Tri-Service

Murdered MP Advocated More Military Intervention

A report murdered MP Jo Cox was working on before her death that warns Britain must not shy away from military action has been published.

In the weeks before she was killed in a brutal attack by a neo-Nazi, the Labour backbencher had started to put together a joint paper with Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat about the UK's role in the world.

Jo Cox's widower, Brendan, said his wife had written on a draft of the report:

"Britain must lead again"

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It was subsequently completed by her friend Alison McGovern MP.

The paper, titled 'The Cost of Doing Nothing', says that the backlash over the Iraq war has led to a rise in "knee-jerk isolationism, unthinking pacifism and anti-interventionism."

But retreating from the global stage has "dangerous" implications for national and international security and heightens the risk of further global instability, it warns.

Mr Cox said of his wife:

"Jo was passionate about this piece of work. She felt deeply that the UK had a duty to stand up for civilians threatened by war and genocide."

He also said that:

"Her commitment wasn't theoretical, it was forged by her experience of meeting survivors of genocide in Kosovo, Bosnia, Rwanda and Sudan. Last week I was clearing some of Jo's things and found the first draft of the report that she had scribbled all over. At the top (was where) she had written 'Britain must lead again.'"

Mr Cox said that although his wife isn't here to continue to advance this argument, she'd be delighted that her colleagues and friends are able to do so for her.

The report, published by Policy Exchange, highlights examples of successful interventions, including the introduction of a no-fly zone in Northern Iraq in 1991 to protect Kurds from air attacks waged by Saddam Hussein's regime, and NATO's action a year earlier to shield civilians in Kosovo from Slobodan Milosevic's campaign of ethnic cleansing.

It also sets out the "devastating consequences" of failing to take action, including the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and the Syrian civil war, which has left an estimated half a million people dead.

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Mrs Cox's partner on the paper, Tom Tugendhat, said:

"Britain has never been isolationist. It is in our national interest to be engaged with the world we helped shape. That means taking responsibility, and influencing events and intervening when necessary. To stand aside would not make us or the world safer, but leave us vulnerable to the whims of others rather than doing what we have always done - shape our own destiny and be a force for good".

MP for Wirral South and friend of Mrs Cox, Alison McGovern said:

"We cannot simply look the other way in cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide. Jo never believed that simply doing nothing in the face of atrocities was good enough, and neither should we".

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who will launch the report, also weighed in, saying:

"In her last speech in the House of Commons, Jo Cox said that 'sometimes all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing'".

He said that nothing is more important than the responsibility of each state to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.

The responsibility of the international community, meanwhile, is to act to protect populations from these atrocities if their governments are unwilling or unable to do so.