‘UK becomes biggest weapons exporter’, declared the Financial Times in June, triggering a flurry of media interest and a fresh flood of calls to the CAAT office. The Guardian ran the story in depth several days later. But any news involving both arms and statistics must be doubly suspect, so what’s the reality behind the headlines? In the complex world of arms orders, deliveries and licences, there are many and varied ways to calculate arms exports. However you do the sums, they nearly all show the USA to be the world’s top arms exporter, with the UK in the top five. One of the more simplistic calculations methods is simply to add up the value of orders within a given year – regardless of how long those orders take to deliver. In most years, the USA still comes out on top. But in 2007 the UK was pushed into the lead by one huge order – 72 Eurofighter aircraft to be supplied by BAE Systems to Saudi Arabia.

This is the infamous Al Salam deal (it means ‘peace’ in Arabic – feel free to laugh). It was this deal that the Saudi regime threatened to cancel until the British authorities dropped a corruption investigation into BAE in 2006. When lobbying for an end to the investigation, apologists for the arms trade argued that the deal would create thousands of British jobs. Once the deal was signed in September 2007, BAE admitted that most of the jobs would not even be based in the UK. So Britain‘s role as ‘world’s top arms exporter’ is a temporary phenomenon, dependent on a questionable means of calculation. Nonetheless, the UK sadly retains a leading role in the arms trade, despite the growth in public opposition and the backlash triggered by the BAE scandal.

Outstanding?

When the figures were released, parts of the media asked whether British people should be proud of what trade minister Digby Jones called ‘this outstanding export performance’. I debated this question on BBC Radio Five Live with Ian Godden of the Society of British Aerospace Companies. With Saudi Arabia accounting for nearly half of the 2007 orders, many callers to the programme clearly felt uneasy about a trade that relies on the whims of a violent dictatorship. There can be no doubt that most UK arms exports still go to oppressive regimes or to countries involved in armed conflict or regions of tension.

I was challenged several times on the grounds that the arms trade supposedly brings benefit to Britain’s economy. The obvious answer is that arms companies in the UK are sustained by hundreds of millions of pounds in taxpayer-funded subsidies every year. Money is poured into research and development for the arms industry at a time when we desperately need to develop skills and technology to tackle climate change. And companies such as BAE have been cutting their UK workforces for years, shifting their focus to the USA but being quick to call themselves British when they want public support here.

Real security that really is sustainable

As Steven Schofield argues in CAAT’s recent report Making Arms, Wasting Skills, demilitarisation and an end to arms trade subsidies would provide the resources for major investment in renewable energy and the jobs and skills that would go along with it. This would place the UK at the forefront of real security and sustainable economics. Now that’s something of which we could all be proud.