Tony Blair

Born May 6, 1953

Edinburgh, Scotland

Prime minister of Great Britain during the 2003 Iraq War

"Iraq has chemical and biological weapons."

Tony Blair quoted in "The Tony Blair Dossier."

Avocal opponent of Saddam Hussein (see entry), British Prime Minister Tony Blair aligned himself with U.S. President George W. Bush (see entry) and urged military action to prevent the Iraqi leader from developing weapons of mass destruction. Despite widespread international opposition to the war, Blair committed British military forces to the U.S.-led invasion and postwar stabilization of Iraq. When no evidence of an Iraqi weapons program was found after Hussein was removed from power, Blair defended himself against charges that he misled the British people about the Iraq threat.

A barrister's son

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair was born May 6, 1953, in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the second of three children born to Leo and Hazel Blair. Leo Blair supported the family by working as a barrister (lawyer). When Tony was very young, his father received an appointment as a law lecturer at Durham University and moved the family to northern England.

At Durham, Tony's father became prominent in conservative political circles and seemed likely to run for public office as a member of the Tory Party. In addition to his teaching and political networking, Leo Blair maintained a law practice and was a popular public speaker. His energy and political ambition would prove an influence on his son. But Leo Blair also worked long hours and did not spend a great deal of time with his family.

Tony's life changed dramatically when he was ten years old. His father suffered a massive stroke and nearly died. It took three years for Leo Blair to regain his ability to speak. As a result, he was unable to work, and his once-promising political prospects came to a sudden end. The family was dealt a second blow when Tony's younger sister, Sarah, was stricken with rheumatoid arthritis and hospitalized for two years. These family illnesses cast a dark shadow over Blair's early adolescence. In addition, the family's finances clearly suffered as a result of his father and sister's health problems.

Learning and breaking the rules

Blair received a scholarship to attend Fettes College in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he enrolled at age thirteen. (Despite its name, the "college" offered courses similar to those in middle school and high school in the United States.) Blair did well in his studies but had a difficult time adjusting to dormitory life, as well as to the strict rules and traditions of the school.

For instance, in his early years at Fettes, Blair was required to "fag" for the older students, meaning that he had to perform chores for them, such as cleaning their shoes. Blair found the practice degrading, and he also disliked the school's strict guidelines about issues such as hair and dress. Blair earned a reputation for questioning authority, though he never let his protests go too far. "I was never an out-andout rebel," he recalled in Tony Blair: The Moderniser, "but I was a rationalist in the sense that, if certain things were wrong, I would say so." Blair also became known for his acting abilities, assuming lead roles in several school productions.

After completing his studies at Fettes, Blair moved on to St. John's College at Oxford University in 1972, where he studied law. Surprisingly, he showed little interest in joining political organizations while at Oxford. Instead, he filled much of his free time by dating and singing in a rock band. Shortly before he graduated, however, he fell in with a group of students who were interested in public affairs and religious issues. Blair soon joined the Anglican Church. His interest in spiritual concerns became stronger after his mother died of cancer in 1975. Her death also made Blair get serious about pursuing a career in politics.

Joining the Labour Party

Though his father had been a member of the conservative Tory Party, Blair joined the rival Labour Party, which had traditionally been aligned with trade unions and socialist politics. He began building relationships with important Labour officials while completing his law training. It was during this time that he met another aspiring barrister named Cherie Booth, and the two were married in 1980. Blair practiced law through the late 1970s and early 1980s, specializing in employment and industrial cases. Though he was active in Labour Party politics, he did not run for office until 1982. His first attempt to win a seat in Parliament (the British form of government) failed, but a year later he was elected as a representative for Sedgefield, an area near Durham.

At this time the Labour Party was fairing poorly in elections. The Tories, led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (see entry), were the party in power. Blair and others within his party felt that Labour needed to change its message if it wanted to reconnect with large numbers of British voters. The change that they pioneered was to move the party more toward the political center. They felt that many voters had turned against Labour because the party was out of touch with current conditions and too closely linked to powerful trade unions and outdated economic policies. At the same time, they wanted to keep their distance from the Tories, whom they felt were too conservative. Blair and his allies proposed a "Third Way" that fell somewhere between socialism and conservatism. (Socialism is an economic system that advocates communal ownership of industry either in the form of state ownership or else in the form of ownership by the workers themselves.) Blair would later coin the term "New Labour" to describe this change in outlook, and he and his associates became known as "the Modernisers." During the 1980s and early 1990s, these lawmakers gradually transformed Labour Party policies and attitudes.

Assuming leadership

Throughout this period, Blair retained his seat in parliament and moved steadily up the ranks of the party. He became a member of the select group that guided Labour's strategy as the opposition party. By the mid-1990s, he was considered one of the party's top figures. When Labour Party leader John Smith died in 1994, Blair replaced him. Under Blair's direction, the party cut its long-standing ties to socialist principles. In the May 1997 elections, the Labour Party won enough parliamentary seats to become the nation's ruling party. Blair, at age forty-three, became one of the youngest prime ministers in British history.

In his first term Blair promoted a political agenda that mixed liberal priorities (such as a strong public education system) with more conservative issues (such as reducing government restrictions on business and cracking down on crime). On the international front, he promoted stronger links between Great Britain and its European neighbors, helped establish a peace agreement in Northern Ireland, and urged the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to take action against Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, who had presided over a violent program of "ethnic cleansing" in the Eastern European region of Kosovo. In June 2001 Blair won a second term as prime minister. Just a few months later, he faced a new international crisis.

Terror and war

On September 11, 2001, members of a radical Islamic terrorist group known as Al Qaeda hijacked four commercial planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon building near Washington, D.C., and a field in Pennsylvania. Nearly three thousand people were killed in these attacks. Immediately after these attacks against the United States, President George W. Bush announced a global war on terrorism that initially focused on Al Qaeda and other known terrorist organizations.

The September 11 attacks made international terrorism an enormous issue for Blair and many other world leaders. Blair quickly pledged his support for Bush's efforts to stamp out terrorism. By early October, British forces were fighting alongside American troops in Afghanistan. The Taliban, Afghanistan's radical Islamic government sheltered Osama bin Laden, the Muslim cleric (religious leader) who masterminded the terrorist attacks, and provided training grounds for Al Qaeda. The invasion of Afghanistan aroused little opposition in the United Kingdom because there was strong evidence showing that the Taliban had supported Al Qaeda.

But there was plenty of controversy when the global war on terrorism moved on to its next major engagement. Beginning in 2002 both U.S. and British officials issued new warnings that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein posed a dangerous threat to international security. They argued that Hussein had engaged in efforts to create nuclear and chemical weapons, and that he could either use such weapons himself or make them available to terrorist groups. Both governments threatened to use military force to bring an end to the perceived Iraqi threat.

Concerns about Saddam Hussein were nothing new. The Iraqi leader's decision to invade neighboring Kuwait had led to the 1991 Persian Gulf War. In this conflict, a United Nations (UN) coalition that included both the United States and Great Britain had pushed Iraq's army out of Kuwait. The UN resolutions, or formal statements, that ended the war required Iraq to dismantle its weapons program, but Hussein consistently refused to comply with UN inspections to verify Iraq's disarmament. Because Iraq failed to comply with the UN resolutions, it had been placed under economic sanctions (trade restrictions intended to punish a country for breaking international law). In addition, British and American forces carried out periodic aerial bombings and missile attacks against Iraqi targets throughout the 1990s.

The war debate

By 2002 the leaders of the United States and Great Britain were out of patience with Hussein. The Blair and Bush administrations pressured the United Nations to authorize the use of military force to remove Hussein from power in Iraq. Their position created a prolonged international debate. Critics charged that there was not enough evidence to prove that Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical and biological weapons. Others argued that there were no clear links between Iraq and terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda. Some charged that Blair and Bush were using the alleged weapons as an excuse to exert control over a strategic and oil-rich area of the Middle East. While the governments of several nations sided with the American and British opinion, many others were opposed. Officials from France and Russia were among the most powerful and vocal critics of military action against Iraq.

Blair remained undaunted by the opposition, and he continued to recommend tough action against Hussein. On September 24, 2002, Blair released a dossier (file) of intelligence information detailing his administration's findings on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Blair addressed the British parliament on the same day to make his argument. "Iraq has chemical and biological weapons," he said, as quoted in "The Tony Blair Dossier." Blair also asserted that Saddam "has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes," and added that the Iraqi leader "is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability."

In November 2002 a new UN resolution demanded that Iraq disarm or face serious consequences. Hussein accepted the terms of the resolution and agreed to let UN weapons inspectors return to Iraq. As they carried out their investigations, the United States and Great Britain began to station military forces in the region near Iraq. Demonstrations against the impending war took place around the world. Massive protests were staged in London, and opinion polls showed that large numbers of British citizens were opposed to an attack on Iraq.

Reports by Chief UN Inspector Hans Blix in the first three months of 2003 were critical of Iraq's level of cooperation but also found no definite proof of a weapons program. Blix requested more time to complete the investigation, but Blair and Bush continued to push for military action. In February the United States and Great Britain requested another UN resolution, this one specifically authorizing the use of military force against Iraq. The resolution failed to gain the necessary support in the UN Security Council and was dropped.

The lack of UN support left Blair with tough decisions to make. He had to decide whether Great Britain should assist the United States in a military invasion of Iraq without widespread international support. He also had to decide whether to risk the lives of British citizens when so many people in his own country were opposed to the war. His answer to both questions was ultimately yes.

Victory and more questions

The invasion of Iraq began on March 20, 2003 (March 19 in the United States). The majority of British troops were deployed in the southern part of the country, near the city of Basra, which they successfully captured in early April. Most Iraqi towns had fallen to the coalition forces by mid-April, and major combat operations came to an end on May 1. The war had succeeded in removing Saddam Hussein's government from power, but the dictator's whereabouts were unknown.

Despite the rapid victory, the controversy surrounding the causes of the war refused to go away. In the months following the fall of Baghdad, the capital city, no substantial evidence of an active Iraqi weapons program was found. Critics charged that Blair's government had either been wrong in its intelligence assessments of Hussein's weapons programs, or that administration officials had purposefully misled Parliament and the British public.

The issue grew even more heated when a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news story questioned the accuracy of the intelligence dossier Blair had presented to parliament in building his case for the war. The story alleged that the dossier had been exaggerated to make a more compelling case. It also quoted an arms expert with the Ministry of Defense who felt that inaccurate claims had been made in the documents. One point of contention was Blair's claim that Iraq's chemical and biological weapons could be functional in forty-five minutes.

The arms expert was later revealed to be Doctor David Kelly. Shortly after his name was made public, Kelly was found dead after allegedly committing suicide. An independent inquiry into the incident was launched. Meanwhile, spokespersons for the prime minister vigorously disputed the BBC's charges. In December 2003 a former Iraqi military officer declared that he had been the source for the forty-five-minute estimate. He stood by his claim, stating that such warheads had been distributed to Iraqi troops in late 2002.

Growing casualties

The prime minister also faced criticism about the dangerous conditions in postwar Iraq. Though formal military battles came to an end in April, coalition forces continued to endure frequent attacks from guerrilla forces. In addition, nonmilitary installations in Baghdad, such as a hotel and the United Nations headquarters, were targeted in deadly car bombings. The coalition's inability to find Saddam Hussein also followed Blair for many months, until the Iraqi leader was finally captured by U.S. forces in December 2003. In late 2003 the U.S.-led coalition approved a plan to speed the transition to an Iraqi-controlled government, but no timetable was set for the removal of foreign troops. As of early December, fifty-three British soldiers had been killed in Iraq out of a total of 520 coalition deaths.

Opinion polls indicate that Blair's popularity in Britain has dropped as a result of the war. Some British citizens feel that Blair misled them about the Iraqi threat, and there have been widespread complaints that the prime minister is focusing too much attention on Iraq and other international issues and not paying enough attention to his own country. Nonetheless, Blair's government still enjoys significant support.

Despite the difficulties and uncertainty the Iraq War created, Blair stands by his decision to confront Saddam Hussein. "We must affirm that in the face of this terrorism there must be no holding back, no compromise, no hesitation in confronting this menace, in attacking it wherever and whenever we can, and in defeating it utterly," he told Fran Kelly of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Where to Learn More

Foley, Michael. The British Presidency. New York: Manchester University Press, 2000.

"In Depth: After Saddam." BBC News. Available online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/middle_east/2002/conflict_with_iraq/default.stm (accessed March 24, 2004).

"Iraq War Debate—2002/2004." University of Michigan Documents Center. Available online at http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/iraqwar.html (accessed March 24, 2004).

Kelly, Fran. "Blair, Bush Reaffirm Vow to Confront Terrorism." ABC News Online. Available online at http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2003/s994099.htm (accessed March 24, 2003).

"Paper Names '45-minute Source.'" BBC News. Available online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3297771.stm (accessed March 24, 2004).

Rentoul, John. Tony Blair: Prime Minister. Boston: Little, Brown, 2001.

Sopel, Jon. Tony Blair: The Moderniser. London: Michael Joseph, 1995.

"Special Report: War in Iraq" CNN.com. Available online at http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/ (accessed March 24, 2004).

Stothard, Peter. Thirty Days: Tony Blair and the Test of History. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.

"The Tony Blair Dossier." Available online at http://controversy.biogs.com/blair.html (accessed March 24, 2004).