By John Lynes

In September 2023, the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI), the showground of the international arms trade, returns to East London.  It has no other purpose than to promote the export of military weapons, at taxpayers’ expense.  Yet both Labour and Tory governments have continued to sponsor DSEI since 1976 despite opinion polls consistently supporting Sadiq Khan’s call to shut it down.

The Labour leadership is still divided over this.  There are those who seek to preserve skilled jobs in the arms industry.  “If we didn’t sell arms, someone else would!”  There are those who cherish the socialist precept – “A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends.”  Is there a middle way?  Could we envisage an international pact to limit arms exports to defensive weapons only?

For example:

• portable weapons – that can be handled by one or two soldiers only?
• static artillery – in fixed emplacements or dug-outs?
• anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns?
• wheeled vehicles, as distinct from tracked vehicles such as tanks?

Sounds simple?  But an M16 rifle can be used equally in defence or in attack.  Arguably a Russian tank is ‘offensive’, a Ukrainian tank ‘defensive’.  The borderline between offensive and defensive weapons is hazy if not downright arbitrary!  For just this reason any workable borderline would have to be a compromise, to be settled by international negotiation.  What might a specification of offensive weapons rule out?  Here are a few suggestions:

• all nuclear arms?
• all mobile artillery other than anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns?
• tracked military vehicles weighing more than 10,000 kg?
• warships more than 40 m long?
• military aircraft with wingspan over 15 m?
• UAVs (‘drones’) with wingspan over 4 m?

A first move might be to urge the General Assembly of the United Nations to convene an international conference to draft the necessary definitions.  Arms-exporting governments may at first be reluctant to take part in this exercise.  However those who boycott the conference would have no say over the final specifications, so they would forfeit the opportunity to protect the interests of their own arms industries.  They would have little to lose, and plenty to gain, from participating.  Their own arms companies, and the prospects of their organised workers, would be on the line.

Once definitions are agreed, the delicate diplomacy will be out of the way.  Hopefully nations will find it easier to abide by specifications they themselves have had a hand in drafting.  The Labour Party could lead its overseas allies in campaigning for international acceptance of the prohibitions.  Once implemented they would apply to every nation, not just to signatories.

This proposal falls short of abolishing the arms trade.  It would apply only to arms exports.  It would curb just the worst excesses.  It could unite all wings of the labour movement and could even attract support from some military top brass who have bridled at the cost of Trident.  It would:

• ease the lot of workers in the arms industry, troubled about the destination of their products;
• be simple to monitor and license; you can smuggle ammunition and small arms, but you can’t export a tank or a battleship without somebody noticing;
• encourage competition in devising new means of defence – underwater drones?  AI-based predictive tools to hinder invaders?

Please share and discuss this proposal.  Let’s make September’s arms fair the last one!

John Lynes is 95 and a Life Member of the UCU.

Image: CAAT