Elsewhere there was change, too. South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia became democracies. Pol Pot was removed from power in Cambodia by the Vietnamese. Idi Amin was toppled in Uganda with the help of the Tanzanians and a new country called Bangladesh was created out of the old East Pakistan after India intervened. Nelson Mandela was released from prison and later elected President of South Africa. British troops were sent to Sierra Leone to restore democratic government. And the international community came together to fight Saddam Hussain, who had invaded Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War.

These things did not happen accidentally. They happened because individuals and governments were prepared to stand up and fight for what they believed in.

There have been some bad things, too. When white European Muslims were butchered by white European Christians in Bosnia, we stood by and watched. Only after 250,000 had died did we intervene - and without a UN mandate.

And when Saddam Hussein continued to kill his own people, ignoring the armistice agreement and a string of UN resolutions, rather than making the case for intervention we talked about alleged weapons of mass destruction. With hindsight, we should probably not have stopped the march to Baghdad to depose Saddam in the first Gulf War, even though that was the UN mandate. Squabbling about the mandate is more often an excuse for doing nothing than a genuine attempt to find common ground.

Most politicians say that what drives them is a feeling that things don't have to be the way they are and that there is something we can do to make it better. Be it access to healthcare, quality of education, social mobility or levels of unemployment, we are prepared to intervene.