First World War — Motion to Take Note

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 7:46 pm on 25 June 2014.

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Photo of Lord Spicer Lord Spicer Conservative 7:46, 25 June 2014

I exonerate the noble Lord. I think that it is fair to say that the noble Lord, Lord Davies, did argue that point. Arguably, it is the exact opposite. The thing that caused the wars was the centralisation and determination of one nation—the Germans—and the individual sovereign states were those that created the peace, winning the war, and there was a lasting peace thereafter. So it was the exact opposite of what the noble Lord, Lord Davies, was saying. One has only to look at the American Civil War to see the effect of the process of forced centralisation and so on in terms of creating wars. I wanted to set the record straight on that, because that was certainly the impression that I got from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay—it was pretty well irrelevant to raise the question of the European Union in the context today, if he did not believe that it would have had some effect on history. I think that it would have been the opposite effect in the wrong hands, and I just want to put that straight.