Once again a Labour Government has become the friend of the arms trader. In 1966 Labour set up the Defence Export Services Organisation and in the 1970s Labour failed to rise to the challenge of the arms conversion movement. Now the Labour Government — that has roared so much about ethical foreign policy — has brought forth a mouse in terms of practical political change. Banning the export and production of land mines is fine but it is not a great political challenge. Banning the export of torture equipment had already been agreed — not even the Tories wanted to be seen to be in favour of free trade in electric shock batons. But there it stops.
Labour will not break from the Tory policy of using the arms trade as a diplomatic and strategic tool in a ludicrous attempt to maintain Britain’s role as a global power. At the same time labour movement leaders use the cover of defending jobs to support the arms industry.
A press release issued by the AEEU at the TUC Conference argued unbelievably that arms supplies should continue to Indonesia because to stop them would mean that the UK would lose civil contracts, and defence workers would lose jobs. They also claimed that the economic situation for the poor in Indonesia — and by implication the human rights situation — was improving. The last argument is a sick joke.
LLB has reported over the years the ongoing genocide in East Timor, which has included the slaughter of newborn babies as part of an organised policy of mass murder. The Indonesian military stands alongside Pol Pot and the Nazis in the genocidal hall of infamy.
Indonesia itself had an election in May which was “Eastern Bloc” in character — multi-party but everybody knew which party was going to get 75% of the vote. Since then thousands more Indonesian troops have flooded into East Timor. Dozens of unarmed youth have been systematically tortured. Perhaps the AEEU press office might like to publicise some of these facts.
The suggestion that to stop arms sales to Indonesia might lead to the UK losing civil orders is based on ignorance beyond belief. What is true is that arms sales are used to curry favour and help repressive regimes crush democratic movements — thus allowing multi-nationals to exploit vulnerable workers. There is no evidence that ending arms sales leads to the cancellation of civil orders. If it did then the UK’s civil export trade would be the hostage of the arms dealers — a good argument for getting out of the trade altogether.
The nub of the matter is that the AEEU organises workers in military export industry and would rather keep them in work by supplying arms to regimes that torture and gun down fellow trade unionists across the globe than campaign for a political alternative.
No economist would seriously argue that the ending of the UK’s role as an arms trader would have anything but a minuscule effect on the overall UK economy or on manufacturing employment specifically. Even pessimistic predictions point to a neutral effect. Others suggest that switching the current £1 billion subsidy to civil exports would actually produce many more jobs than the 80,000 that arms exports provide.
There is no need for arms export workers to lose their jobs. The taxpayer currently pays a £12,500 subsidy to keep each of these workers in employment. Why not pay them to retrain and do something more useful instead? It is not as though the international demand for civil engineering, computing and other transferable skills is not there. By 2010 the global environmental technology market will be ten times the size of the arms market. It is not difficult to conceive of an alternative economic strategy.