Plenary, 12 Sep 2001
Meeting date: Wednesday, September 12, 2001
Official Report
116KB pdf
One Minute's Silence
Colleagues, at the turn of the century, we looked back at the episodes of carnage caused by human warfare in the trenches of the first world war in Europe, by the atom bombs in Japan and by so many other causes, and we seemed determined to create a more civilised global society in the 21st century. However, what happened yesterday brought a new dimension of indiscriminate terror and suffering into our world. It dwarfed the traumatic tragedy that we in Scotland experienced over Lockerbie 10 years ago. That is why the party leaders were right yesterday evening readily to agree that it would be unthinkable that we should meet today in this democratic forum and carry on as though what happened did not concern us.
John Donne wrote:
"any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind".
We as politicians are by definition especially involved in mankind. We know that there are injustices in this world, as there are in our own country. We come together in parliamentary Assemblies throughout the world with our differing opinions to argue and debate our way towards solving the problems of mankind and every so often the people to whom we are accountable make their choice of the route that they wish taken. That is light years away from the motivation of those who yesterday perpetrated those acts of demonic barbarism on America.
In his inaugural address as President, Thomas Jefferson said that
"error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it".
Reason being left free is what brings us all together. What we saw yesterday was what happens when the forces of unreason unleash themselves on innocent people.
The vast majority of those killed had neither political nor military roles. They were office workers, aircraft passengers with their families, tourists, passers-by and rescue service workers. Over the coming days, thousands of people in different countries will be plunged into mourning as they learn of the deaths of relatives or friends.
Before we begin to debate our motion of condolence, let us in sympathy with the victims rise and stay silent for a minute in our places.