One of the areas that has been put under the spotlight by the popular uprisings (are they revolutions? Not sure....) in north Africa is the British arms trade. Okay, it is not a forensic investigation, admittedly, but it keeps being mentioned.
In the same way that there was a rash of concern a few weeks back that drugs supplied by a pharmaceutical wholesaler in West London might be used to kill Death Row inmates in the US, the role (or non-role) of British-made weapons in the suppression of uprisings is regularly mentioned in news reports on radio and TV. In the case of the drugs, I was more interested in how the US penal system ended up contracting with the owner of a minicab business for such a major slice of business. Did he put forward a great bid when he tendered for the business? Were his rates so competitive that money-conscious public bodies could not say 'no' to his prices? Or were the buyers looking to purchase from a source seemingly far off the radar because they realise the deal is just a little bit grubby?
Likewise, in the past we may have congratulated ourselves that we have a thriving arms industry that exports lots and lots of 'goods'. Fantastic for the UK balance of trade just as long as we don't have to think what they are used for. But then along comes a set of popular uprisings against tyrannical and hated ancien regimes which we find ourselves willing to succeed (whilst worrying a little about future consequences - but that is for another day!) and then someone spoils the party. They mention that the ruling governments might be using the weapons that we supplied to put down the protesters, to kill demonstrators. Ooops! That's not what we wanted at all...
Which brings us to Alistair Burt, Foreign Office minister in the coalition government, going on record last week to say that there was no evidence that British-made tear gas canisters had been used against protesters in Bahrain. How did he know? Did he phone the government there and get them to promise, on their honour, that they would not use the weapons we sold them to do anything nasty? Did he "have in his hand, a piece of paper"? How a government minister can make a claim like this and expect the public to accept it at face value beggars belief. But he did and I suspect a lot of people thought no more about it.
The arms trade has always been a double-edged sword: great for exports, bad for the preservation of human life. Robin Cook, for the most part a fine politician, God rest his soul, rather lost the plot when he talked about the need for our foreign policy to have an ethical dimension. How was that ever to be achieved? Our enemies today will be our friends next week and thus has it ever been so. Mr Orwell was not predicting the future in 1984, he was commenting on what had been going on for ages but was starting to descend into the demonic barn dance of partner changing that characterises world politics today. Similarly, an ethical foreign policy cannot be reconciled with a buoyant arms trade; no-one can guarantee the weapons they sell will only be used against 'bad guys' because, once you've sold 'em, you are no longer in control of 'em.
So thanks Alistair Burt for trying to make us feel a bit better about ourselves. Great Britain was not in any way helping to stifle the popular uprising in Bahrain and no civilians involved were harmed with British weapons. Nor ever will be. It must be true - our government told us.
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