“A small boy, about nine years old, was following his goats as they grazed in the mountains. His name is not known. He was probably playing a little, throwing stones maybe, or he would have noticed the small green mine that blew his foot off at the ankle. From what we know of how people react, from the memories of those who have survived, the little shepherd boy probably hopped or dragged himself to where his foot lay – it would have been quite close to him. He would have cried, or maybe just sat lonely and quiet and helpless and slipped into unconsciousness. His goats must have stayed until after he died, probably until the wild dogs arrived at the scene. We have no way of knowing exactly what happened; the dogs found him days before we did. He was certainly [to use the arms industry’s preferred terminology] a ‘soft target’.
McGrath, Rae (2000) Landmines and Unexploded Ordinance: A Resource Book.Pluto, London.
So, the book’s about landmines and cluster bombs, both manufactured, promoted and used by US / EU countries, including the UK. The author isn’t some hippie but a former British Army (REME) soldier who heads up one of the most respected demining NGOs and was nominated for the Nobel Prize. Landmines and cluster bombs cause massive death and misery long after a conflict’s end, as well as economic hardship once the TV cameras go home – how does a country like Somalia, Afghanistan or Rwanda deal with thousands of amputees? With unusable roads? With crops and fields peppered randomly with metallic seeds of death?
Because unlike the Hollywood depiction, there are no barbed-wire boundaries, no handy skull-and-crossbones, no ‘Achtung Minen!’ notices; that would defeat the point. Mines and cluster bombs are hidden killers. That is their grisly role.
When your prospective MP comes a-knocking in the next few weeks, ask him if his party will commit the UK to an outright ban on the manufacture, promotion, sale and use of cluster bombs as they promised when they signed (but have not yet implemented) the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions.
(got to write this quick, dodgy connection. sorry for mistakes)
I really, really, really care about this stuff on all sorts of levels. Please read on if you’ve got five minutes. I’ve tried quite hard to make a slightly complex story simpler (though I’m a bit rusty at writing)
You don’t need me to tell you that we’re in the shit financially. The government has never been so in debt. we’re in real danger of losing our national credit rating, and money for hospitals, schools, police, roads etc will be cut, regardless of who wins the next election.
So, you might be surprised to learn that we spend hundreds of millions a year subsidising arms deals to dodgy countries. read on while i fill you in for a bit. Cos at the end I’m going to ask you to take a look at a really important petition to see if you want to sign it..
The story begins..
Said arms deals, like all the best scams, take place not in shady car parks at midnight with manilla envelopes, but in full plain sight of the nation. they tie in torture, women’s repression, oil, moolah, UK servicemen’s lives and a lot of tax money – flowing OUT of the coffers.
From an economic point of view, it’s all supposed to be about exports – selling goods and services to foreigners. They’re what build wealth in the long term, not shuttling money round and round this little island. Think about it like this: if I paint a picture and flog it to a mate, perhaps in exchange for a CD, that’s one thing. But we’re really just swapping stuff. On the other hand, if a stranger wants the painting I can take the cash and use it to buy some more paint cheap to do another painting etc. This is because of things like comparative advantage that you can read about later.
The point is that governments are (perhaps rightly) obsessed with having a ‘trade surplus’ – from the perspective of the Bank of England, our real national ‘profit’ each year is simply what we earn in exports minus what we spend on importing stuff. All those pounds shuffled about inside the UK each year don’t really matter.
The Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD) exists to promote British industry’s exports. If a UK company does a certain deal with an overseas company or government, and the foreigners feel like not paying, the UK taxpayer picks up the tab. The idea behind the system is to promote our export sales to other contries by making it less risky to do business with dodgy clients.
Setting aside for a moment the fact that government subsidies to exports (which these amount to) are illegal under international trade laws, and give our economic competitors a big shitty stick to beat us with in trade negotiations at the EU, WTO and G20, the logic behind taxpayer funding of the ECGD unravels as soon as you look at it. which is presumably why they gave it such a boring name (since ‘The Bribing Foreigners With Public Cash Department’ is a bit nearer the mark but less politically acceptable).
For starters, the arms industry has sucked in 30-60% of the ECGD’s funding over the last few decades, even though arms account for less than 4% of all our exports. Eh? So the other 96% of our exports (tractors, pharmaceuticals, Amy Winehouse) sell themselves just fine? Hmm… And exactly just who would need the services of the ECGD, should they be unable to pay for a brand-new tank, assault helicopter or aerial spy drone? Unstable dictatorships? Repressive regimes? You guessed it.
Secondly, the economic logic behind supporting the arms industry is a bit flawed. Jobs created in these contracts are already subsidised by us to the tune of £10,000 minimum each job, each year. And the profits these companies make (£16,000,000,000 operating profit for BAE in 2008 alone) *don’t* end up in the taxman’s coffers, but safely overseas in shareholders’ and managers’ tax havens. That new school round the corner? That new bridge? That MRI scanner? And yes, that soldier’s flak jacket? All were paid for by taxes collected on wages of call-centre workers, teachers, builders etc.
Of course, the minister signing off the deal usually gets a say on where those subsidised jobs go. You won’t be suprised to realise that they typically end up in a hotly-contested constituency. If you’re thinking of a comparison with the 18th-century ‘Pocket Borough’ episode of Blackadder, where he buys a parliament seat, well, so am I.
Along the way, some of you might have moral or ethical problems with selling weapons abroad to places like: Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive regimes in the world, especially to women; or Sri Lanka, who have just concluded a decade-long internal war against the Tamil ethinic minority through the simple tactic of shelling their refugee camps; Indonesia, whose General Suharto decided (in the name of internal order) to wipe out a bigger proportion of his own subjects than either Hitler, Mao or Stalin; or the Sudan, whose own internal persecutions hit the headlines every spring when refugees spill over into drought-struck and war-torn Somalia, precipitating famine. So you can also blame the ECGD for Bono.
But, lastly, the military / strategic arguments against these sales are compelling. The point behind advanced military technology is that it gives you an advantage. Ideally, it should render all previous weapons obsolete, giving you and your allies a decisive advantage / deterrent. So it’s distinctly odd that we should be selling weapons at all to the list of nasties listed above.
But they’re good (if desperate) customers. We probably shouldn’t serve them, but we think we know that, if we don’t someone else will (if you’ve ever worked with the ‘regulars’ in a pub, you know what i mean). The government’s Export Credit Guarantee Department, however, go above and beyond the call of duty for Britain. Not even the americans or the French (notoriously keen on government subsidy of industry) go so far as to run an ECGD of their own. So, to continue the drunkard analogy, the winos aren’t just queueing up to get in at 10am, but getting free bar snacks and 2-4-1 deals on strongbow and jagerbombs as well.
Subsidies are bad. But we’ve even gone one better with a big fat bribe.
Incredibly, *our* money was used to bribe the Saudis into buying a consignment of brand-new, state-of-the-art Eurofighter jets. You see, they were shopping around and looking at rival US models, and offering to pay in some badly-needed crude oil, so we beat everyone else to the punch by offering £20,000,000 in inducements to the canny Saudi princes in inducements and freebies. Because they’re worth it.
Unfortunately for BAE, two Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigations (in 1992 and 2006) threatened to call a bloody spade a spade, and order the deals called off and bribes repaid. Luckily, the Tory and Labour governments of the day ordered the SFO to stop sniffing around when the Saudis threatened not to stump up the oil.
Why do we, the taxpayers, pay for private companies to sell off military advantages to grisly gangs at a loss?
Money and blood.
Firstly, many senior members of government have shares in these companies, and have hustled from government to the boardrooms of these companies with indecent haste (former Defence Minister Nicholas ‘Fatty’ Soames being just the most colourful example.) But that’s only half the story.
The military reality is that, in a world where the business of killing has grown ever more complicated even as arms development and production has been increasingly privatised, the services of private companies have never been more vital. Forget all about not being able to lob Trident nuclear missiles around without the americans’ say-so; just keeping a Lynx helicopter airborne requires the participation of over 100 private corporations. The government needs these companies more than they need us. Perhaps if the industry in question was agriculture, or power generation, or computing, it might be possible to argue that the circle was a virtuous one, no matter how extreme the trade distortions and income inequalities it generated were. But remember that the final products of the arms industry are misery, death and despair.
Next time you get paid, look at that P.A.Y.E. knocked off your total hours, and think about that. remember, every pound spent like this isn’t being spent on schoolbooks, or electricity for hospitals, or subsidising the night bus.
Yesterday it was announced that yet another SFO fraud investigation into the Saudi, and other BAE deals (including Quatar and Tanzania) has been headed off at the pass – this time with BAE making a token $280m settlement out of court in the UK ans US. This is *very* small change out of their $2000m profit on $15,000m revenue this year.
Originally published in The Oxford Student, Feb 2008.
Read the original article here (.pdf format): OS6.20.OSTOS6.21.OST
It’s 8.30 on a wet Monday morning in January. I’m standing beside the Thames outside 11 Millbank – better known as ‘MI5’ – holding a small cork noticeboard taped to a broom handle. I’m trying hard to look reasoned, righteous and above all, lawful, as I have an excellent view of both the river and two black, efficient-looking submachine-guns gripped by a pair of the Met’s finest. For the last five minutes we’ve been having a heated debate spanning police operating procedures, Government green papers and ancient civil liberties that concerns my right to stand here at the corner of the road by the rush-hour traffic.
Eventually the policemen, their guns and a curious piece of legislation officially on the statute books as ‘SOCPA (2005) s132-138’ all prove as powerful as the mighty ebb tide of the Thames itself and so I walk away with my board. I have not been arrested but, in some sense, I don’t feel free, either.
The copper has offered to arrest (or, as he ominously puts it, ‘process’ me) because pinned to my board is an A3 piece of paper with the hand-written words ‘B-is-for-Margaret-Beckett – Get Out Of Your Caravan And Get A Clue’ and her mugshot in all its grainy laserjet glory.
It’s a modest enough statement of political opinion and I and my companions Todd and Chris are doing little more than standing benignly in the rain, taking turns to lean sleepily on the broom handle and half-heartedly offer our opinion in a Michael-Palin-cum-market-trader patter to anyone who’ll listen.
We have undertaken to carry out 26 separate demonstrations in one day, with a different target politician for each letter of the alphabet. We will become record breakers, stealing an official Guinness World Record held by comedian-activist Mark Thomas (21 protests) but though the tone of our demonstration (from ‘A-is-for-Dianne-Abbot: Stop Laughing At Portillo’s Rubbish Gags!’ to ‘Z-is-for-Zac-Goldsmith: Pick A Party And Stick To It!’) is flippant, our purpose is deadly serious.
This is because for every single one of our miniscule, peaceful, Goons-esque protests we have had to give the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police advance notice in writing detailing our proposed actions. Eye colour and favourite toothpaste aren’t quite included; exact timings to the minute, meeting details and press briefings are. It’s a lot of information to fill in 26 times over just to stand around with a silly banner and as well as being laborious, intimidating and Byzantine it turns out our rights can still be suspended, as our armed friends’ behaviour demonstrates.
Others have discovered this the hard way: Maya Evans was the first person convicted under the law, for reading out the names of the British an Iraqi war dead by the Cenotaph in Whitehall. Speaking to Tim Barton she pointed out that the weight of bureaucracy involved and range of police powers granted to the police on the day ‘…makes it so draconian and anti-freedom… that’s not really a free demonstration, once you go through the requirements.’
Similarly, comic-turned-activist Mark Thomas was incensed by the scope of SOCPA, but typically, saw the surreal nature of the special legal conditions around Parliament as a comic opportunity after a friend was threatened with arrest for picnicking with a political Victoria sponge (with ‘Peace’ iced upon its jammy face.) He has since organized a series of peculiarly British protests in favour of trolls, surrealism, bans on surrealism and the record-setting speed-protest we’re attempting to better today.
However with a straight face, and at some expense, he is currently seeking a public prosecution of Gordon Brown, who last autumn may have inadvertently committed an offence by reading aloud a speech by Nelson Mandela live on TV in Parliament Square itself. Could life get weirder?
This may have catalysed the Government into a partial retreat. This month they announce the results of a public consultation, though official nods and winks to ‘harmonization’ of police powers have led some to suggest an expansion of the rules countrywide. I put this to a Home Office spokesperson, who insists the consultation was merely to see if ‘there remains to be a case for the current legislation.” When pressed, however, they refused to comment on or rule out suggestions that powers might be expanded across the country, insisting there had to be a law governing protest since without one, ‘anyone could turn up’ – clearly a nightmare scenario for the Government.
Even cutting-edge political aggitators sometimes need to improve their timekeeping...
Suppose, I wondered, an ordinary member of the public – with no legal training – takes issue with a topical Government policy, gets an unpaid day off work and hops on a train down to London with a placard? Wouldn’t they be guilty through ignorance of an offence? The Home Office were at a total loss, ending the interview.
Baroness Sue Miller (LD) will this week question the Home Office on the outcome of a recent Green Paper consultation, with a view to introducing a Repeal Bill. She opposes the law, to the extent that she organized a public protest against it with fellow politicians. The law was, she explained, “clearly nonsense – incredibly beaureaucratic. It’s in place for one of three reasons, and only the Government can say why; because Brian Haw’s protest was undtdy; because it was an embarrassment to Blair; or because of a perceived terrorist threat. Well, the information we get from Black Rod – security briefings – tells us that in relation to the security issue it’s the road that’s always seen as the real difficulty, not protestors. It’s a small step towards a police state. People should be able to demonstrate”. Any proposal to extend the powers nationwide would, she said, be ‘chilling.’
Chief Inspector Paul Switzer is the policeman with responsibility for enforcing the law throughout most of the Parliament area. He is helpful, polite and (for someone simultaneously policing a football match during our interview) attentive. Nonetheless, he has the strained, even Canuteian air of a man trying to enforce the laws of an Alice In Wonderland world, where crossing a road can turn a ‘peace’ T-shirt into political heavy weaponry. Our team was repeatedly asked to produce a paper copy of our authorization, he reasoned, because it was ‘common sense… it saves time,’ but he agreed it wasn’t necessary. In that case, I ask, would then be unlawful for a policeman to demand it of a demonstrator under threat of arrest? He could only concede that ‘a lot of police pass through the area… some may not be as au fait with SOCPA as the various units that work that area.’ It seems even the police are in confusion over the law.
As he rings off, I feel a bit confused, too. It all seems reasoned, reasonable, even. But I reflect: The courageous protestor bravely standing up for their beliefs is a part of freedom’s folklore, a part of the language of democracy we take for granted. In recent months we have watched protestors in Pakistan, read about police pay pickets at home and joined Facebook causes from Burmese monks to marine conservationists.
The right to assemble with others, to freely and peacefully protest is one of the most ancient and basic liberties we have enjoyed. Since medieval times – the basic right to petition those ruling us has never been called into question. Security threats are clearly a smokescreen – but should we now subordinate this right to present a friendly face to visitors, or allow the government to meet in peace?
I hope not. I have been to another place in the world where the organs of government meet peacefully while tourists happily snap away. The photos are of Lenin’s tomb, the place is Red Square, and the ‘unhindered Government’ is that of Putin’s Russia. It’s efficient, certainly. But it’s not accountable, and an insult to our history and traditions if we allowed it to happen here.
Inspired by Mark Thomas‘ ‘official’ world record attempt (highlighting the ludicrous SOCPA law) we thought we’d try and break his WR of 20 protests in a day. We managed 24 out of 26 planned protests (being unlawfully prevented from completing one by the police, and failing to record another thanks to a camera fault.
