to

be effective in delivering improvement to the people. In other words,government has a challenge of honesty and a challenge of

transparency and these are very important issues. Around the worldI often talk to people about obviously the need to push outcorruption and systems that are transparent and accountable andso on. But very often the biggest challenge for government is notjust the challenge of transparency but the challenge of efficacy; canit get things delivered for the people? One of the things I always sayto any new Prime Minister that comes in is that the expectations ofpeople are always very large. There was a famous Americanpolitician, Mario Cuomo, who once said that you campaign in poetryand you govern in prose. So when you are campaigning, you are

raising the expectations; but when you get into the government, it istough. Then youve got to deliver, and thats a lot harder. And onebasic lesson is that you deliver most when you reach out and tryand build bridges in a non-partisan way. And so this is where youmay have a huge number of differences and disagreements aboutthe past and you may require this process of reconciliation. Butreconciliation will be easier to achieve if the government itself isoperating effectively to deliver change for the people and so theyfeel their lives are getting better.

So one of the biggest problems we have in the Middle East right now

is that the disparity between living standards in Israel and livingstandards in the Palestinian territory mean that unless people feelthat the peace process is actually gonna bring benefit to them -- andPalestinians in particular feel that they are going a rise in their livingstandard and additional prosperity along with the justice of the state-- if they dont feel that, they are far less inclined to put aside thedifferences and go for reconciliation.

So this issue to do with how you reach out and become moreinclusive is very, very important. And by the way, I think one hugechallenge for Western democracy today is how to get out of aparalysis of policymaking where parties engage in issues in such apartisan way that they cant build any common bridges with each


7/8

other and therefore the country cant move forward. And if you thinkof whats happened in the US, there is a paralysis in Congress thatover time has been hugely debilitating and has kept back theeconomic recovery of the country.So these issues to do with delivery for the people change and

reform are of huge importance, and sometime they can help whenyou reach out beyond the partisan divide and you start cooperatingin areas of policy, then its easier for the people to see that it issensible to cooperate also on the basic process of the reconciliation.

So those are my five lessons or principles if you like. From the workof reconciliation that I have been engaged in when I was PrimeMinister and since leaving office, and this is never easy by the way,and sometimes you go through periods when it just seems that thedifferences are irreconcilable and the process of reconciliation ishopeless. We reached a situation just the few months back. I wasattending a meeting in the Middle East. This was before werelaunched the process. I was attending a meeting in the MiddleEast and people would just literary say that the situation washopeless and we never going to be able to resolve it. And yetactually a few months later we are now having a negotiation backon track again.We had a situation just as I left office in 2007 where in NorthernIreland, the Reverend Ian Paisley, who some of you may rememberfrom the Northern Ireland dispute, and Martin McGuinness from theRepublican movement sat down in office together in a power-

sharing arrangement. If anyone had said if Id said in 1997 when Icame into power that Martin McGuinness would sit in the same roomas Ian Paisley, they would have considered me mad. And if Id saidthat they would be sharing power in government together, I wouldhave been certified. Some of you may have thought that I shouldhave been anyway, but the fact is no one could have foreseen thatdevelopment. All the smart money would have been on that beinghopeless, that it is not going to happen, but it did.

So I guess my concluding thought is really this: the important thingabout reconciliation is also never to give up on it. It is important,

otherwise you wouldnt be here. It is vital for the future of thecountry, otherwise the debate wouldnt be happening. And howeverdifficult it seems and however big the gaps are, its worth constantlytrying to reconcile, and this is where the people themselves havealso got to play a role, because political leaders need to be inpower. Of course leaders should lead, but it helps when they lookover their shoulder to have someone behind them. And one of thethings thats in every experience I have from the Balkans throughNorthern Ireland and the Middle East and parts of Africa where Iwork in today, is in order to have reconciliation, the leader has to

lead but the people have to be behind them, and you never get areconciliation without that strong popular support pushing and


8/8

enabling and empowering the leader to lead. So dont give up,however difficult it is. Carry on, because there is a huge sharedopportunity for Thailand and it would be shame to waste it and I amquite sure in the end, by the way, you wont. So however difficult orbleak it looks right now, I am certainly here today to say

reconciliation can work and where it works, it brings enormousbenefit to the people.

Thank you.

tony blair's address - 2 sep 2013

Documents