2 OCTOBER 2004, Page 38

In the end we'll give in to terrorists in Iraq, so why not now over Mr Bigley?

At the time of writing, the hostage Ken Bigley, so far as we know, lives. While he endures his ordeal, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary said that they could not negotiate with his tormentors. That would be to 'give in to terrorism'. Those — who must include Mr Blair and Mr Straw, as well as the rest of us — who want so much for Mr Bigley to live must rely on intermediaries such as the two eloquent Muslims from Britain who have gone to Iraq to do what they can.

But Mr Blair and Mr Straw should think on. Mr Bigley's captors' demands are not unreasonable: that certain women prisoners in Iraq should be released; women who, so far as we know, are not terrorists but who have been caught up in events because they worked for Saddam. I might be wrong about that. I do not know the details, in so far as they can be established. But that is how it seems. This does not mean that the captors are themselves reasonable. Nor that they, or others like them, would not take more hostages and make unreasonable demands for their release. If Mr Blair and Mr Straw give in, we must assume that there would be more hostagetakings and more demands.

But historical circumstance comparable to the Anglo-American engagement in Iran suggests that the United States and the United Kingdom will indeed 'give in to terrorism' and leave Iraq. Present evidence suggests that they are already doing so. Shia militia are now allowed to control parts of the country. They are being 'given in' to. Sometime over the next year, the Americans, and therefore the British, will start to withdraw their forces. Some sort of Iraqi democracy will be in place when they do so. We must hope that it survives. More likely, regional warlordism or some sort of tyranny will replace it. Some of those warlords will have been our present enemies, especially those Shia associated with Shia Iran.

How can we know that this will happen? Because we have been here before. We have left many places in charge of terrorists to whom we said we would not give in.

The people of the occupying power Britain, France, now the United States — intervene. Voters and public opinion decide whether democracies remain in power in distant countries vastly different from their own, which are no immediate threat to those democracies' homelands. The rise of the democratic, universal franchise in the West, and of an all-powerful public opinion, more or less coincided, give or take a decade or so, with the rise of nationalist movements against the Western empires. At first, rulers in London and Paris assumed that the new electorates would be imperialist, jingoistic, 'patriotic'. So, at first, they were. The Boer war suggested so. Lloyd George, an opponent of that war, had to flee a Birmingham antiwar meeting, disguised as a policeman.

But a decade or so later came Ireland. A majority in mainland England, or perhaps a large, educated minority, eventually turned against the methods the Black and Tans, and so on — which we used to put down the Irish revolt. Those opponents of our repressive Irish policy, which a Liberal prime minister, Lloyd George, carried out, included some High Tories and much of the London establishment. The same happened over Algeria in late 1950s and early 1960s France_ Democracy and public opinion would not tolerate the methods employed to keep Algeria part of France.

De Gaulle came to power in 1959 on the strength of the pro-Algerian colonists. They thought that, being a French nationalist, he would keep Algeria French. But they were just the dupes whom he used to achieve supreme power over France, He soon betrayed them, and made Algeria independent. He left much murder and chaos. The causes through which rulers rise to power are often the opposite of those which they use to retain power. The newly independent Algerian authorities to whom de Gaulle granted rule immediately presided over the massacre of thousands of Algerians who had worked for France as officials or even village postmen. But liberal opinion everywhere hailed de Gaulle's action in granting Algeria independence as an act of statesmanship. In those days, atrocities did not distress liberal opinion if carried out by one section of the Third World against another.

De Gaulle, then, had 'given in to terrorism'. Some liberal opinion will hail Mr Blair as statesmanlike when he quits Iraq, no matter what murder he leaves behind. He has seen the light, it will be said. Possibly Mr Blair knows that after the re-election of himself and President Bush, all this will happen. He is intelligent and realistic. He must know that the Iraq adventure has been so costly to the United States that, whoever wins the presidential election, the President will leave Iraq. That means that we will too. Mr Blair, like so many statesmen before him, such as Lloyd George in Ireland, de Gaulle in Algeria, or the British in Cyprus and so on, would have 'given in to terrorism'.

So why not give in now? Why should the British government not come to some sort of an appeasing arrangement with Mr Bigley's captors? Next year, in fleeing Iraq — once the United States President says it is all right — they will do so in any case. Talleyrand, who served successive regimes that were enemies of one another, said that treason was 'a matter of dates'. That is, he was prepared to serve whichever regime, in any year, that won power in France, as he did.

'Giving in to terrorists' is also a matter of dates. At the moment, it seems not to be in Mr Blair's political and above all electoral interests to leave Iraq. The dates are not right. Mr Bush, before his own election, is not yet ready to give the word that it is all right to leave. The moment he, or a President Kerry, says it is all right, Mr Blair will say so too — hoping for the resultant liberal acclamation.

Doubtless Mr Blair does not think of it in that way. He ascribes to himself higher motives. Nonetheless, it looks as if for the time being he will sacrifice the head of any Briton in Iraq until he, the Prime Minister, is ready to quit. In which case, he would sacrifice the head of many an Iraqi who sided with the Anglo-Americans. He should appease Mr Bigley's captors before he appeases the entire country of Iraq. That would be true statesmanship.