Oundle School’s Former pupil David Loyn: Reporting from the Frontline

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David Loyn gives a lecture to Lower Sixth Form pupils at Oundle SchoolThe 2012 Oundle Lecture held at Oundle School on 21 June was delivered by distinguished journalist and Old Oundelian, David Loyn, who addressed Lower Sixth Form pupils and other guests on the question ‘Why Won’t Politicians Learn the Lessons of History?’

Focusing on recent conflicts, Loyn said that he believes that the mistakes that have been made in the last ten years are the worst of any made in the last 100 years. He was particularly critical of Tony Blair, who, he revealed, had been uninterested in how important it was to understand Iraqi history before making decisions about going to war. ‘Tony Blair didn’t do history.’ Under the leadership of Blair and George Bush, convictions replaced questions, and spin replaced debate.

Citing the historian E.H. Carr, who said that history was an ‘unending dialogue between the past and the future’, Loyn said that British and Russian engagements in Afghanistan over the last 100 years had provided enough intelligence to inform decisions in the 21st century. Yet Bush and Blair ignored these hard-fought experiences when they decided to send troops into Afghanistan, engagements that Loyn argued has left a catalogue of failures, from high maternal mortality rates and few rights for women to a tyrannical government and corrupt elite dependent on foreign donors.

History does not always repeat itself, but history should be used when policy judgements are drawn up. Loyn said that Douglas Hurd, former Foreign Secretary, had cautioned, ‘ignorance of history is foolishness.’ Loyn proposed that the government should appoint a Chief Historian to advise on policy, just as there is a Chief Medical Officer to advise on public health issues.

Pupils were particularly interested in the four days in 2007 that Loyn spent with the Taliban at their invitation in northern Helmand province. The Pashtun honour code meant that as a guest, he was under the protection of his hosts, who offered him extreme hospitality. He said the biggest risk was running into a British patrol, which would have caused suspicion among his hosts. While some critics called him a traitor for talking to the enemy, Loyn said it is more important than anything else to know what people think, and it is his duty as a journalist to make sure that he is able to ask hard questions.

When asked how his time at Oundle had prepared him for his career as a journalist working in conflict zones, Loyn said that sleeping in the extreme cold of the old Bramston dorms in the tower above Laxton had toughened him against any of the hardship that he later experienced in the Hindu Kush.

Working primarily for the BBC, David Loyn has reported extensively on overseas conflict and change, from India, Eastern Europe, Kosovo, Africa and Afghanistan, and has successfully conducted interviews with numerous rebel leaders in an effort to understand the motivation that drives conflict. His second book, Butcher and Bolt – 200 years of foreign engagement in Afghanistan, is considered to be essential reading for members of the Foreign Office. He is currently the BBC’s International Development correspondent.

The Oundle Lecture dinner, also organised by the Sanderson Fellow Dr Richard McKim, was attended by Governors, OOs and Oundle Staff. It raised £3,500 for The Roddy Scott Foundation, a charity named after a reporter who was shot and killed by Russian troops during their occupation of Afghanistan. It seeks to provide English language education among deprived Muslim communities in the Pankisi Gorge, a remote and inaccessible region in Northern Georgia. David Loyn represented the Foundation on this occasion, and made a short after-dinner speech. ‘It’s on a different kind of front line – the battle for minds,’ said Loyn, as he accepted the School’s cheque from Headmaster, Charles Bush.

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