Blair went to war on a lie, law lords told

The mothers of two British soldiers killed in Iraq have taken their case to the Law Lords challenging a Court of Appeal ruling that said the Government was not obliged to order an independent inquiry under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the "right to life".

The women, Beverly Clarke and Rose Gentle, are arguing that - as their sons were under compulsion to obey orders - that the government had an obligation to ensure that anything they were asked to do was legal and are arguing that the Iraq war was not legal and that their sons should never have been sent there.

Mr Singh said the overwhelming body of legal advice received by the Government was that the invasion would not be lawful without a second UN Security Council resolution. "These mothers ... have come to court with reluctance. They are proud of their sons, who died with honour serving their country," he said.

Mrs Clarke and Mrs Gentle base their argument on the legal advice prepared by Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, in the run-up to the war. They say 13 pages of "equivocal" advice were reduced to one page of unequivocal advice that military action would be legal in just 10 days.

Mrs Gentle said: "I think Tony Blair sent our boys to war on a lie. He just agreed with George Bush right away." Peter Brierley, whose son, L/Cpl Shaun Brierley, was killed in 2006, said: "This was not defending his country. The country was not under any threat of attack."

All these mothers are seeking is a public inquiry into why Britain went to war with Iraq. They are concentrating on Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights because Article 2 enshrines the "right to life" and allows exceptions only as a result of "the use of force which is no more than absolutely necessary". The mothers are arguing that, as the war in Iraq was not absolutely necessary, then the government have failed to take reasonable steps to ensure that its service personnel do not face the risk of death except in lawful military activities.

I have great admiration for any young man or woman who promises to risk his or her life to defend their country at it's moment of maximum danger. When someone makes such a promise I think it is incumbent on politicians to make sure that they honour their part of that bargain and only put people's lives at risk when there is no other option.

That was clearly not the case in this instance. Not only did we have weapons inspectors in Iraq searching for WMD and finding nothing - which, instead of making Bush and Blair suspicious that they might have got this wrong, led Blair to claim:

"We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years-contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence-Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd."

And, of course, we had an Attorney General making it very clear that courts may very well rule that the Iraq war was illegal without a second UN resolution.

Lined up against these two mothers are the Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Defence Secretary Des Browne and the current Attorney General Baroness Scotland.

And, although the Law Lords will not rule on the actual legality of the Iraq conflict, they are expected to question whether or not the government took sufficient steps to comply with it's obligations under international law:

The fact that nine law lords, instead of the usual five, are set to hear the case - brought against the prime minister, the defence secretary and the attorney general - underlines its constitutional importance.

Nine judges sat in 2004 in the Belmarsh terror suspects' case on detention without charge, and in 2005 in the hunting ban case which challenged the legality of legislation passed under the Parliament Act.

The law lords will not be asked to decide whether the invasion of Iraq was lawful. But they are expected to look at the steps the government took in the run-up to the war to ensure that it was complying with international law.

I have no idea whether or not these two mothers will succeed but, by bringing the case - and by getting this far - they appear to be bringing ever nearer the day when a British court will be forced to rule on whether or not the invasion of Iraq was legal.

"Whether the invasion of Iraq was lawful is the most important unanswered question of this generation," said Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers, the mothers' solicitor.

British courts have already indicated what way such a decision might go with a jury refusing to convict two men who attempted to damage B52 bombers at Fairford in Gloucestershire by claiming in their defence that they were attempting to prevent war crimes from being committed.

So far, courts have avoided ruling on the legality of the conflict itself, and, indeed, the government in the Fairford case almost begged the court not to come to decision:

Sir Michael Jay, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, submitted a witness statement which seems to contain a note of official panic. "It would be prejudicial to the national interest and to the conduct of the government's foreign policy if the English courts were to express opinions on questions of international law concerning the use of force ... which might differ from those expressed by the government," he wrote.

Such an opinion "would inevitably weaken the government's hand in its negotiations with other states. Allied states, which have agreed with and supported the United Kingdom's views on the legality of the use of force, could regard such a step as tending to undermine their own position."

How confident are they of the conflict's legality if they have to send Sir Michael Jay to beg that a court avoid ruling on the matter? If I was Blair, I'd be starting to feel uneasy...

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Tags: Blair, Bush, Iraq war, legality, second resolution, Law Lords ruling, Beverly Clarke, Rose Gentle