LYDIA NOON 28
January 2019
While Brits have grown
accustomed to turbulence in political fairyland, last week the action moved
from Whitehall to hotels, and the subject matter has been the UK’s future as
cheerleader for free trade.
No less than six cabinet
ministers attended Davos’ World Economic Trade Forum, resulting in
Britain’s first
potential post-Brexit trade deal with Israel and, an announcement by
the foreign secretary that
£2.5 million would be pledged to support the UN peace process in Yemen,
followed a day later by, rather embarrassingly, a swanky “arms
dealers’ dinner” in London’s Park Lane with many on the guest list enabling
the Saudi-led bombardment of Yemen.
And so, as the Brexit engine
rumbles on, so does one of the most controversial and disturbing aspects of it:
the dealings of the UK’s weapons industry with unscrupulous regimes.
Free trade agreements outside
of the EU mean less regulation, and dodgy deals bode well for many countries in
the business of buying weapons.
Business and politics:
convenient bedfellows
The Government has
identified arms
sales as a priority for the brave new world post-Brexit, and a global
Britain, or arguably a more desperate Britain, looks set to invest in this
sector. Europe accounts for few military contracts so there is little downside
to the changing market, according to the UK’s trade group for arms companies,
euphemistically called the Aerospace, Defence, Security and Space association
(ADS).
“Europe will continue to be
important, but there are perhaps other areas where there is now a bigger
incentive to develop longer-term relationships. Brexit provides the
circumstances and the catalyst for faster and more efforts”, said
ADS in August 2016.
One of ADS’ members, British
multinational BAE systems, is similarly nonchalant. The UK’s largest
manufacturer says that Brexit is “just
not that big a deal”, and is excited about frictionless trade. It is worth
noting that the corporation’s main customers are Saudi Arabia, the US and the
UK, with Europe only accounting for 8%eight percent of its income in 2017.
Theresa May set up five
business councils in November 2018 in order for companies to advise
her on “post-Brexit opportunities”. The chair of BAE systems, Roger Carr, along
with Rolls- Royce chair Ian Davis, co-lead the industrial, infrastructure, and
manufacturing council, which is to meet three times a year.
Meanwhile, ADS and its member companies, which include
Airbus, missiles manufacturer MBDA and G4S, among others, invited MPs to meet
them in parliament on 9 January, to plead the business case for voting for
Theresa May’s ultimately doomed EU withdrawal deal, which was rejected on 15
January.
ADS chief executive Paul
Everitt has spoken of the continued uncertainty of Brexit being damaging
to business investment, forcing companies to implement costly contingency
plans, while Airbus
warned this week that the company could pull out of the country in the event of
a no-deal Brexit, or perhaps even with one. It’s worth noting that
Airbus, which manufacturers commercial and military aircraft, has been propped
up by both British government and EU subsidies in recent years.
Taxpayer subsidies don’t end
there. An extra £2
billion was allocated to the international trade budget last October to increase
Britain’s presence across the world, of
which touting arms deals is a large part.
A very Brexit race to the
bottom
In the 12 months following the
2016 EU referendum, Britain cleared export licences worth £2.9 billion to 30
countries with oppressive regimes – such as Bahrain, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan
– up almost a third on the previous year where export licences were granted to
just 17 such countries, according
to research by Campaign Against the Arms Trade and inews.
The UK’s weapons trade was
worth a total of £74 billion in
2017, with exports reaching £41 billion, providing direct employment for
380,000 people.
At the DSEI arms fair in
London, the largest of its kind in the world, that year, international trade
secretary and staunch Brexit supporter, Liam Fox, insisted in his keynote
speech that Britain had measures in place to allow “ethical
defence exports”, worth £5.9 billion a year to the British economy.
Fast forward 16 months and Fox
has just secured Britain’s first post-Brexit “in principle” trade deal with Israel
while at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The announcement on 24
January comes after a mega year of trade between the two countries. Plans are
afoot for trade meetings in London with Israeli government ministers in the
coming months.
The UK’s increasingly closer
ties with Israel include rising levels of arms sales. In 2017, the government
issued a record £221 million worth of weapons licenses to British defence
companies exporting missiles, sniper rifles and other equipment to the regime.
These deals flew in the face of international conventions condemning Israel’s
human rights violations against its Palestinian population and in the West Bank
and Gaza.
Black tie dinner
On 23 January, the cream of
Britain’s arm traders attended an annual
black tie dinner at Grosvenor House Hotel in London. The ADS drinks
reception and three-course dinner brought MPs, military figures and arms
dealers together, with tickets costing £225 for members and £450 for
non-members.
Government minister for trade
and export promotion Rona Fairhead, and former Labour Home Secretary, Alan
Johnson, spoke at the event, along with BAE Systems chief executive Charles
Woodburn. The multinational company was also one of the sponsors of the event.
Rona Fairhead works with Liam
Fox on the UK’s export strategy, and has spoken of her ambition to increase UK
exports from 30 percent of GDP to 35 percent.
Alan Johnson, meanwhile, was
quoted on the ADS event web page, which has since been taken down, saying that
during his after-dinner speech, he would: “reflect on my time in Parliament,
drawing parallels with programmes such as ‘Yes Minister and “The thick of it”.
Campaign against the Arms
Trade and Stop the Arms Fair organised a demonstration outside the venue
highlighting the complicity of the UK in Yemenis’ suffering. Chants of “Arms
dealers feast while Yemen is starved” meant that none of the attendees could
plead ignorance: over 14 million people risk starvation in the ravaged country.
Britain’s arms deals with
Saudi Arabia garner a great deal of controversy: the government has issued £5
billion of licenses for military exports to the regime since it started bombing
Yemen in 2015, and, despite widespread calls for an arms embargo from many
politicians, campaign groups, Yemeni activists and members of the European
Parliament, Theresa May’s government is undeterred.
Police pushed, pulled and
dragged protesters out of the way as they disrupted the entrance of the largely
middle-aged, white male guest-list. They formed protective lines around those
attending, ushering them into the hotel in a show of misplaced loyalty,
symbolic of the state’s ongoing support of repressive regimes.
On asking three men in black
tie if they knew why people were protesting, one said that he worked in civil
aviation; it had nothing to do with him, another, angrily: “you don’t know what
you’re talking about”, while the third said that he made planes, not weapons.
There’s no hiding from the
fact though that many of the 1000 UK-registered companies in ADS make and sell
weaponry – whether to countries on watchlists or to countries compiling the
watchlists. Some, like Northrop
Grumman, also offer personnel support, in the form of training the Saudi
military and providing technical services to the Ministry of the National
Guard.
Supporting Yemen?
Wilfully detached from the
horrors of war, obstinately focusing on what the electorate want to hear – job
creation, British-made, contributing to the economy – those in the business of
sustaining it must start listening to those affected by its consequences.
“All across Yemen people are
suffering and dying. This is a very, very dirty war”, said Sarah, at the
demonstration. From Aden, a city in southern Yemen, she has lived in the UK for
19 years. “I hope our voice can reach those responsible for what’s happening
and I hope that they stop what they are doing.
I asked Sarah whether she’s
worried that Brexit will increase the UK’s involvement in the onslaught on
Yemen.
“I can’t say much about the
politics, I can just say the human side. I hope it doesn’t get worse under
Brexit, I pray to God it doesn’t. I know that the people have nothing to do
with it and it is just some who are responsible for it – I hope that they will
stop selling these weapons and look at the people that are dying.”
In an ill-timed move, the day
before the arms dealers’ dinner, foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt announced an
extra £2.5 million to support the UN peace process in Yemen. This brings the
total amount of British financial support to Yemeni people to a paltry £570
million since 2015.
Hunt added that Britain would
support the “deployment and coordination of demining and explosive ordinance
disposal capacity in Hodeidah city”, explosives that may not – and should not –
have been sold to the Saudi regime by the UK – but clarity on that, thanks to
the government’s opaque licensing
system, is near impossible to ascertain.
No comments:
Post a Comment