Week 9 2113

Tendring Topics......on line

‘Arms and the Man’

            That is the title of one of George Bernard Shaw’s more light-hearted plays, but ‘the arms’ that I have in mind are the weapons of death that, even as I write, are killing men, women and children in Syria and elsewhere and during the past century have killed millions of men, women and children world-wide.  ‘The man’ is our Prime Minister, David Cameron.

            He has recently been in India, furthering trade with that rapidly growing potential consumer of the products of British industry.  It was his second visit there in the past three years, his earlier one having been in July 2010.  Since then he has paid similar visits to Egypt and Kuwait, Saudi Arabia (on two occasions), Indonesia, Japan, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Brazil, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

            Furthering British trade relations is obviously a very worthy activity though some may wonder if affairs at home in Britain are really running so smoothly that our Prime Minister can afford frequent absences on trade missions.  What is concerning is the fact that much of the commercial activity that he is so eager to promote is that of the arms trade – a trade that many of us regard as being as undesirable as the slave trade and that, like the slave trade, is destined to become  one of the darker aspects of our nation’s history.  This interest of the Prime Minister was noted particularly during the ‘Arab spring’ when he toured the Middle East in the company of arms salesmen who regarded the turmoil in the region as a unique sales opportunity.  How those salesmen must have rejoiced earlier at the bloody break-up of the former Jugoslavia.  Quite apart from the deadly weapons required at the time, its outcome was the creation of five potential customers instead of just one!

            Howard Wheeldon, Director of Policy for ADS, a ‘defence’ trade organisation is reported as saying, ‘The PM has done a fantastic job.   He has picked up the value of defence to the national economy.  Other PMs haven’t necessarily’.  No doubt; but the promotion of arms sales surely can’t have a very high priority on the Prime Minister’s ‘job description’.

            In fact, the British arms trade does very well by global standards.  The USA is the world’s biggest arms exporter with 35 percent of the market share.  The UK comes next with a 15 percent share, narrowly in front of both Russia and France. It is not a statistic in which I take any pride.

            It may be argued that every country has a right to self-defence.  Trouble arises only when weapons fall into the wrong hands.  Much the same argument has been put forward in the USA about gun control.  ‘The only way to foil the activities of  bad guys with guns is to make sure that the good guys are well armed’.

 Internationally, how do we tell the ‘good guys’ from the bad?  And how do we ensure that they remain ‘good? I am sure that when the French sold Exocet Missiles to the Argentineans they hadn’t intended them to be used against the British in the Falklands.  When the USA and the UK covertly armed the Mojihadin in Afghanistan to support them in their guerrilla war against the USSR they hadn’t intended to put weapons into the hands of those who, a few decades later, would be using them to kill British and American troops.  It would surprise me if British made weapons are not being used by both sides in the current bloody conflict in Syria.

            I look forward to the day when the success of the arms trade is a distant memory and we are better known for our tractors, our dams, our bridges and our medical and surgical expertise than for our tanks and guns, our bombers, our jet fighters and our death-dealing missiles.

An elderly ‘Essex boy’!

          It might have been thought that someone who had had to serve only nine weeks of a nine months sentence for serious fraud, and had heard that there was to be no further investigation into his expensive activities as former Leader of Essex County Council, would have thanked his lucky stars for his good fortune and have kept a very low profile, at least for a year or two.

           

But that was not Lord Hanningfield’s way.  He sued Essex Police for wrongful arrest and trespass and has been awarded £3,500 in damages. Only a month or two ago we had learned that, as the fraud for which he had been convicted had been much greater than had originally been realized, he would have to pay back a further £37.000 under the Proceeds of Crime Act, or return to gaol for a further term.  We were told at the time that as he was by no means a wealthy man this might compel him  to sell his bungalow and ‘take up the tenancy of a Council House’. (Did he really imagine he'd qualify for one?)   Under the circumstances he might have been expected to add that £3,500 to his meagre savings, but not so.  He is ‘still working to raise that £37,000’ and is donating the £3,500 to a cancer charity!

            Lord Hanningfield (who was plain Paul White, an Essex pig farmer, before Tony Blair arranged for him to be ennobled on Margaret Thatcher’s recommendation) says that one chapter of his life is now over and he wants to get on serving the people of Essex.  ‘I’ll mainly be working in the House of Lords and I’m already taking up some issues’.

            How strange that the government and members of the House of Commons should be so strongly opposed to convicted criminals being permitted to vote in elections for those who make our laws – but are apparently quite happy for a convicted criminal, who has not yet ‘paid his debt to Society’ (he still owes us £37,000 or a further spell in gaol!) and as far as I know has uttered not a single word of apology or contrition, to play a part in the House of Lords in making those laws!

            We used to hear a great deal about ‘Essex girls’ and their characteristics.  Lord Hanningfield is surely an elderly ‘Essex boy’ to match any of them!

           

              The Assassins

          It is said that at the beginning of the Battle of Waterloo it was reported to the Duke of Wellington that the commander of one of the British cannon had Napoleon himself squarely in his sights.   Should he give the order to fire?  ‘Certainly not’, replied Wellington, ‘We are soldiers – not assassins’.  Yet had he given the order to fire it is at least possible that thousands of British and French lives would have been spared.

            That, I suppose, is always the justification advanced for assassination.  A particular individual is the enemy of the State/the Party/Democracy/the Faith/ the Revolution, or whatever else is considered most important at that time and in that place.  The violent erasure of just one life, it may be claimed, would save thousands of others.  In the nineteenth century a Russian nobleman said of his country that its system of government was ‘despotism tempered by assassination’.

            The present Russian government may well have been responsible for the assassination in London in 2006 of Alexander Litvinenko, a former member of the KGB and of its successor, who had defected to MI6, becoming a double agent working for British Intelligence. It wouldn’t be particularly surprising if he were regarded as a threat to his former employers (much as Burgess and Maclean, who defected to Russia, were regarded in Britain) and orders given for his elimination.  It was an assassination that has soured Anglo-Russian relations to this day.

            British-Israeli relations were similarly soured by the assassination of Mahmoud al Mabhooh, a Hamas activist, in Dubai in 2010 by agents of Mossad, the Israeli Secret Service.  The assassins used forged British passports to get near to their victim, again provoking British official condemnation.  Such assassinations, we may think, are the sort of conduct that we expect from Russians and folk from the Middle East – but are far below the standard of the United Kingdom and our allies.

            But are they? Whoever murdered Alexander Litvinenko and those who murdered Mahmoud al Mabhooh at least put their own lives at risk and in danger when they carried out their criminal actions.   We can hardly say the same about those in the USA who control drones (unmanned aircraft) to fly over enemy – or sometimes nominally allied – countries, seeking out individuals considered to be a threat to the USA as targets for the launch of their death-dealing missiles.  ‘Smart’ as these drones and their deadly cargo undoubtedly are, they are not quite smart enough to distinguish between individual friends and foes. From 2006 to 2009 between 750 and 1,000 people were assassinated by drones in Pakistan, of whom it is reckoned that 66 to 68 percent were Taliban activists and between 31 and 33 percent innocent civilians.

            I understand that the UK also uses drones but that, at present, their use is restricted to military targets in Afghanistan.  We do, of course, support the activities of our American allies.   There was a time, not so very long ago, when American courts refused to extradite suspected, and in some cases tried and sentenced, IRA murderers to the UK.  There’s no doubt what the American reaction would have been had we then sent drones to pick out and ‘neutralise’ those enemies of our country and its people - especially if a few innocent American civilian deaths occurred as ‘collateral damage!'    Do not do unto others what you would hate them - or anyone else - to do unto you!