Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

In the arms of the state

by Famous Nelson  |  Socialist Resistance no41  |  page 15-16

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

As used on the Mandela : Underground adventures in the Arms and Torture Trade Ebury Press £10.99 (or less, via internet) 2006 saw the publication of an important, readable and amusing book by Mark Thomas which is an indispensable guide to anyone who wants to understand the relationship between the British state and the arms industry. in order to better undermine it!

2006 was a particularly apposite year for this book to become available because on December 14, Tony Blair shut down a major investigation into alleged corruption by the arms company BAE Systems -claiming the enquiry would endanger Britain's national security.

This was the same day that Blair became the first serving Prime Minister to be interviewed by the police in a criminal investigation over the cash for honours scandal. This was also the day the inquiry into the death of Diana

Under Blair's instruction Lord Goldsmith, ended the Serious Fraud Office criminal inquiry into alleged bribes paid by BAE to Saudi officials. Not surprisingly both the company and Blair's friends in the Saudi government had frantically lobbied to end the investigation.

According to Goldsmith the wider public interest... outweighed the need to maintain the rule of law".

As used on the Famous Nelson Mandela ... is the written accompaniment to Thomas touring act in which he mesmerises audiences with the same mixture of analysis, fact and wit.

While Thomas exposes the horrors of the international arms trade - including a fascinating section on Sudan -some of his choicest barbs are rightly saved for new Labour and their supposedly "ethical" foreign policy.

The night I saw him on stage at West London's Tricycle theatre in December the mainly young audience was pretty attentive between the bouts of raucous laughter and I expect that the Campaign against the Arms trade got a number of new activists out of the event.

While I could make a detailed critique of why some of Thomas's anarchist leanings are not the most effective way of destroying the state that I hate just as deeply as he does, I think in the end its more appropriate to pay tribute to someone who is certainly reaching a bigger audience than this paper is but without losing either his principles or his ability to take the piss out of everything -including himself.