Such people are in for a shock. The first section of the Scott Report, which has been widely leaked, deals with the history of arms export control. The judge, who gleefully sequestrated the funds of the South Wales NUM during the miners’ strike, is no socialist or rebel. His attitude to government control of arms exports is that it has been far too strict.
He is disgusted that the government has used a short draconian measure passed during the wartime emergency of 1939, which effectively gave ministers complete power over all arms exports. This, the Lord Justice thinks, is an appalling interference with the inalienable right of businessmen to export what they want, including the means of slaughter. He believes that, if the government wants to control such commendable free enterprise, it must move cautiously with carefully constructed statutes which allow enormous leeway for free marketeers. Paul Foot, article May 1995, ‘Arms Dealing: Will They Get Off Scot Free?’
The advantages of arms exports are obvious. They produce a high return, and can be kept utterly secret from the public. They are in constant demand all over the world. Yet their disadvantages lead to equally obvious problems. Arms are needed most where wars are being waged – wars which ‘responsible’ democratic governments such as the British government are usually trying (at any rate in public statements at the United Nations) to stop.
The big conflicts which are the real honeypot for the arms exporting industries are almost always subject to embargoes. The Iran-Iraq war was no exception. To keep up its wholly unjustified reputation as a peacekeeper, the British government had to be seen to be discouraging arms exports to either side.
Hence the notorious ‘guidelines’ to industry, announced in parliament in 1985, which banned the export of any ‘lethal equipment’ to the warring countries. Against the guidelines were ranged all those who wanted to make money by killing Iranians or Iraqis. These exporters had considerable support in the ministry of defence and the department of trade. Alan Clark, a wild Thatcherite eccentric, served in both ministries from 1986 to 1992, and went on record as denouncing the guidelines. If there was a war between two sets of foreigners a long way away, he argued, why not make some decent foreign exchange by selling both sides as many arms as they wanted? ibid.
The Gulf War quickly tore the uneasy compromise apart. The embargo had to be imposed more fiercely than ever. All sorts of curious characters were caught up in the process. Three British directors of Matrix Churchill, a Midlands firm owned by Iraqi government supporters which had been happily exporting machine tools for use in Saddam’s artillery factories, suddenly found themselves prosecuted.
Their defence was that the government and MI6 had supported them throughout. When their defence was proved by documents wrung from a reactant civil service, the case collapsed – and the government nearly collapsed too. Major survived only by setting up the Scott inquiry and giving it more powers to wrest the facts from the government machine than had ever been given to any public inquiry in British history.
As a result, Scott found himself beavering away in the cracks of the system. Since the whole ‘solution’ to the arms for Iran-Iraq problem had been based on lying to parliament and the public, Scott was horrified to discover an enormous network of deceit. There can be no doubt that his report will be a hideous embarrassment to government ministers, law officers and the civil service.
Even if, as seems likely, he lets the merchants of death off lightly, he cannot excuse, for instance, serial deception of parliament and blatant contempt for the most basic rules of fair play to defendants. The shortcomings of the whole saga quickly fade beside the altogether exhilarating prospect of at least some official confirmation of what socialists have always propounded: that lying, cheating and double talk are not just incidental to the system. They are essential to it. ibid.
A new dawn has broken has it not. Tony Blair
I feel the hand of History upon our shoulders. Tony Blair
We will confront the tyranny and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk. Tony Blair
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It was when we were on a trip to west Africa he [Blair] asked me to say to Gordon that if he’d let him join the Euro, he’d give him the country to run. Claire Short
Ten years in power, three election victories, Tony Blair has been the most successful leader ever in the history of the British Labour Party. The Blair Decade I, BBC 2007
The gap between the very rich and very poor is bigger. ibid.
On May 1st 1997 Britain’s voters had put an end to almost two decades of Conservative rule and swept Tony Blair into power. ibid.
Tony Blair’s first unsuccessful campaign for parliament came in 1979; he finally made it in 1993. ibid.
The two men [Blair & Brown] met at a restaurant and made a deal. ibid.
Blair had come to office with some big ambitions but few detailed policies for achieving them. ibid.
Brown would direct much of his resentment towards Blair on to the third man in the New Labour triangle – Peter Mandelson. The intensity of the bond between Mandelson and Blair was matched by a fierce mutual dislike and suspicion between Mandelson and Brown. ibid.
In the eyes of his Cabinet colleagues a lack of interest in the grinding detail of practical politics. The Blair Decade II
February of 2001 when Blair travelled to Camp David to meet George Bush face to face for the first time. ibid.
Blair was the only foreign leader at the emergency joint session of Congress. ibid.
In the spring of 2002 Tony Blair was telling Britain and his Cabinet that no decision had been made to invade Iraq; secretly his aides were learning from their American counterparts about plans for a pre-emptive attack. ibid.
Blair’s bridge was crumbling as Chirac led fierce European opposition to war. ibid.
The failure to get a second UN resolution would come to define the road to war and haunt Tony Blair for the rest of his premiership. ibid.
He could see no way out of the long dark tunnel that was Iraq: he considered resigning. It wasn’t just Iraq that was dragging Blair down, the Gordon Brown problem was surfacing yet again. ibid.
He did not enjoy the 2005 campaign. ibid.
Now he was confronted by home-grown suicide bombers. ibid.
Supporters of Gordon Brown wanted a date ... It looked like a Labour Party callous coup ... He was served with an eviction notice by his own party. ibid.
A generation that is totally alienated from the values of their parents, and even more alienated from the values of wider British society. All too often we don’t engage with them. And the intense targeting by the police and intelligence services only increases the anger of those who are vulnerable to radicalisation ... The danger is we create even greater resentment that may only end with further attacks. Peter Taylor, Generation Jihad
Is there a danger that anti-terror laws give impetus to radicalisation? ibid.
March 22nd is Census Day when twenty-nine million of us will be asked questions which apparently will help shape the future of this country ... How many cars have you got? How big is your house? The government has been asking personal questions, gathering information about us, for two hundred years. This Is Britain with Andrew Marr, BBC 2011
More than two hundred years have passed since Malthus created panic about over-population. But the topic is as hot as ever. One reason: immigration. ibid.
In 2001 almost 400,000 people listed their religion as Jedi. ibid.
In fifty years’ time White Britons will be a minority. ibid.
In some age groups, in some areas, women outnumber men. ibid.
Blackpool is now the divorce capital of Britain. ibid.
Over 40,000 same-sex couples have registered civil partnerships since they were first introduced in 2004. ibid.
In Britain the highest rate of gun crime is in rural areas. ibid.
Back in 1911 the average woman died at just fifty-four, and the average man at fifty. ibid.
The fastest-growing age-group of all: centenarians ... There are 12,000. ibid.
Governments know far less than they pretend to. ibid.
On the 17th of January 1969 Barbara Castle published her vision for industrial harmony in Britain In Place of Strife. It promised pre-strike ballots and a cooling off period before strikes could start, and that settlement would be imposed on wild-cat strikes. Moderate by today’s standards; most of Wilson’s cabinet saw all of this as extreme and divisive. And the union leaders regarded In Place of Strife as an outright assault. Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain, BBC 2007
But for Heath there was no escape. On the 9th January 1972 the National Union of Mineworkers demanded a pay increase of 45%. When this was rejected they began their first national strike since 1926. The miners began a mass picket of the largest coke distribution depot in the country at Saltley in Birmingham. ibid.