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UK Arms exports- the World's Number One?

tim — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:20:31 +0000

‘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.

BAE case in the Lords

tim — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:33:54 +0000

Buried

The five senior Judges are technically a committee of the Lords so the hearing took place in a Lords’ Committee room, dominated by a huge painting of the burial of King Harold. Only the tops of the heads of the Judges (without wigs) were visible from most of the public seats as the banks of case documents formed a wall across the room. Between the Judges and the rest of us sat eleven bewigged barristers – CAAT and The Corner House had four (David Pannick QC, Philippe Sands QC, Dinah Rose QC and Ben Jaffey) and the Government five, whilst ‘interested party’ BAE, and ‘intervener’ Justice, a human rights and law reform organisation, had one apiece. All these barristers were backed by teams of solicitors. Even though the Lords’ authorities had added an extra bench, this retinue left little space in the room.

We all crammed in – CAAT and Corner House people; the Guardian‘s Rob Evans, who had done so much to expose the BAE corruption allegations, was there along with journalists from other papers, the BBC and specialist legal magazines; representatives from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, concerned that its 1997 Anti-Bribery Convention will be rendered meaningless if the Government is allowed to stop corruption inquiries as in this case, took copious notes; Peter Gardiner, the former BAE travel agent who gave evidence to the SFO looked on; and many others were present.

The arguments

The Government’s lead barrister, Jonathan Sumption QC, went first. He argued that the Director of the SFO, as an independent prosecutor, had a wide discretion as to which cases he investigated or prosecuted, he just had to act ‘reasonably’ in making his decisions. He also produced a witness statement from the Foreign Office in an attempt to show that, in contrast to what Lord Justice Moses had said in the High Court, the attention of Saudi Arabian officials had been drawn to the separation of powers between the Government and the legal authorities in the UK.

David Pannick challenged this. He said the rule of law had to prevail and that this demanded that the SFO did not give into threats by Saudi Arabia to withdraw cooperation on anti-terrorism until all other options had been exhausted and, even then, only if it was strictly necessary. The Government, he said, did not meet this test, as all bar one of the approaches to Saudi Arabia listed in the Foreign Office statement had been made before the threats were issued and all were fairly casual mentions in the course of other meetings. Additionally, the UK did not seem to have reminded Saudi Arabia of its anti-terrorism commitments.

With regards to the OECD Convention, Dinah Rose argued that this was a relevant consideration because the SFO Director said his decision was made in accordance with it – the question was whether ‘national security’ was an implied exemption or not and she said not – whilst the Government said it was up to the OECD to decide on this issue.

No decision as yet

There was very little intervention by the Judges as the barristers made their submissions. This, we were told, is unusual. Each of five Judges now considers the submissions, looks up the precedents and writes his or her own speech – the verdict is the majority view. The result will be announced, most likely in October, when the Judges’ committee reports to the full House of Lords. Justice?

Campaign update

The House of Lords has overturned the High Court's ruling that the Government broke the law by stopping the corruption investigation into BAE Systems' Saudi arms deals. The case had been brought by CAAT and The Corner House with widespread support.

The Serious Fraud Office's appeal was heard by the House of Lords on the 7th and 8th of July and judgment was given on 30th July.

One of the judges, Baroness Hale, said that she would have liked to have been able to say that it was wrong to stop the investigation as it was "extremely distasteful that an independent public official should feel himself obliged to give way to threats of any sort." However, she had to agree with her colleagues that the decision taken by the SFO Director was lawful.

The judgment means that those with powerful friends prepared to make threats can effectively evade justice, particularly if the threats are couched in terms of national security. The ruling also confirms that the UK government has driven a coach and horses through a key international anti-bribery convention to protect its friends in BAE.

CAAT and The Corner House are not dejected by the result as it has brought the whole issue into the public realm and clarified the law.

Merchants of death

tim — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:44:53 +0000

BAE Systems shareholders will be delighted by the company's 14 per cent rise in net profits - a cool £586 million - in the first six months of this year.

As the company itself puts it so poetically, its Land and Armaments unit "continues to benefit from operational requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Well, bully for the company and its shareholders who can sit back and wait for the profits from war to land in their laps, while British troops and the civilian populations of both Iraq and Afghanistan count the cost in death, destruction and injury.

All in all, it's not been a bad week for the merchants of death, with the Law Lords having ruled on Wednesday that normal rules on investigating bribery and corruption do not apply to the arms industry or to its partners in the venal autocracy of Saudi Arabia.

Britain's arms-trafficking industry already enjoys a privileged position over the rest of our country's manufacturing sector.

The government guarantees, through its export credit and guarantee department, payment for contracts tied up with some of the most dictatorial and unstable regimes in the world.

And when criticism erupts from either peace campaigners or civil libertarians, Cabinet ministers launch into a long diatribe about the contribution that arms sales make to the economy and to employment in the vital export-oriented engineering sector.

What they do not explain is why this industry needs feather-bedding rather than, say, cars, shipbuilding, rail rolling stock, motor bikes, steel or a raft of other sectors that have been allowed to decline, become extinct or be bought up at knockdown prices by competitors in other countries.

In each case, government - it doesn't really matter of what stripe since their responses have been uniform - has simply cited the inexorable power of market forces.

But market forces do not seem to apply to an industry that is geared to annihilation rather than peaceful development.

Trade unions will, of course, welcome the ongoing employment of their members, even though the numbers in the arms industry are in steady decline.

Unions are also correct to insist on the preservation of collectives of highly skilled engineering workers and the maintenance of existing research and development teams.

But it is a perversion of their skills and training that they should be restricted to production in the cause of death rather than life.

We do not have to go back to the example of the Lucas shop stewards committee three decades ago to understand that the skills of arms industry engineers can be put to better civil use.

The Scottish TUC and Scottish CND have done excellent work together in identifying alternative projects relating to tidal power and other renewable energy possibilities to take the place of the ridiculously expensive and dangerous Trident submarine white elephant.

There is no reason why the government could not give its blessing to similar initiatives across Britain.

The main reason that it does not do so is its servile attitude to the US, which demands backing for its various criminal overseas wars and insists on a war-based economic model.

Reversing that militaristic approach would help the cause of international peace and Britain's economic position.

SFO wins appeal in BAE-Saudi case

tim — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:54:04 +0000

The Law Lords have this morning upheld an appeal by the Director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) against the High Court's ruling that he acted unlawfully in terminating a corruption investigation into BAE Systems' arms deals with Saudi Arabia.

The appeal followed a High Court judgment in April that the SFO, acting on government advice, had dropped the investigation following lobbying by BAE and a threat from Saudi Arabia to withdraw diplomatic and intelligence co-operation if the investigation were not dropped. This judgment was in response to a judicial review brought by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House.

Nicholas Hildyard of The Corner House said:

"Now we know where we are. Under UK law, a supposedly independent prosecutor can do nothing to resist a threat made by someone abroad if the UK government claims that the threat endangers national security. The unscrupulous who have friends in high places overseas willing to make such threats now have a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card – and there is nothing the public can do to hold the government to account if it abuses its national security powers. Parliament needs urgently to plug this gaping hole in the law and in the constitutional checks and balances dealing with national security. With the law as it is, a government can simply invoke 'national security' to drive a coach and horses through international anti-bribery legislation, as the UK government has done, to stop corruption investigations.”

Symon Hill of CAAT said:

"BAE and the government will be quickly disappointed if they think that this ruling will bring an end to public criticism. Throughout this case we have been overwhelmed with support from people in all walks of life. There has been a sharp rise in opposition to BAE's influence in the corridors of power. Fewer people are now taken in by exaggerated claims about British jobs dependent on the arms trade. The government has been judged in the court of public opinion. The public know that Britain will be a better place when BAE is no longer calling the shots.”

CAAT and The Corner House will issue a more detailed statement following an analysis of the Lords' judgments.

Making Arms, Wasting Skills

Ellie Keen — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Alternatives to militarism and arms production

Executive Summary

Arms production is now an international military-industrial network, dominated by US-based corporations including Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the essential function of which is to support the United States in maintaining its military supremacy and its geo-strategic goal of continued access to energy supplies. The leading European arms companies, BAE Systems, EADS and Thales, have pursued aggressive acquisition programmes in the USA to gain access to the lucrative American market. BAE, which already had an effective monopoly position in UK arms manufacture, is now one of the largest suppliers to the Pentagon, generating more sales in the US than the UK.

Various trends are clear, including the increasing use of foreign subsidiaries and subcontractors by these corporations and the rationalisation of the traditional, domestic arms manufacturing bases in the USA and Europe, with significant job losses. For example, since the early 1980s, UK arms-related employment declined from 740,000 to 315,000 by 2006.

A hierarchy of production exists, with the United States maintaining clear supremacy in first-tier sophisticated military platforms based on its massive procurement and R&D programmes, including the most advanced fighter aircraft and weapons such as satellite-guided missiles. This ensures its domination of the global arms trade and provides a form of technological leverage with client states to gain support for its over-arching strategic goals. Second-tier suppliers include the UK, France, and Russia offer other large platforms and weapons but with lesser capabilities. However, there are emerging nations including South Africa, South Korea, Brazil and India that have used their role as subcontractors in the international structure to modernise their own manufacturing capacity and now seek to challenge existing second-tier suppliers in their export markets. Below this is a much larger group of countries supplying basic, mass-produced weapons including sub-machine guns and rifles.

The arms trade is characterised by an intense supply-side dynamic to sell high-technology weapons into areas of regional tension like the Middle East and there are widespread allegations of corruption and bribery around these contracts, such as the Al Yamamah deal between BAE and Saudi Arabia to supply Typhoon/Eurofighter. At the same time, the diffusion of arms production has made it increasingly difficult both to monitor and control the arms trade when regional arms races are an increasing threat and may trigger the outbreak of major conflicts.

The UK has accepted a subsidiary role to the US in the latter's broader strategy of global military force projection not least because it seeks to retain access to leading edge military technologies, including nuclear weapons. But the cost of this subservience is continued multi-billion pound expenditure on a range of sophisticated equipment that offers no contribution to the country's real security needs; a significant and shameful role in a corrupt and dangerous arms trade; and no real commitment to support efforts at international disarmament, including nuclear disarmament.

Supporters of the military economy and the arms trade argue that, despite the massive job losses in the sector, they provide the UK with internationally successful, high technology niches in aerospace, engineering and electronics, as well as skilled work and spin-offs beneficial to the civil sector. But the real cost has been the diversion of resources from other forms of manufacturing activity that, if provided with similar long-term government investment, could actually have generated greater employment and direct benefits to the civil economy through improved technologies and industrial processes.

The dominance of BAE as a systems integrator for military aircraft, nuclear submarines and surface vessels is clear. However, the decline in arms employment has left only a handful of local economies with a residual dependency on military R&D and production, including Preston, Barrowin- Furness, Yeovil, Brough and Glasgow. These reflect the pattern of regional concentration in the North West, South West and South East, although the latter is not as significant as it was. Even at these sites, there have been considerable job losses since the 1980s and there is continued vulnerability to further rationalisation.

The military aircraft sector is particularly dependent on arms exports, with the BAE Brough site in East Yorkshire facing closure because of the lack of follow-on orders for the Hawk trainer aircraft. The Warton site in Lancashire is also heavily dependent on the Saudi Arabian contracts for Typhoon aircraft, and is vulnerable to regime change should the corrupt Al Saud absolute monarchy be overthrown.

Overall, because arms-related employment constitutes such a small proportion of national employment, the adjustment from a further restructuring based on deep cuts to military expenditure, is a minor one. Only in these small pockets of local dependency would further assistance be required to help diversify the local economies. This would be the sort of restructuring that many local areas have experienced after the loss of a staple industry and can be done successfully through support to regional and local economic development agencies in order to create a diversified and robust economic base.

More ambitiously, central government has a vital role to play in developing a radical, political economy of arms conversion and common security. By moving away from military force projection and arms sale promotion, the UK could carry out deep cuts in domestic procurement including the cancellation of Trident and other major offensive weapons platforms, as well as adopting comprehensive controls on arms exports, including the suspension of weapons exports to the Middle East. The substantial savings in military expenditure could help to fund a major arms conversion programme.

Here the emphasis would be on environmental challenges, including a multi-billion pound public investment in renewable energy, particularly offshore wind and wave power, that would substantially cut the UK's carbon emissions and reduce dependency on imported oil, gas and uranium supplies. These new industries will also generate more jobs than those lost from the restructuring of the arms industry. In this way, the UK would be taking a leading role in establishing a new form of international security framework based on disarmament and sustainable economic development.

Download the whole report here

How Britain wages war

JamieSW — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:15:47 +0000

Five photographs together break a silence. The first is of a former Gurkha regimental sergeant major, Tul Bahadur Pun, aged 87. He sits in a wheelchair outside 10 Downing Street. He holds a board full of medals, including the Victoria Cross, the highest award for bravery, which he won serving in the British army.

He has been refused entry to Britain and treatment for a serious heart ailment by the National Health Service: outrages rescinded only after a public campaign. On 25 June, he came to Down ing Street to hand his Victoria Cross back to the Prime Minister, but Gordon Brown refused to see him.

The second photograph is of a 12-year-old boy, one of three children. They are Kuchis, nomads of Afghanistan. They have been hit by Nato bombs, American or British, and nurses are trying to peel away their roasted skin with tweezers. On the night of 10 June, Nato planes struck again, killing at least 30 civilians in a single village: children, women, schoolteachers, students. On 4 July, another 22 civilians died like this. All, including the roasted children, are described as "militants" or "suspected Taliban". The Defence Secretary, Des Browne, says the invasion of Afghan istan is "the noble cause of the 21st century".

The third photograph is of a computer-generated aircraft carrier not yet built, one of two of the biggest ships ever ordered for the Royal Navy. The £4bn contract is shared by BAE Systems, whose sale of 72 fighter jets to the corrupt tyranny in Saudi Arabia has made Britain the biggest arms merchant on earth, selling mostly to oppressive regimes in poor countries. At a time of economic crisis, Browne describes the carriers as "an affordable expenditure".

The fourth photograph is of a young British soldier, Gavin Williams, who was "beasted" to death by three non-commissioned officers. This "informal summary punishment", which sent his body temperature to more than 41 degrees, was intended to "humiliate, push to the limit and hurt". The torture was described in court as a fact of army life.

The final photograph is of an Iraqi man, Baha Mousa, who was tortured to death by British soldiers. Taken during his post-mortem, it shows some of the 93 horrific injuries he suffered at the hands of men of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment who beat and abused him for 36 hours, including double-hooding him with hessian sacks in stifling heat. He was a hotel receptionist. Although his murder took place almost five years ago, it was only in May this year that the Ministry of Defence responded to the courts and agreed to an independent inquiry. A judge has described this as a "wall of silence".

A court martial convicted just one soldier of Mousa's "inhumane treatment", and he has since been quietly released. Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers, representing the families of Iraqis who have died in British custody, says the evidence is clear - abuse and torture by the British army is systemic.

Shiner and his colleagues have witness statements and corroborations of prima facie crimes of an especially atrocious kind usually associated with the Americans. "The more cases I am dealing with, the worse it gets," he says. These include an "incident" near the town of Majar al-Kabir in 2004, when British soldiers executed as many as 20 Iraqi prisoners after mutilating them. The latest is that of a 14-year-old boy who was forced to simulate anal and oral sex over a prolonged period.

"At the heart of the US and UK project," says Shiner, "is a desire to avoid accountability for what they want to do. Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary renditions are part of the same struggle to avoid accountability through jurisdiction." British soldiers, he says, use the same torture techniques as the Americans and deny that the European Convention on Human Rights, the Human Rights Act and the UN Convention on Torture apply to them. And British torture is "commonplace": so much so, that "the routine nature of this ill-treatment helps to explain why, despite the abuse of the soldiers and cries of the detainees being clearly audible, nobody, particularly in authority, took any notice".

Unbelievably, says Shiner, the Ministry of Defence under Tony Blair decided that the 1972 Heath government's ban on certain torture techniques applied only in the UK and Northern Ireland. Consequently, "many Iraqis were killed and tortured in UK detention facilities". Shiner is working on 46 horrific cases.

A wall of silence has always surrounded the British military, its arcane rituals, rites and practices and, above all, its contempt for the law and natural justice in its various imperial pursuits. For 80 years, the Ministry of Defence and compliant ministers refused to countenance posthumous pardons for terrified boys shot at dawn during the slaughter of the First World War. British soldiers used as guinea pigs during the testing of nuclear weapons in the Indian Ocean were abandoned, as were many others who suffered the toxic effects of the 1991 Gulf War. The treatment of Gurkha Tul Bahadur Pun is typical. Having been sent back to Nepal, many of these "soldiers of the Queen" have no pension, are deeply impoverished and are refused residence or medical help in the country for which they fought and for which 43,000 of them have died or been injured. The Gurkhas have won no fewer than 26 Victoria Crosses, yet Browne's "affordable expenditure" excludes them.

An even more imposing wall of silence ensures that the British public remains largely unaware of the industrial killing of civilians in Britain's modern colonial wars. In his landmark work Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses, the historian Mark Curtis uses three main categories: direct responsibility, indirect responsibility and active inaction.

"The overall figure [since 1945] is between 8.6 and 13.5 million," Curtis writes. "Of these, Britain bears direct responsibility for between four million and six million deaths. This figure is, if anything, likely to be an underestimate. Not all British interventions have been included, because of lack of data." Since his study was published, the Iraq death toll has reached, by reliable measure, a million men, women and children.

The spiralling rise of militarism within Britain is rarely acknowledged, even by those alerting the public to legislation attacking basic civil liberties, such as the recently drafted Data Com muni cations Bill, which will give the government powers to keep records of all electronic communication. Like the plans for identity cards, this is in keeping what the Americans call "the national security state", which seeks the control of domestic dissent while pursuing military aggression abroad. The £4bn aircraft carriers are to have a "global role". For global read colonial. The Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office follow Washington's line almost to the letter, as in Browne's preposterous description of Afghanistan as a noble cause. In reality, the US-inspired Nato invasion has had two effects: the killing and dispossession of large numbers of Afghans, and the return of the opium trade, which the Taliban had banned. According to Hamid Karzai, the west's puppet leader, Britain's role in Helmand Province has led directly to the return of the Taliban.

The militarising of how the British state perceives and treats other societies is vividly demonstrated in Africa, where ten out of 14 of the most impoverished and conflict-ridden countries are seduced into buying British arms and military equipment with "soft loans". Like the British royal family, the British Prime Minister simply follows the money. Having ritually condemned a despot in Zimbabwe for "human rights abuses" - in truth, for no longer serving as the west's business agent - and having obeyed the latest US dictum on Iran and Iraq, Brown set off recently for Saudi Arabia, exporter of Wahhabi fundamentalism and wheeler of fabulous arms deals.

To complement this, the Brown government is spending £11bn of taxpayers' money on a huge, pri vatised military academy in Wales, which will train foreign soldiers and mercenaries recruited to the bogus "war on terror". With arms companies such as Raytheon profiting, this will become Britain's "School of the Americas", a centre for counter-insurgency (terrorist) training and the design of future colonial adventures.

It has had almost no publicity.

Of course, the image of militarist Britain clashes with a benign national regard formed, wrote Tolstoy, "from infancy, by every possible means - class books, church services, sermons, speeches, books, papers, songs, poetry, monuments [leading to] people stupefied in the one direction". Much has changed since he wrote that. Or has it? The shabby, destructive colonial war in Afghanistan is now reported almost entirely through the British army, with squaddies always doing their Kipling best, and with the Afghan resistance routinely dismissed as "outsiders" and "invaders". Pictures of nomadic boys with Nato-roasted skin almost never appear in the press or on television, nor the after-effects of British thermobaric weapons, or "vacuum bombs", designed to suck the air out of human lungs. Instead, whole pages mourn a British military intelligence agent in Afghanis tan, because she happens to have been a 26-year-old woman, the first to die in active service since the 2001 invasion.

Baha Mousa, tortured to death by British soldiers, was also 26 years old. But he was different. His father, Daoud, says that the way the Ministry of Defence has behaved over his son's death convinces him that the British government regards the lives of others as "cheap". And he is right.

Victory for the Raytheon 9

Tim Holmes — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:26:05 +0000

On 11 June 2008, 6 people, who had occupied the offices of Raytheon in Derry and destroyed computers, were acquitted of criminal damage by a Belfast jury. Raytheon is a huge US arms manufacturer, with sales of $20 billion in 2006 and over 70,000 employees worldwide. It makes Patriot, Tomahawk, Cruise and Sidewinder missiles, and much more besides.

The action which gave rise to the criminal charges took place on 9 August 2006 during Israel’s war on Lebanon, in which well over 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed by Israeli bombing and shelling. On 30 July 2006, an Israeli aircraft targeted a residential building in Qana in southern Lebanon with a Raytheon-supplied “bunker buster” bomb. As a result, 28 civilians, from two extended families, the Hashems and the Shaloubs, were killed. The dead included 14 children.

This event led to 9 members of the Derry Anti War Coalition occupying Raytheon’s offices in Derry ten days later. They remained there until forcibly removed by police in riot gear about 8 hours later.

Substantial damage was done to Raytheon property:

“Documents found on the premises were thrown from the windows to supporters outside. After our supporters were moved away by the police, computers, already damaged, were hurled out. Our main target was the mainframe: we knew that putting this out of action would disrupt Raytheon’s ordering system and thus hamper production, including production of missiles. The mainframe was decommissioned with a fire-extinguisher.”

This account is taken from The Raytheon 9: Resisting war crimes is not a crime, an excellent pamphlet about the affair by Eamonn McCann, who took part in the occupation.

The action eventually led to 6 of the participants appearing before a judge and jury in Belfast in May 2008, charged with criminal damage and affray. On 4 June 2008, after the prosecution had put its case, the judge expressed the opinion that there was no case to answer on either charge. However, the prosecution appealed to a higher court and won with respect to the criminal damage charge, which then had to be put the jury. A few days later, the jury found all the accused not guilty on the criminal damage charge. The charge of affray was dismissed by the judge without it being put to the jury.

The trial went largely unreported in the local Northern Ireland media, and in the Dublin and London media. The same is true of the verdict, even though it has sensational implications. The defence argued that the accused had undertaken their action in order to prevent war crimes being perpetrated in Lebanon by Israel using Raytheon-supplied weapons. In the words of Eamonn McCann in a statement afterwards, by finding the accused not guilty:

“The jury has accepted that we were reasonable in our belief that: the Israel Defence Forces were guilty of war crimes in Lebanon in the summer of 2006; that the Raytheon company, including its facility in Derry, was aiding and abetting the commission of these crimes; and that the action we took was intended to have, and did have, the effect of hampering or delaying the commission of war crimes.” [1]

In other words, in the opinion of the jury, having heard the evidence, it was reasonable of the defendants to believe that Raytheon was engaged in criminal activity by supplying Israel with armaments and that they were justified in perpetrating criminal damage on Raytheon property in order to hamper this criminal activity. In his statement, Eamonn McCann called

“on the office of the Attorney General and the Crown Prosecution Service, in light of this verdict, to institute an investigation into the activities of Raytheon at its various plants across the UK, with a view to determining whether Raytheon is, as we say it is, a criminal enterprise.”

Gagging order

The Raytheon trial would normally have taken place in Derry, where the offences alleged were committed. However, on 14 September 2007, the prosecution requested a change of venue, on the grounds that protests outside the court might intimidate jurors, and coverage in the local media might prejudice them.

At this time, the presiding judge, the Derry recorder, Corinne Philpott, banned publicity about the case, but in such general terms that journalists present didn’t know what they were allowed to report and what was banned. There was no reporting of the application for a change of venue. On 10 December 2007, Judge Philpott imposed a blanket ban on reporting in Northern Ireland of any matter relating to the trial, including anything at all relating to Raytheon. The objective seems to have been to prevent publicity in Northern Ireland about Raytheon’s arms business, which might make a jury incline to the view that damaging its computers was a good idea.

There was no attempt by mainstream media organisations in Northern Ireland or elsewhere to have this extraordinary gagging order lifted or modified, despite the fact that their work was being hampered by the ban. For example, the Village magazine reported on 29 February 2008:

“Suzanne Breen (formerly of Village, now writing for the Sunday Tribune) has been referred to the Attorney General for possible contempt in an article published on 18 November in the Sunday Tribune. She had mentioned possible witnesses from the USA and Lebanon, and that, if convicted, defendants could face lengthy jail sentences.

“Also RTE has ordered Belfast independent production company Below the Radar to delete sections on Raytheon from a film about Ireland and the arms trade transmitted on 14 January. The effect of the ban is that all discussion of Raytheon’s presence in Derry has been shut down.” [2]

However, a legal challenge to the order was launched by Shane O’Curry of the Foyle Ethical Investment Campaign. As a result, the Belfast recorder, Judge Burgess, modified the order in late February 2008 to limit the ban to the usual one on pre-trial reporting of material directly relevant to the trial. It could then be reported for the first time that the Derry recorder had acceded to the prosecution’s request to move the trial from Derry to Belfast.

Notes

[1] www.ukwatch.net/article/raytheon9_acquitted
[2] www.village.ie/Ireland/Northern_Ireland/Media_gag_over_Derry_arms_factory_occupation/

Victory in the Courts: BAE Saudi inquiry ruled unlawful

tim — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:06:16 +0000

The decision followed a legal challenge brought jointly by CAAT and The Corner House, a respected organisation that has worked on anti-corruption issues for many years. In a strongly worded judgment on 10th April, the Court described how BAE and the Saudi regime had lobbied Tony Blair and his ministers to have the investigation dropped. The judges went so far as to describe the Saudi threat as a ‘successful attempt by a foreign government to pervert the course of justice in the United Kingdom’.

The history

The legal challenge began sixteen months previously, at the end of 2006. At that point, SFO investigators had spent two and a half years delving into allegations that BAE paid multi-million pound bribes to Saudi princes to secure the arms deals known as Al Yamamah. In autumn 2006, the media reported that the Saudi regime was threatening not to sign a deal with BAE for Eurofighter Typhoons if the investigation was not stopped. Apologists for the arms trade appeared in the media to make wildly exaggerated claims about the number of British jobs dependent on the sale.

The investigation was terminated on 14th December 2006. Within days CAAT and The Corner House had instructed solicitors at Leigh Day & Co and barristers from Blackstone Chambers to begin a claim for judicial review. This is the process by which a court considers whether a public body has behaved unlawfully.

A long process followed, with moments of both joy and exasperation. BAE spied on CAAT and got hold of an email containing advice from our lawyers. A comedy gig organised by Mark Thomas, with comedians including Russell Brand and Ed Byrne, raised thousands of pounds for the legal challenge. We applied successfully for a Protective Costs Order, placing a limit on how much CAAT would have to pay if we lost the case. Our claim for judicial review was initially rejected, but in November the High Court gave permission for it to proceed. Finally, in February, the hearing took place.

Documents released during the hearing exposed the lengths to which BAE was prepared to go to stop the investigation. They revealed that the company had lobbied the SFO to have it dropped as early as 2005. At that point, the SFO told BAE quite clearly that commercial and political considerations were not valid reasons for stopping a criminal investigation. During the following year the SFO obtained access to Swiss bank accounts and Tony Blair was personally lobbied by the Saudi prince Bandar – an individual who was himself at the centre of the corruption allegations. As his threats included the withdrawal of cooperation over fighting terrorism, BAE and the UK government were able to use ‘national security’ as a fig-leaf to cover up their motivations.

Decision unlawful

Contrary to Blair’s claim to be protecting the UK, the High Court found that the UK’s adherence to the rule of law had been undermined by the decision to drop the investigation in the face of the Saudi threat. The judges, Alan Moses and Jeremy Sullivan, ruled that the SFO’s director ‘failed to appreciate that protection of the rule of law demanded that he should not yield to the threat’. They added that surrender to a threat ‘merely encourages those with power, in a position of strategic and political importance, to repeat such threats’. It was not the investigation, but the decision to cut it short, that had endangered national security.

The judges went on: ‘There is no evidence whatever that any consideration was given as to how to persuade the Saudis to withdraw the threat, let alone any attempt made to resist the threat’. They then moved on to a vital point about motivations: ‘Too ready a submission may give rise to the suspicion that the threat was not the real ground for the decision at all; rather it was a useful pretext. It is obvious, in the present case, that the decision to halt the investigation suited the objectives of the executive. Stopping the investigation avoided uncomfortable consequences, both commercial and diplomatic.’

The judgment was welcomed by a wide range of newspapers (see page 12), politicians from all the main parties and others. Messages of congratulation flooded in to the offices of CAAT and The Corner House, by post, email and phone. The Government and BAE were alarmed. Clutching at straws, several right-wing columnists – who sixteen months before were confidently predicting that our challenge had no chance of success – suddenly revived their commitment to British jobs. Their claims were even less believable this time. BAE has already admitted that most of the jobs created by its latest Saudi deal will not even be based in the UK. Lord Woolf’s report into BAE’s ethics was greeted with similar derision for its failure to consider some of the most basic ethical issues about the arms trade (see page 3).

Government to appeal

The Government almost immediately announced its intention to appeal against the decision. The appeal will be heard by the House of Lords on 7th and 8th July. Considering the questions raised by the case to be of general public importance, the High Court has ordered the Government to pay all the costs both for the case so far and for the appeal regardless of the outcome.

The High Court’s decision means that the investigation is technically reopened. However, the new director of the SFO, Richard Alderman, has said that he will make no decision in practice until after the House of Lords has ruled on the appeal.

Regardless of the outcome, the political repercussions of the High Court victory should not be underestimated. The arms industry in the UK is struggling to get used to the fact that it can no longer expect to have everything its own way. Ministers know that their subservience to arms dealers is coming under greater public scrutiny. BAE has discovered that it cannot always bully its way to the desired result and the Saudi regime has realised that the British people do not share their Government’s willingness to submit to human rights abusers.

Just as importantly, public and media awareness has shot up on the issue of arms companies’ influence in the corridors of power. People from all walks of life are determined to campaign against this situation, recognizing that it is as harmful for the UK’s democracy and economy as it is for international peace and security. And more people than ever are now aware that CAAT is a key organisation working to change this situation.

One more thing is very clear. While staff at CAAT and The Corner House, along with our barristers and solicitors, have worked extremely hard on this case, we could not have done it with out the encouragement and help of thousands of supporters. Countless individuals have made donations to CAAT, lobbied their MPs, written to their local papers and gone out on to the streets to promote the campaign. Many have offered encouragement that has kept the staff going at the most difficult times. Our success would not be possible without them. This, then, is a victory for every CAAT supporter and for everyone committed to justice, accountability and peace.

Eamonn McCann on the Raytheon Victory

Ellie Keen — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:33:58 +0000

On 9 August 2006, nine Northern Irish anti-war activists occupied the Derry offices of Raytheon, one of the biggest arms manufacturers in the world, and destroyed its computers.

Their action was sparked by anger at Raytheon’s complicity in Israel’s bombing campaign against Lebanon.

The Raytheon 9 won a massive victory when they were acquitted of charges of criminal damage earlier this month.

Campaigning journalist Eamonn McCann was one of the nine protesters. He spoke to Socialist Worker about the case

There has been considerable controversy about Raytheon ever since the company announced that its factory was coming to Derry in 1999.

Raytheon specialises in producing hi-tech bombs, missiles and battlefield control systems.

It sells arms mainly to the US government. But it is also one of the largest suppliers of the Israeli army.

The immediate cause of our occupation of the Raytheon factory was the bombing of Qana in southern Lebanon on 30 July 2006.

This came at a time when the United Nations secretary general and even the archbishop of Canterbury were calling upon George Bush and Tony Blair to at least pose the idea of a ceasefire. But they adamantly refused.

They wanted Israel to finish crushing Hizbollah and the Lebanese resistance forces.

In the midst of this, a bomb was used to destroy an apartment building in Qana leading to the deaths of 28 people.

We were almost certain that this was a Raytheon bomb. In campaigning against Raytheon we’d acquired a great deal of knowledge about what it was producing and where it was selling it.

We held a meeting of the Derry anti-war coalition and decided to occupy the building. Our intention was not just to protest about what was happening in Lebanon – it was much more practical than that.

We believed that we could in effect decommission the factory, disrupt production and delay the ability of Israel to rain down further death on southern Lebanon.

We were aware that Israel was running short of some of the weapons that Raytheon was delivering and that encouraged us in our belief that we could have some effect on Israel’s ability to wage war.

We smashed Raytheon’s computers and used a fire extinguisher and other equipment to take out their communications hub.

The charges levelled against us were affray and criminal damage. The charge of affray was thrown out because key to the charge is that you severely frighten people by your behaviour.

We demonstrated in court that there was no evidence that we had frightened anybody.

Then we fought the criminal damage charge. Of course, we didn’t deny doing any of the things we were accused of.

In fact we said on the first day that we did all of the things we were accused of and that we would have done more if we could.

I stood up in the witness box and said that we regretted that we couldn’t have done more.

Our defence was not a moral defence – it was a political defence. We didn’t say that this was a protest because we were angry at Israel’s actions. We said that this was a genuine, serious effort to disrupt the supply of arms to Israel.

Our argument was that Israel was committing war crimes and that our action was intended to prevent this larger crime.

If you hear the sound of a child being brutalised in the house next door and you rush in to smash the door down and save the child, should you be charged with breaking and entering? Obviously not.

In the same way we were trying to save people in Lebanon who were being criminally attacked by Israel.

We presented lots of evidence. This included documents from the Norwegian government about why it had withdrawn investment from Raytheon, journalism by Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn, and lots more to back up our argument.

We explained what Raytheon’s weapons were and what they were used for.

We were not required to establish as a certainty that these things were happening. We were required to show our belief that these things were happening.

And we showed that we had a genuine belief based on reasonable evidence.

The jury accepted that we believed that Israel was guilty of war crimes and that our action was intended to hamper this. We were vindicated.

I hope the case will lead to a wider campaign over Raytheon. In light of the court’s decision, there is now a case for Raytheon to be investigated to determine whether it is a criminal enterprise.’

For more information on the case go to www.raytheon9.org

Raytheon-9 Acquitted!

Ellie Keen — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

A statement by the 9 Raytheon protestors from Derry.

After their acquittal on three charges of criminal damage to the computer equipment and office of Raytheon, the world's largest supplier of Guided Bomb Units, Colm Bryce and Eamonn McCann spoke to supporters and press outside the court. Colm Bryce began:

The Raytheon 9 have been aquitted today in Belfast for their action in decommissioning the Raytheon offices in Derry in August 2006. The prosecution could produce not a shred of evidence to counter our case that we had acted to prevent the commission of war crimes during the Lebanon war by the Israeli armed forces using weapons supplied by Raytheon.

We remain proud of the action we took and only wish that we could have done more to disrupt the ‘kill chain’ that Raytheon controls.

This victory is welcome, for ourselves and our families, but we wish to dedicate it to the Shaloub and Hasheem families of Qana in Lebanon, who lost 28 of their closest relatives on the 30 July 2006 due to a Raytheon ‘bunker buster’ bomb.

Their unimaginable loss was foremost in our minds when we took the action we did on 9 August, and the injustice that they and the many thousands of victims of war crimes in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered, will spur us on to continue to campaign against war and the arms trade that profits from it.

We said from the beginning that we came to this court not as the accused but as the accusers of Raytheon. This court case proved that Raytheon in Derry is an integral part of the global Raytheon company and its military production. This is no longer a secret or in doubt. Raytheon have treated the truth, peaceful protest, local democracy and this court with complete contempt. The most senior executive who appeared said that the charge that Raytheon had ‘aided and abetted’ the commission of crimes against humanity was “not an issue” for him. Raytheon should have that contempt repaid in full and be driven out of Derry and every other place they have settled. They are war criminals, plain and simple. They have no place in our society and shame on all those in positions of power or influence who would hand them public funds, turn a blind eye to their crimes, cover their tracks or make excuses for them.

These crimes continue daily and hourly in the Middle East. It is up to those of us who oppose those wars of domination and occupation to build a movement that matches the enormity of what is being done by Western governments. We hope that this victory gives courage and heart to all those involved in that movement and the many more who need to be for us to achieve our aim of stopping these wars. Until then, the very least we can do, to show solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the Middle East is to dissociate ourselves from the corrupt governments of the US and Britain. That means opposing the visit to Belfast of the world’s biggest war criminal, George W Bush on 16 June.

We feel totally vindicated by this decision and wish to extend our heartfelt thanks to all of those who gave us support, especially to our families and friends, to the members of the Derry Anti War Coalition and the Irish Anti-War Movement , to our excellent legal teams. Of course, we particularly want to thank the jury who listened intently through three weeks of evidence before ensuring that justice was done today.

Eamonn McCann then addressed supporters and press saying:

The outcome of this case has profound implications.

The jury has accepted that we were reasonable in our belief that: the Israel Defence Forces were guilty of war crimes in Lebanon in the summer of 2006; that the Raytheon company, including its facility in Derry, was aiding and abetting the commission of these crimes; and that the action we took was intended to have, and did have, the effect of hampering or delaying the commission of war crimes.

We have been vindicated.

We reject entirely and with contempt the statement by Raytheon this evening suggesting that the result of the trial gives them concern about the safety of their employees. This is an abject attempt to divert attention from the significance of the outcome. Not a shed of evidence was produced that we presented the slightest danger to Raytheon workers. The charge of affray was thrown out by the court without waiting to hear defence evidence.

Our target has always been Raytheon as a corporate entity and its shareholders and directors who profit from misery and death.

There is now no hiding place for those who have said that they support the presence of Raytheon in Derry on the basis that the company is not involved in Derry in arms-related production. We have established that not only is the Derry plant involved in arms-related production, it is also, through its integration into Raytheon as a whole, involved in war crimes.

We call on all elected representatives in Derry, and on the citizens of Derry, to say now in unequivocal terms that the war criminal Raytheon is not welcome in our city.

We call on the office of the Attorney General and the Crown Prosecution Service, in light of this verdict, to institute an investigation into the activities of Raytheon at its various plants across the UK, with a view to determining whether Raytheon is, as we say it is, a criminal enterprise.

We believe that one day the world will look back on the arms trade as we look back today on the slave trade, and wonder how it came about that such evil could abound in respectable society. If we have advanced by a mere moment the day when the arms trade is put beyond the law, what we have done will have been worthwhile.

We took the action we did in the immediate aftermath of the slaughter of innocents in Qana on July 30th 2006. The people of Qana are our neighbours. Their children are the children of our neighbours. We trashed Raytheon to help protect our neighbours. The court has found that that was not a crime. This what the Raytheon case has been about.

We have not denied or apologised for what we did at the Raytheon plant in the summer of 2006. All of us believe that it was the best thing we ever did in our lives.

Related Link: http://www.raytheon9.org

THE SmashEDO Carnival Against the Arms Trade

Ellie Keen — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 16:42:19 +0000

It's not rocket science...

Nostrils still flaring from the stench of spray paint and pepper spray ....yer SchNEWS crew reports from the frontline of the anti-arms trade struggle, Brighton styleee. Yep its the event we’ve been relentlessly pushing for the last two months – the Carnival against the Arms Trade.

With red flags flying, three soundsystems, a cardboard tank and the inevitable samba band around 500 people were met by a surprisingly small number of police on the Level in Brighton. At around 1pm having confirmed the factory was open the march moved off towards EDO MBM, around a mile and a half away, chanting “Smash, Smash EDO.”

As soon as the crowd turned up the road leading to the weapons factory they were confronted with a pen constructed from crash barriers and a section 14 crowd control order. Police obviously planned to contain the demo well away from the site, but the masked up-for-it crowd of activists had other ideas. The cage was swiftly taken to bits and used to push against police lines. One soundsystem ended being used as a battering ram. One red bandanna sporting protester told SchNEWS “We came here to fight the arms trade – we’re not gonna be pushed into a playpen.”

As the police resorted to wild baton strikes to hold the crowd back they were outflanked and pushed down the road. The carnival then staged a noisy demo fully occupying the road outside the factory. Although it looked as if most of the workers had been sent home early – a few of the suits had hung around on the top floor perhaps to watch the action. Well they must have loved the bird’s eye view they got next...

Someone tugged at one of EDO’s massive steel gates which suddenly and miraculously opened. Half a dozen gobsmacked protesters waved the main crowd over. Flag wielding activists piled onto the factory’s forecourt and a few plucky individuals literally smashed EDO, putting in their windows. Anti-war slogans were sprayed on the building and MD Paul Hill’s SUV copped a few bricks. Police eventually forced people out with batons, pepper spray and dogs.

Eventually having made their point forcibly the crowd moved back into town before police re-reinforcements arrived. Ten arrests were made in total during the fighting, although many more were de-arrested in displays of crowd solidarity. Police violence hospitalised a number of others.

On the way back into town the scuffling continued with one motorbike cop getting his Chips as he was covered head to toe in white paint. In a pathetic display of childish temper tantrum one gang of riot police smashed the cardboard tank to pieces.

A Smash EDO spokesman said: “Overall the day was a victory for the campaign – in the face of police brutality we were able to show the massive disgust that exists at those who profit from death and misery. They might accuse us of being violent but anything that happened today pales in comparison to the damage inflicted by EDOs products in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan and Somalia. Congratulations to all who took part for their action and initiative and strength in refusing to be intimidated by the police aggression.”

THE COMPANY

EDO manufacture vital parts for “smart” bombs, used extensively in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Somalia, but they’re only as smart as the person in charge – ultimately the Commander in Chief, aka Dubya. EDO Corp were recently acquired by ITT in a multi-billion pound deal. ITT’s links to fascism go back to the 1930s. The founder Sosthenes Behn was the first foreign businessman received by Hitler after his seizure of power.

After the Iraq War (not that it's mission accomplished) there has been a four year relentless campaign against EDO in Brighton. Despite an injunction under the Protection of Harassment Act (which failed) and over fifty arrests the campaign is still going strong. Their avowed aim is to expose EDO’s complicity in war crimes and shut them down. There are regular Wednesday afternoon demos when workers leave the factory.

For more info about the Smash EDO Campaign See www.smashedo.org.uk

* For more coverage of the Carnival Against The Arms Trade with photos see www.indymedia.org.uk/en/actions/2008/edo

* Webpage for the Carnival www.smashedo.org.uk/carnival

* ON THE VERGE - The Smash EDO Campaign Film, produced by SchMOVIES, the film police tried to ban, is available to buy for £6 incl p&p (profits to Smash EDO) or download - see www.schnews.org.uk/schmovies/on-the-verge

BAE’s frantic flag-waving

tim — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:16:40 +0000

BAE has launched a new advertising campaign, its first for more than five years. The company claims that ‘It is not a knee-jerk reaction to the negative press and the SFO inquiry’. The campaign includes adverts in a selection of national and regional newspapers, ‘giant mobile poster sites’ in regions where it has a ‘significant industrial presence’ and advertising wraps on taxis in Farnborough and London.

The basic campaign image is the Union Jack, which seems a little rich considering two company trends. Firstly, BAE Systems is moving into the US as fast as it can. The number of BAE employees in the UK is steadily decreasing while the number of BAE employees in the US is rapidly increasing, overtaking the number of UK employees in 2006. BAE may happily become a US company if the opportunity arose. Secondly, BAE is increasingly subcontracting work to lower-cost countries. For example, BAE’s signature Hawk aircraft are being built in India for the Indian air force, with talks reported to be taking place about Hawk production there for the global market.

There is no indication that the company has any interest in its UK manufacturing base except as a bargaining (blackmailing) chip, primarily to gain new contracts from the Ministry of Defence.

Advert 1: ‘Our firsts in engineering help the UK stay a world leader in innovation… In the last two years we’re proud to have launched the Type 45 destroyer and Astute submarine’

BAE projects are routinely late and over budget with the taxpayer left to pick up the bill. Only two weeks before the launch of the BAE ad campaign, a report from the House of Commons Defence Committee revealed that the budget for BAE’s Astute Submarines had increased by 47 per cent and the budget for BAE’s Type 45 Destroyers by 18 per cent, costing the taxpayer £2.2 billion more than expected. The in-service date for the Type 45 is presently three years later than planned.

But a wider question leaps out: what sort of innovation do we want? Nuclear submarines or alternative energy and transport systems? Even civil aviation has been rejected by BAE which sold its stake in Airbus, leaving the 13,000 UK employees subject to the politics surrounding French/German aerospace giant EADS.

Advert 2: ‘We train more skilled engineers in the UK than any other company… We’ve always hired and trained the very best of UK talent’

There is a skills shortage in many areas of UK science and technology. But extensive government support for arms production, not least by means of Research & Development funding, means that arms companies have not been the ones to suffer. In 2005, around £2,600m of government R&D money went to the military sector while a paltry £37m went to renewable energy.

If the government were to reduce its arms expenditure and put the money into technologies required for our wider, environmental security, there would be equivalent levels of skilled employment. A recent government report estimated that the number of jobs in the renewable energy sector could, given supportive enough policies, expand from 8,000 in 2004 to as many as 35,000 by 2020. In contrast to arms companies, this work would be a contribution to global welfare and security.

Advert 3: ‘Last year we spent over £3.2 billion with our UK suppliers… it’s all of us that benefit’

Every company has a network of suppliers. The economic activity that would result from workers moving into other sectors would result in alternative supplier networks.

And the beneficiaries of BAE’s activities? There is no doubt that the company’s decisions are taken not with the UK public or even its own employees in mind, but in order to generate maximum wealth for its international shareholders.

On Trial for Protesting a Weapons Maker

Ellie Keen — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:14:20 +0000

Eamonn McCann is a founder of the 1960s civil rights movement in Northern Ireland, a veteran socialist and trade unionist, and one of Ireland’s most widely read journalists. He is the author of War and an Irish Town, Bloody Sunday in Derry: What Really Happened and other books.

In 2006, as a response to Israel’s savage war on Lebanon, Eamonn and other members of the Derry Antiwar Coalition organized an occupation of a local facility of Raytheon, the U.S.-based weapons maker and world’s largest producer of guided missiles. Nine activists were arrested and charged with vandalizing the building. They are on trial now, and could face time in prison if convicted.

In July 2006, members of the Derry Antiwar Coalition organized a protest, occupation and decommissioning of the local Raytheon facility there. Why did you decide to take action?

Our motivation was to prevent war crimes. Israel’s bombardment was causing carnage and destruction in Lebanon, and we knew they were using Raytheon manufactured bombs.

We were particularly outraged by the bombing of the town of Qana. Israel dropped a bomb on one complex there, killing 28 people, the majority of them women and children, crushed and suffocated beneath the rubble.

We believed this required an immediate response. We decided to take action to disrupt, delay and hamper Raytheon’s ability, in whatever way possible, to deliver weapons of mass destruction to Israel and participate in war crimes.

As the number of dead and maimed in the Middle East mounts, Raytheon recently announced a further growth of revenues and profits. How do you view Raytheon’s relationship to war crimes?

Raytheon, like all arms companies, profits from bloodshed. And after all, if there were no wars, governments would not feel the need to buy the high-tech munitions that Raytheon manufactures.

Raytheon is one of the many companies that fuels war for profit. But the Raytheon company also has a political agenda. Adam Cherill, the business manager of Raytheon, if my memory is correct, has said that the Palestinian people have no connection to the land of Palestine—that they have no culture, no society and no historical ties to the land. Now, that is not a commercial statement. That is a political statement.

The Raytheon company is closely tied to the top brass of the Pentagon. So they are complicit in everything that happens in the Middle East. In particular, they are complicit in war crimes committed through the use of Raytheon munitions.

We know that towards the end of the Israeli-Lebanon conflict in the summer of 2006, Raytheon rushed so-called bunker-buster bombs. They delivered a rush-order, of these bombs just a short time before the war ended so that Israel could continue bombing.

Israel had dropped so many bombs over southern Lebanon, south Beirut and elsewhere that they were actually running out of supplies. Raytheon rushed two Airbus transport planes from the United States to Israel in order to replenish supplies, even though, at that point, it was known that their munitions were being used to bomb civilians, to target ambulances and civilian infrastructure. So this is a company which is knowingly involved in war crimes.

The trial of the Raytheon 9 began last week in Belfast. The trial was moved from Derry, and the presiding judge imposed a media gag on all discussion of the case. Why?

The trial was moved to Belfast because the judge reckoned that there would be sympathy for the Raytheon 9 in Derry, because the defendants were well known to a wide range of people in Derry.

Now, there also could have been hostility to the defendants in Derry. I wouldn’t rule this out, because all the main parties in Derry and in the local area were all sharply condemnatory of the Raytheon 9.

But anyway, the judge transferred it to Belfast and imposed a media gag because, he said, the coverage of the case would in itself have the potential to prejudice the jury’s decisions.

This was complete nonsense. Cases trialed in Northern Ireland are regularly covered in advance of the actual trial. It was completely out of order. So it was an absolutely meaningless reason for imposing the media gag. What it did was take the issue of the Raytheon 9 and anything controversial for the Raytheon company itself out of the public arena. And it meant that the media didn’t even report on developments at the Raytheon plant, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the case.

The Raytheon 9 has received tremendous support in Ireland and around the world. Among the many who have spoken out in your defense are Noam Chomsky, George Galloway, Tony Benn, Christy Moore and George Monbiot. Yet none of the local political parties or their representatives have come to your defense. This is no surprise from the right-wing parties, but Sinn Fein, especially during the 1980s, prided itself on support for national liberation struggles in Central America and the Middle East, viewing itself in solidarity with all anti-imperialist struggles.

None of the mainstream parties—none of the four parties which form the new executive of Northern Ireland—has supported the Raytheon 9. And this is despite the fact that Sinn Fein, in particular, has always presented itself as a socialist organization, as an anti-imperialist organization.

But the truth is that the closer Sinn Fein got to power, the more they ditched their supposed socialist principles that would involve any anti-American activity.

Sinn Fein is determined to maintain the friendship of the Bush administration. Indeed, Martin McGuiness, the vice president of Sinn Fein, personally invited George Bush to visit Northern Ireland in June this year, in a couple weeks’ time. And he has publicly described George Bush as a “friend of Ireland” and “a man of peace.”

So the Sinn Fein party is not just compromised on its supposed anti-imperialist, socialist credentials, but it seems to have moved to the other side. Not really an uncommon thing for a nationalist organization once achieving office.

In 1968, you helped spark the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland and resistance to the British-supported sectarian state. Today, you are still fighting against injustice.

There’s a straight line from 40 years ago to what is happening today. In 1968, we were outraged by the U.S. war in Vietnam and inspired by the Black struggle for civil rights. We were moved by this. In Ireland, we were fighting against local injustices, but we viewed ourselves and our struggles as part of an international struggle.

Today, we continue to fight against local injustices in Ireland, but we also see it as connected to a global struggle. There’s never been a contradiction between fighting local injustices and fighting injustice in the world.

The U.S. is attempting to violently dominate the Middle East and control the oil there. Iraq and Lebanon, as well as Palestine, are at the frontline of this struggle. The location of struggle may have changed, but the struggle for liberation and justice continues.

For information on how to support the Raytheon 9 and for daily updates on the trial, visit the Support the Raytheon 9 Web site.

Eamonn McCann’s article “Qana, Derry: The dead lie in familiar shapes” describes the activists’ trip to Lebanon and the action against Raytheon the visit motivated. He also talked about the case in a You Tube video.

The film they tried to ban

Ellie Keen — Sat, 24 May 2008 22:06:10 +0000

On the Verge

(The Film they Tried to Ban)

Download 'On the Verge' Now

The new Smash EDO Campaign Movie is currently on tour. Police forces around the country have attempted to stop screenings of the film visiting venues and citing licensing laws to try to get screenings of the film pulled. Despite the repression the tour is going ahead.

Trailer for 'On the Verge' - The Smash EDO Campaign film

About the Film

On the Verge is an independent film about the SMASH EDO Campaign

“In 2004 a group of Brighton peace campaigners began to bang pot and pans outside their local arms manufacturers EDO MBM in disgust of their part in the Iraq war. This has grown into the Smash EDO campaign, which has cost the company millions, been the subject of large scale police operations and has tested the right to protest in the UK.Using activist, police and CCTV footage plus interviews with those involved in the campaign, 'On The Verge' tells the story of one of the most persistent and imaginative campaigns to emerge out of the UK's anti-war movement and direct action scene.”

The Company

EDO MBM Technologies Ltd are the sole UK subsidiary of huge U.S weapons manufacturer EDO Corp.From their base in Moulescoombe Brighton, EDO MBM manufacture vital parts for the Hellfire and Paveway weapons systems,laserguided missilesused extensively in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Somalia. EDO Corp were recently acquired by ITT in multi-billion pound deal. ITT's links to fascism go back to the 1930s. The founder Sosthenes Behn was the first foreign businessman received by Hitler after his seizure of power.

The Campaign

There has been active campaign against the presence o f EDO MBM in Brighton since the outbreak of the Iraq war.Campaigners include students, Quakers ,Palestine solidarity activists, anti-capitalists and academics. Despite an injunction under the protection of harassment act (which failed) and over forty arrests the campaign is still going strong.Their avowed aim is to expose EDO MBM and their complicity in war crimes and to remove them from Brighton. They hold regular weekly demos outside the Moulescoombe factory on Wednesday's between 4 and 6.

Heckler at the Back

Ellie Keen — Sat, 10 May 2008 23:06:07 +0000

NO KOCH JOKES PLEASE AS PROTESTERS TARGET GUN FIRM HECKLER & KOCH...

Campaigners in Nottingham have the world’s second largest seller of small-arms, Heckler and Koch, firmly in their sights.

One would have thought that a city infamous for its gun crime would be a poor location for a warehouse full of guns. Not according to H&K, who do great business equipping war-mongers on any side.

Proud owners of H&K weaponry include the brutal militias of Darfur - the Janjaweed. Funnily enough, despite the outcry against the massacres in Darfur, they obviously weren’t quite bad enough to stop selling weapons to the perpetrators. Even a recent arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against a senior Sudanese politician accused of selling H&K weapons to the Janjaweed hasn’t seemed to stem the flow of H&K guns to a militia accused by everyone including the US of committing genocide. (H&K guns also fill the arsenals of the US Dept of Homeland Security, US Navy Seals & the FBI amongst others).

H&K have a ‘strategic partnership’ with the world’s largest mercenary company Blackwater (see SchNEWS 572). H&K supply the guns to the Iraqi and Afghan puppet governments, and Blackwater provide the training (perhaps they also supply child-sized targets for their students).

There was a plan for H&K to produce special edition ‘Blackwater’ weapons - complete with the Blackwater logo on them. However, after Blackwater made the headlines for killing 17 innocent Iraqis (not the first time that Blackwater have killed innocent Iraqis, but the first time that it made the news in a major way), the plan was shelved.

Nearly 100 people showed up this Tuesday (6th) to march against H&K at their Nottingham facility, accompanied by large numbers of police who, in the words of one protester were ‘their usual sinister selves’. The FIT Team (See www.fitwatch.blogspot.com) made their (always unwelcome presence) and did what they do best - blatantly intimidate people all day with video cameras; following some people home.

Interestingly, local media also came under pressure; Trent FM, who had shown some enthusiasm about reporting the demo, received a word in their ear from both H&K’s press office as well as the police, warning hacks that it would be ‘irresponsible’ to publish the fact that H&K has a warehouse full of weapons in Nottingham, as it may prompt criminals to try and steal them.

In response the campaigners pointed out to the radio station that H&K’s address was published at Company House, as well as in several business directories. About the radio station being leaned on, the campaigners said that “If the security policy of H&K and Notts police relies on no-one finding out the company’s location, then clearly it is they who are irresponsible, not our campaign and not the media. A large warehouse stocked with high-power assault rifles and submachine guns with inadequate security to prevent a robbery is clearly a significant danger to the public, and publicisng such a danger is very much in the public interest.”

The H&K warehouse, located at Easter Park, Lenton Lane, Nottingham, is next to the ‘Trent Vineyard’, an evangelist church that held the funeral of Danielle Beccan, a 14 year old girl who was killed in a drive-by shooting. At her funeral service the then mayor of Nottingham said, “Guns have no place at all in our community - not in Nottingham, not in my city nor any other city in Britain.”

One campaigner told us “The arms trade relies on secrecy. Most people abhor the idea of factories and warehouse making and selling weapons around the world, and arms companies know this. By lifting the lid on the business, anti-arms protesters can make a put the pressure on the government/corporate killing machine to stop killing for profit.”

* http://nottsantimilitarism.wordpress.com

Resisting war crimes is not a crime

tim — Sat, 10 May 2008 11:52:34 +0000

Nine people in Derry in Northern Ireland have been charged under terrorism laws following an occupation of the local Raytheon plant during which, police claim, £350,000 damage was done to computer equipment.

The US company Raytheon is one of the largest arms manufacturers in the world, supplying guidance systems for many of the missiles and bombs used by US and Israeli forces in the Middle East. Raytheon systems guided the Qana bomb to the bunker where it blasted and crushed at least 51 people, including many children, to death last month.

Three of the arrested men, Colm Bryce, Kieran Gallagher and Eamonn McCann are members of the Derry branch of the Socialist Workers' Party while another, Sean Heaton is a member of the Socialist Environmental Alliance. The five others, Eamonn O'Donnell, Gary Donnelly, Paddy McDaid, Jimmy Kelly and Micky Gallagher are Republicans, from the IRSP and the 32-Country Sovereignty Committee.

After hours of questioning, all nine were charged with Aggravated Burglary and Unlawful Assembly. These are "scheduled" offences, meaning they would be heard before a Diplock, non-jury court. These charges also meant that the men couldn't be given bail by the Magistrates' Court but had to be remanded to prison before a bail application in the High Court.

The only reason for the remand in prison and the severity of the charges is that the protestors live in Northern Ireland. This would not have happened in Britain or the South of Ireland. Despite the New Labour talk of a new NI, political dissent is still treated differently here.

At the bail hearing, the Crown tried to raise Eamonn McCann's convictions on public order offences going back to the civil rights movement 1968/69/70. However, the judge said that the "vintage" of these charges made them irrelevant.

The arms merchants were brought to Derry in 1999 by SDLP and Ulster Unionist leaders John Hume and David Trimble: the announcement of the plant was made at the pair's first joint public appearance following their receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. It was part, they said, of "the peace dividend."

The savage irony was immediately apparent. An argument over Raytheon has continued in Derry since. However, all the local mainstream parties---John Hume's SDLP, Gerry Adams's Sinn Fein and Ian Paisley's DUP---have backed the company's presence, arguing that the Derry plant isn't directly involved in arms manufacture and that driving Raytheon out would deter other investors in an area of high unemployment.

Speaking from a window at the plant during the occupation, Eamonn McCann said: "We had to dramatise the argument so as to force the issue into the mainstream."

Documents and computers were hurled from windows and the computer mainframe and other equipment put out of action.

The idea for the occupation emerged from a packed meeting of the Derry Anti War Coalition on August 2nd addressed by former Abu Ghraib interrogator Joshua Casteel of Iraqi Veterans Against War and Hani Lazim of Iraqi Democrates against the Occupation. Discussion from the floor focused on Raytheon, and the role it gave Derry in the arms trade. The activists knew that, despite the line of the main parties, there is real anger in the town at the idea of software developed in Derry helping to murder people in Lebanon and Gaza.

On August 9th at 8am, protestors arrived at the building Raytheon shares with a call centre. The police were already in position. At about 8.30, an employee about to go into work hesitated for an instant and the anti-war activists rushed the door. Police started grabbing people by the scruff of the necks and literally throwing them back out. The nine now charged are those who made it into Raytheon's premises.

Once inside, the protestors erected barricades against the police and set about decommissioning the equipment. Many fliers thrown out the window gave the lie to the claims that the Derry plant had no connection with the arms trade.

Once local radio started to report the occupation, others started to arrive to join the protest. In the course of the day, between 80 and 100 people kept the solidarity picket going. Cars on the main road honked their horns in support.

Local residents brought coffee, sandwiches and cake. Armed police in riot gear stormed the buildinng after eight hours and carried the protestors out in handcuffs.

Almost all were battered and bruised in the process.

At the bail hearing, barrister Joe Brolly pointed out that Raytheon had had a turnover of $21.9 billion last year, and described them as "purveyors of death".

Bail was granted but the restrictions are draconian. Conditions include an exclusion zone around Raytheon, and also ban the protestors from attending any public meeting or any private meeting of Derry Anti War Coalition or the Irish Anti War Movement. They were told that a "private meeting" means any meeting of three or more people.

A Raytheon 9 Defence Campaign is now being established across Ireland.

Trial Update

The trial of Derry Anti War Coalition activists, the Raytheon 9, is set to start on Monday May 19th. It is to be held in Belfast. The trial was moved to Belfast after the Prosecution Service applied to have it moved; it argued that the Derry jury pool is likely to know too much about the campaign against Raytheon, including the non-violent direct action taken on 9th August 2006 and that any jury from Derry may be too sympathetic to the action and/or intimidated by the level of support for the Raytheon 9 because of all the protests held outside the court over the almost two years since the nine were arrested.

The Derry Anti War Coalition is confident that, wherever the trial is heard, there will be large demonstrations in support of the Nine and that any jury who hears the truth about what was happening in Lebanon when the action took place cannot but find that the Nine acted to stop war crimes and, therefore, committed no crime.

Anyone wishing to support the Raytheon 9 can do so in several ways: Send a message of support to resistderry@aol.com (NB This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it).

Organise a fundraiser for the defence fund Spread the word about the role of the arms trade in fuelling war. If there is an arms company in your town, organise a protest at it.

Unfair Trade

tim — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:02:29 +0000

As the AGM of BAE Systems takes place in London today, the company's supporters will again pop up in the media to trot out the usual phrases about "living in the real world". In reality, it is these very supporters of the arms trade who display staggering levels of naivety.

This became very clear last month, at the time of a landmark High Court ruling in favour of the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House. The judges ruled that the government had behaved unlawfully in cutting short a corruption investigation into BAE's Saudi arms deals. Among the congratulatory messages which flooded into the CAAT office were a few abusive ones and the odd death threat. But one message left on my phone began: "I'm a member of the British public and I live in the real world." The anonymous caller claimed that were "thousands of British jobs" dependent on Saudi arms deals.

His comment was typical of people who believe that it is naive to oppose the arms trade but who simply accept assertions about employment figures without scrutiny. Such scrutiny is vital to those of us who believe that everybody's livelihood is extremely important. As a child in the early 1980s, while my unemployed father quite literally got on his bike to find work, I experienced the realities of unemployment far more closely than most of those who are willing to make questionable claims about jobs to claw back public support for BAE - such as Norman Tebbit in the Daily Mail recently.

This sight was common in 2006, when BAE was lobbying for the Saudi corruption investigation to be dropped. BAE's supporters rushed onto radio and television, pausing only to pluck random figures from the air. A report by arms companies had previously suggested that BAE's latest Saudi arms deal might create 11,000 jobs across the whole of Europe. By November, BAE was citing the figure of 16,000 British jobs, while the figure of 50,000 regularly appeared in the media.

After the investigation was dropped, and the deal signed, BAE admitted that most of the jobs would not even be based in the UK. Saudi Arabia was to receive 72 Eurofighter aircraft, the first 24 of which had been intended for the RAF, who now have to take second place; so much for British jobs and national security.

BAE is keen to present itself as good for Britain, having reacted to the recent bad publicity with an advertising campaign covered in union flags. This is rather rich, given that BAE is developing away from the UK. George Bush's aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan has created countless business opportunities for those who profit from war and BAE now has more staff and shareholders in the USA than in the UK.

Far from enhancing our country, BAE has weakened it. In the High Court last month, judges found that the BAE investigation had been dropped following a Saudi threat. They described this as a "successful attempt by a foreign government to pervert the course of justice in the United Kingdom". Giving the impression that Britain will give into threats sends an appalling message to terrorists.

Most of all, BAE's supporters are naive about the arms trade itself. I have lost count of the times that I have been accused of opposing arms deals "even when countries need arms for self-defence". This displays an utterly unrealistic perception of what the arms trade is about.

The main players in the arms trade are often those using weapons for aggression and repression. Indonesia has been a good customer of BAE, not the people of West Papua who have they so easily bombed. Morocco and China both appeared at the DSEi arms fair in London last year, but no representatives from the Western Sahara or Tibet. People suffering aggression are victims of arms companies, not their customers.

Sometimes the attitude of arms trade supporters goes beyond naivety. Some suggest that corruption is a western concern and "they play by different rules to the ones we stand by here". This ignores the reality that when bribery leads to ministers wasting public money on arms they will not use it to provide health care or tackling poverty. The victims of bribery are the poorest people in the poorest countries.

Yet people here in Britain are also victims of the arms trade. The unhealthy influence of arms companies over government distorts democracy and leads to about £850m of taxpayers' money being spent every year on subsidies for the arms trade, although only 0.2% of UK jobs depend on it. In these circumstances, it is no surprise that BAE can boast about how many engineers it employs. I am often told by engineering students that their career prospects will be severely damaged if they are not willing to work in the arms trade.

Is this where British taxes and British skills should be going? Future generations may not understand why we chose not to subsidise the engineering needed to tackle the unprecedented horrors of climate change but to assist the sale of weapons to dictators. They will think that anyone who thought this would help Britain must have been shockingly naive.

The world in which supporters of the arms trade live is not based on reality, but on fantasy. It is a world straight out of 1950s boys' adventure stories. It is a place in which honest British arms companies work hard to provide jobs and to sell arms to grateful democracies in need of self-defence. It is a world in which any British company engaging in bribery would do so reluctantly and only because you can't expect foreigners to live up to our standards. It is based in a fictitious Britain in which millions of people work in the arms trade and climate change isn't real.

This is a world as real as Narnia and most British people know it. They would rather see their taxes used for health and education, just as many engineering graduates would rather use their skills to fight climate change. They know that corruption kills, that the arms trade fuels aggression and that arms trade bosses are moved to emotion not by the union flag but by profit graphs.

A dwindling minority of people - among them a disproportionately high number of politicians and columnists - still remain oblivious to this. After a year which has seen an unprecedented rise in public opposition to the arms trade, it's time for such people (as they would put it) to move into the real world.