On June 29, 2024, at the Free Iran 2024 World Summit hosted at the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) headquarters in Paris, former United Kingdom’s Parliament Speaker John Bercow delivered a compelling speech.
1. Former British Speaker John Bercow Slams Iranian Regime, Calls for International Support for Democratic Change#MaryamRajavi4FreeIran #FreeIran2024 #BerlinDemo29Junehttps://t.co/AuLQXnZoPi
— Iran Freedom (@4FreedominIran) June 29, 2024
The full text of Speaker Bercow’s speech follows:
Mrs. Rajavi, distinguished colleagues, fellow lovers of liberty, ladies and gentlemen, this is, I think, the sixth occasion upon which I’ve been privileged to be invited to be amongst your number for an event of this kind in one venue or another.
I can tell you from the head but also from the heart that attendance upon the sixth occasion is every bit as much a privilege and a source of inspiration for me as was the first. In common with all of you, I am here for one reason and one reason only, and that is that I wish to place upon the record, as passionately and informatively as I can, my unqualified support for the National Council of Resistance of Iran as an institution, and for the quite extraordinary heroism, both of Mrs. Rajavi, which requires no debate or elaboration and of the resistance fighters themselves, from some of whom we were all privileged a few moments ago to hear.
Bravery, vision, fortitude, and if I may say so, as one who lives in safety, these are people, one and all, my friends, who daily exhibit the courage to burn, to take the risks which they do, knowing that the next day could be their last because there is a higher goal, a risk worth taking in pursuit of that desired objective of freedom.
Now, we have all described the evil of the Iranian regime, but I think it does warrant the briefest of underlining. By what is that regime characterized? Mass murder, frequent extrajudicial killings, indiscriminate incarceration of people who dare to take a view that differs from that of the mullahs, and beyond those top-level, egregious, and unforgivable abuses of human rights.
The daily fact of life under this bigoted, theocratic dictatorship is barbarity, bestiality, and brutality. Reality. That’s what they do, and it is, if I may say so, and I do, all that they know. They haven’t got the mental headspace, the absence of prejudice, or the scope of imagination to suppose that there can be another way to run a country.
I say that because I think all of us in this hall today are united by the often unstated but implicit assumption and conviction that the role of governments, and indeed of parliaments, and of individual members of parliament is to serve their peoples. This is a concept entirely unknown, indeed alien to the misogynist bigots who predominate in Teheran. They simply don’t look at it like that. They’re not there to serve. They’re there to cow, to subjugate, to dominate, and to terrorize their people.
They’ve been doing it for 45 years since that revolution was ushered in and appallingly abused when I was a 16-year-old schoolboy witnessing the fact of the revolution on my television screens. Well, I think the message should go out loudly and clearly to the regime, your number will be up. You will not get away with it. You cannot, must not, and will not be allowed to perpetrate these appalling crimes of humanity with impunity.
The time will come, and I think the time is hastening, when you, the representatives of that regime, will be hauled before the international criminal court to answer for your despicable, wanton crimes against your own people. That’s what they’ve done, and they must pay the price for it.
Now, I referenced amongst their various weaknesses, the ministers, the mullahs, and the Ayatollahs, a complete absence of imagination to envisage any different way than the way they manipulate, kill, maim, and abuse their own citizens. Of course, part of that bereft imagination seems to have been communicated to and sadly absorbed by people in the international community who don’t like the regime but have foolishly and supinely come to be persuaded by the regime’s TINA Mantra.
TINA standing, of course, for “there is no alternative.” Oh, yes, there is an alternative, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s talk about what that alternative is.
First of all, to the mass murderers, one very simple point that might not yet have penetrated their skulls, but which Western democratic leaders ought to understand, subscribe to, and enunciate is this. The alternative to wanton killing of people is to stop the wanton killing of people. It’s not very difficult. It’s not very complicated. In fact, it’s a very easy concept to grasp.
Stop killing people, stop terrorizing people, and also stop trying to intimidate people by giving them the impression that you think they’re really rather stupid. The people of Iran are not stupid. The people of Iran have sussed this regime. The people of Iran have shown it by their mass abstentionism from the parliamentary and the presidential elections.
The reason why they’ve gone for mass abstentionism and boycott is not that they are in a state of undiluted bliss about this regime, but because they feel utter undiluted, unreserved contempt for the way in which the regime abuses its own people. They want nothing of it. The idea that there’s a performer there amongst them, these six clerically endorsed candidates for the presidency, is, of course, for the birds.
None of them is a liberty lover. None of them is a Democrat, and none of them is on the side of the Iranian people. The only way we will discover for sure who is on the side of the Iranian people is by allowing the opportunity for free and fair expression of the public will. That’s what causes me to turn, if I may, to Maryam Rajavi’s Ten-Point Plan.
The philosophy and intended policy program of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. No alternative, my friends, it is in fact one of the most eloquent articulate, and comprehensive statements of alternative that any Democrat could wish to see.
The starting point is the sovereignty of the people, the right of the people to choose their parliament and to choose their rulers, and indeed, the right to change their choice of their parliamentarians and their government from time to time, because that is the essence of the liberal democracy that Mrs. Rajavi and her colleagues want to engender for the benefit and with the support of the people of Iran.
Hope regular sovereignty is based upon the principle of regular universal suffrage. There’s nothing very odd or undeliverable about that, nor is there about freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press.
What could be complicated about that? People across Iran, as around the world, would love to enjoy the values, principles, and concepts enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Those things matter to people. They want an independent judiciary. They want a separation, clear, explicit, and observable between state and society. They want environmental husbandry. They want free enterprise subject to appropriate caveats in the form of social protection. Protection.
I believe, as people who are peace-loving, which the Iranian people are, they want to live under a government that accepts the principles and practices of a nuclear-free Republic. That is the alternative. Let it be put to the test.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran has been making this argument time and time and time again with ever-increasing force and eloquence and manifest evidence of widespread public support, which the regime has chosen, therefore, not to respect, but to seek to crush. In seeking to crush it, they have unfortunately been aided and abetted by those more dimwitted members of the international community whose philosophy is appeasement. Well, I’ll tell you what Winston Churchill had to say about appeasement in the late 1930s, my friends.
He characterized it thus, faced with a terrible evil, appeasement connoted to its eternal discredit, being resolved only to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.
That’s appeasement. And my friends, ladies and gentlemen, one and all, appeasement stinks. We’re not arguing for military action. What I think we’re all in this room saying, and John Bolton said it so extraordinarily, cogently an hour or so ago, is let there be a rigorous sanctions policy applied with fixity of purpose and clear consistency.
Let us support and equip those who want to fight for their freedom within Iran. Let’s make it clear to the mullahs that when they are ousted, they will be brought to book. That is what will happen.
Finally, I just want, if I may, to say this. My friends, I know I’m quite old, so you won’t be surprised, but I’ve been taking part in political meetings now for over 40 years since my late teens. In all the time that I’ve been involved in political activity, I have never come across a cause that enjoys such an extraordinarily broad and eclectic range of support in terms of geography and therefore of continents, but also in terms of political parties.
There are here assembled people from the right, including many whom I know and respect, like my colleague, David Jones, a former conservative cabinet minister in Britain, and also from people in the center and people who, like myself, these days, regard ourselves as hailing from the left.
We have our differences. There are disputes. We might have different policy prescriptions, but we are united by the conviction that people should be able to choose their government, have a just legal system, a proper focus on the extension of opportunity, and in my view, an overriding commitment to equality of treatment for all of our citizens.
I say that with particular regard to the millions of brave women throughout Iran who follow Mrs. Rajavi’s amazing lead. That’s what we want to see a genuine democratic, secular, freedom-loving, opportunity-spreading, forward-looking, non-bigoted government of Iran.
We will not stop making the argument until that government is achieved. I, for one, I suspect, echoed by you, look forward one day, Mrs. Rajavi, to the time when many of us, perhaps, will have the opportunity, the privilege, to gather in Teheran, to applaud your success, and to assure you of its continuation. This may sound rude, but it isn’t intended to be.
I mentioned Winston Churchill, faced with quite extraordinary, sometimes inordinate, adversity. Winston Churchill’s family motto, my friends, was K-B-O. “Keep buggering on” at all times. Keep going, keep fighting, keep working, keep campaigning, keep battling, keep refusing to take no for an answer, keep holding aloft the torch of liberty.
That’s what we’re going to do, and we’ll do it for as long as is necessary. The sooner the regime wins an understanding of one simple point, the better. That is that it, in the end, will not win. The forces of freedom will win over the forces of Iran, as in so many other parts of the world. That’s the reality. The sooner the bigots get the message, so much the better.
Thank you very much indeed.
