When it comes to the arms trade the British government are the deranged offspring of a Ferengi and Franz Kafka, insatiable greed and bureacratic ineptitude combined in one nightmare package.
Here’s a nice encapsulation of the sick situation by activist/comedian Mark Thomas at the 2007 Birmingham Police and Security Fair :
[…]
In the middle of the hall was Mr Xia, a Chinese man with three electro-shock weapons on display for all to see. He demonstrated them for me while I filmed him. A bargain at £3.25 each. At least, I thought, it shouldn’t be hard to find a cop at the police and security fair. How foolishly naive. The Association of Chief of Police Officers had a stall around the corner from Mr Xia, but with no one there. The nearest Customs officer, I was told, was at the airport. The closest thing I found to an on-duty officer were two life-size cardboard cutout cops, on sale as a deterrent to thieves. Eventually, I found the fair organiser’s office.
Mr Xia was arrested, and two weeks later I got a phone call from Solihull CID. “Mr Xia has pleaded guilty to the possession of prohibited firearms,” said the voice, “but I think it is illegal to try and sell these weapons.”
“You would be right.”
“And I think Mr Xia was trying to sell them.”
“He was at a trade fair.”
“Would you give us a statement and let us see the film you shot at the fair?”
“Yes, I would be happy to.”
“And one more thing – if you wouldn’t mind, could you bring up copies of the relevant legislation?”
While it’s long been an open secret in Britain that our national earnings are underpinned by international arms sales – we make 46 billion a year out of it – what’s not often mentioned is that we’re also one of the biggest enablers of the worldwide and domestic trade in illegal small arms and torture equipment.
The British government’s attitude to arms sales is hypocritical to the nth degree. On one hand it subscribes to the “Guns bad, mmmkay?” school of thought for domestic consumption; on the other it allows illegal arms and torture weapons to be sold under its nose to pretty much anyone from at home and abroad, so long as they have the money.
You’d be surprised at who has a financial interest in the arms and repression industry:
45 UK UNIVERSITIES own over £15m worth of shares in the arms trade. Three institutions – University College London (UCL), Trinity Hall Cambridge and the University of Liverpool – each own shares worth over £1million.
British academics, MPs, police and media alike bemoan the growing gun culture that leads to the murders of so many young men and shed crocodile tears even as they condemn: “Tsk tsk”, they say. “Oh dear, black drugs and gun culture, tragic isn’t it? Oh well, at least it’s not our children.”
Yet while all that international money is sloshing around London they’ll happily turn a blind eye either by passivity or ineptitude,to the international gun culture that is the Daddy of the gun culture in our cities.
As a spokesperson for the University of Liverpool explains; “The university has a legal obligation to maximise returns on its investments as it is accountable to its beneficiaries. We would not choose to invest in arms if other opportunities to fulfil our financial obligations were equally available.”
Oh well, then, that’s fine. Profit trumps morals, my duh.
It’s a sad fact that in our post-imperial and industrial days of decline we are a fading, insignificant offshore island in a big scary world. Our only remaining diplomatic bargaining chips are a] guns and b] money. These days we can only wield power in the world by
a] enabling, supporting and protecting the international trade in arms and weapons of repression, come what may and
b] by having a whole city full of handy banks for managing the subsequent profits and lots of accountants and lawyers to evade any inconvenient legislation (that’s when they’re not actually orchestrating it on a massive scale).
and
c] By knowing where the bodies are buried. *Cough* Banco Ambrosiano.*Cough*
that last’s influence probably outweights the first two.
Mind you, the relevant laws are such an absolute dogs breakfast as to be almost totally ineffectual anyway and of course lets not forget that we in our turn are mere passive instruments of US foreign policy, just another tool to be used by Washington to do politics by the back door.
The voters have expressed their justified disgust with this hypocrisy by demonstrating peacefully yet forcefully, only to find themselves subjected to the most draconian of the post-911 terror laws. A state of terrorist emergency was first declared in metropolitan London in Feb 2001, but no-one knew until the law was used not against terrorists but against legitimate arms trade prorestors.
The Metropolitan Police are using anti-terrorist legislation against protesters demonstrating at Europe’s biggest annual arms fair which was opened today by Geoff Hoon, UK defence minister, in London’s Docklands. The police have invoked Section 44 of Terrorism Act 2000 which allows assistant chief constables (or the commander in the case of the Metropolitan police) to authorise extended stop and search where they
“consider it expedient for the prevention of acts of terrorism”
Section 44 was also used extensively during the protests and peace camp at Fairford RAF airbase in the build-up to the Iraq War (1). This is contrary to clear undertakings from the Home Secretary to the House of Commons that Section 44 notices would only be used where there is good reason to suspect terrorist activity. Protestors have already won a judicial review of police mass detention tactics during the Fairford protests (2), while Liberty has said it will seek a judicial review of the Met Police’s use of Section 44 in the Docklands.
There has been much made in the press of how the police have “braced themselves for violent protests” (e.g. The Guardian, 6 September 2003) and the £1 million pound cost of the policing operation. Sixteen arrests were reported on the evening news, while inside, cluster bombs, which the exhibition organisers had last week said should not be included, were among the exhibits.
That that state of emergency hasn’t been lifted since and it was what eventually resulted in the effective ‘shoot to kill’ policy that then allowed the extra-judicial murder of Jean-Charles Menezes by trigger happy police.
Which makes the persistence of anti arms-trade protestors all the more admirable.
A nondescript large industrial unit in Lenton, Nottingham had its anonymity taken away by local Disarm DSEI / anti-arms trade protesters on Tuesday when they descended on Heckler and Koch’s UK headquarters.
H&K are the world’s second largest maker of pistols and machine-guns for soldiers and death squads across the world, including Turkey, Iran, Mexico, Thailand, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Burma/Myanmar. Their weapons are in use in over 90 countries, including by British police, and the company has evaded EU arms controls to sell weapons to war-zones in Sudan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Sierra Leone. Over half a million people are killed worldwide by small-arms annually.
A productive bit of research led a couple of intrepid investigators to buzz the company and ask “Excuse me, is this the Nottingham Small Arms Factory?” Although they didn’t get a response as such, their suspicions were confirmed when armed police turned up minutes later and detained them for 45 minutes under the Terrorism Act.
The subsequent demo made it clear that gun merchants are not welcome in the city (which, by the way, has the highest gun crime rate in the UK). The peaceful protest obviously hit a raw nerve as the forty or so people in attendance attracted an almost equal number of cops, including members of the (London-based political squad) Forward Intelligence Team.
Local rag, the Nottingham Evening Post, showed just how weak its commitment to reporting is when they pulled the story from page 2 after being told by a police press officer that it would be ‘irresponsible’ for the media to publish the arms company’s address (…yes, so obviously it’s: NSAF Ltd, Unit 3, Easter Park, Lenton Lane, Nottingham NG7 2PX). See http://disarmdsei.evey.org
It’s easy to see a grand establishment conspiracy in all this but I’m inclined to think it’s more a typical mixture of jaw-dropping venality, sheer ineptitude and passive complicity.
Or am I?
When you think of a world in the grip of accelerating climate change, potential social disorder and subject to an increasing scramble, even to the death, for temperate land and resources and you consider how few natural resources we actually have, then controlling the weapons of repression and the gold begins to look less like conspiracy and more like an actual strategy.
Looked at in that light the arms traders’re doing our young a favour by training them in weapons skills for the the apocalyptic future. You could even say it’s a public service.
See what I mean about Kafka and the Ferengi…..
