The UK Is Among the World’s Largest Suppliers of Weapons—and Is Making Arms Boycotts Illegal · Global Voices
Protest against UK arms sales to Israel on November 21, 2014 in London. Source: BDS Movement Website.
The United Kingdom’s arms industry is ranked as one of the largest globally , second only to the United States. It has been implicated in atrocities and abuses in varied contexts, recently evident in the arming of cluster bombs to its primary consumer Saudi Arabia in its war in Yemen. The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has taken the UK government to court over these allegations on multiple occasions:
Why we're in court to say UK must #StopArmingSaudi pic.twitter.com/GEtfb7tYYk 3,500 children killed or injured in Yemen https://t.co/Ku6I1wDhKh
— CAAT (@CAATuk) 8 February 2017
Alongside the often-cited examples of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Israel, weapons made in the UK have also been sold en masse in Mexico, where murders, mass disappearances, and mass displacement of civilians in the ongoing drug war have made the country one of the most violent on earth. The UK's security and military export licenses to Turkey were valued at £466 million from 2013-2016 and have been used in Turkey's widespread, brutal repression of civil society and Kurds.
Through “open” trade conventions such as the Security & Policing (S&P) exhibition and closed events such as the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) fair , the UK allows local and international companies to showcase some of the world’s most lethal weapons. The UK is also home to one of the world's leading suppliers of surveillance software , Gamma Group.
The “Stop The Arms Fair!” network, a group of activists who sought to stop the upcoming DSEI fair in September 2017, recently highlighted the UK's role in routinely selling surveillance gear and weapons to governments notorious for abusing human rights including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Ethiopia, and Venezuela.
“Closed to public” UK arms fair sells surveillance gear and poison gas to torturers. 157
https://t.co/ptMPHgXAhf
— Stop The Arms Fair! (@StopTheArmsFair) 11 March 2017
Journalist <PERSON> recently wrote on inews.co.uk how:
The Government has approved more than 152 licences to export non-lethal arms abroad since 2010, including some £182,000 of tear gas or irritant ammunition due to be sent to Saudi Arabia in 2015 and crowd control ammunition worth £6.1m cleared for sale to the United Arab Emirates in 2014.
As the UK negotiates its exit from the European Union, it has its sights set on expanding this arena, according to both the post-Brexit green paper and one of the ministers for Exiting the EU, Member of Parliament <PERSON> .
In February this year, the UK doubled down on this position when it announced plans to make it unlawful for local councils, National Health Service (NHS) Trusts, public bodies and certain university student unions to boycott, divest from or sanction an industry or state “ other than where formal legal sanctions, embargoes and restrictions have been put in place by the Government .”
The UK wants to make it illegal for public bodies with government funding to boycott, divest from or sanction an industry or state.
The boycott law builds on consistent efforts by the Department for Communities and Local Government to bar publicly funded bodies from boycotting countries, or tenders from suppliers based in other countries, on ethical grounds. This affects procurement fund policies for purchasing goods and services, as n umerous public bodies have ethical procurement policies preventing them from investing in or buying specific kinds of products. It also affects how these bodies invest in pension pots, where funds are merged into “pooled funds” or “wealth funds”. Government ministers have warned that penalties for breaching this law will be “ severe .”
In response to this guidance, one of the largest trade unions in the UK, UNISON, emphasized : “Investment policy should be a matter for the scheme members and their decision makers, not for a government to intervene”. Last year, the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association that represents over 1,300 pension schemes also stressed that these rules could hamper the best interests of pension fund members .
‘Stop The Arms Fair’ protest against UK's arming of Israel on September 7, 2015. Source: Facebook.
Many campaigns recognize the historically crucial role of local councils in furthering human rights and in strengthening processes that impact international norms. In the 1960s and 1970s, more than 100 local authorities in the UK opted to ban South African goods , and in 1981, Strathclyde Council ceased its pension fund investments in companies with South African subsidiaries. 142