4th May 2000
Adapted from Campaign Against The Arms Trade website
There
were two demonstrations at BAE SYSTEMS Royal Ordnance factory on King's Meadow Road, off Queen's Drive, Nottingham (near BR Station and Meadows area) on Thursday 4th May 2000
BAe-owned Heckler and Koch have supplied 600,000 assault rifles to Turkey, dispite the well-documented suppression of the Kurdish community in Turkey.
Five campaigners braved the cold and early hour to leaflet the workers as they went in at 6-30 in the morning. The workers were friendly and most took a leaflet. (The "good morning sir, would you like a
leaflet?" approach kind of shocked them)! There were 10 Mod police there keeping us entertained and catching us all on their home video.
The afternoon demo at 3-30 saw numbers grow to eleven, thus we could spare people to hold a banner out at the passing traffic who beeped their support.
A radio interview for Radio Trent went out throughout the day, and a photographer from a local free paper, The
Topper, came and took a picture and a leaflet.
There was also a trip to the BAE AGM in London, where 5 Nottingham activists joined a peaceful picket outside, and noisy protest inside the meeting.
C.A.A.T. are planning another week of action, 10th-18th June, so watch this space. For information, to join in or to help with future events, contact Nottingham Rainbow Centre on (0115) 958 5666.
Extract from Nottingham CAAT Leaflet :
WHAT'S WRONG WITH BAE SYSTEMS?
With an annual turnover of £12.3 billion BAe SYSTEMS is Europe’s largest arms exporter, exporting weapons to well known human rights abusers such as Indonesia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.BAe is currently fulfilling a government licensed contract to export Hawk Aircraft spare parts to Zimbabwe. The sale will enable the Zimbabwean government to continue its bombing raids on the Congo, and contribute to the fuelling of a brutal conflict which threatens to engulf the whole of central Africa.
BAe has recently completed the delivery of 16 Hawk Aircraft to Indonesia despite eye witness accounts of Hawks being used to terrorise the East Timorese people last year, and accounts of their current use against the secessionist province of Aceh. In 1998 BAe Systems received £2132 million of underwriting from the British Government under the Export Credit Guarantee Department.
BAe has won a contract to supply 600,000 Heckler and Koch assault rifles, and a Rapier missile system to Turkey. Turkey is a country with a record of severe repression and violence against the Kurdish people, against whom it has pursued a systematic policy of cultural destruction, displacement and ’ethnic cleansing’.
BAe Royal Ordinance has been heavily involved in the manufacturing of depleted uranium (DU) missiles, which were used extensively in both Iraq and Kosovo. DU burns on impact immediately, releasing its pollutants into the atmosphere. Whilst this represents a grave threat to the surrounding environment, it is also widely accepted that DU may be linked to child lukemia cases in the gulf, and may be a cause of ‘gulf war syndrome’.
BAE Systems would like to be seen as a profitable and innovative global company. To this end they have participated in educational events in schools and universities, supposedly to promote engineering and technology amongst students.
But as a shareholder, worker or member of the public you may be interested to know the real story behind this industrial success.
BAE Systems is certainly profitable for a few shareholders and executives; for the rest of the world they are not so beneficial. Even UK workers may not be doing so well out of BAE Systems as it appears: over a third of its labour force is outside Britain, and this is likely to increase as BAE relies more on cheap labour (and the avoidance of UK arms controls) by locating industry abroad.
Any attempt to question the moral or political basis of UK arms trading is generally met with the arguments that it generates jobs and that is good for the UK economy.
Yet these statements hide the reality of a declining industry with employment falling rapidly despite massive government support. Any examination of the true costs and benefits of arms trading would conclude that it is neither good for the UK economy nor for UK employment, and that the Government’s failure to face up to the reality of the new world situation after the end of the cold war is responsible for the loss of many jobs which could have been saved if resources had been shifted to other sectors. However, the UK Government continues to provide a substantial financial subsidy to the arms industry, on the grounds of employment generation.
The total government subsidy available to military exports includes Export Credit Guarantee Cover, marketing and other support from the MoD and DESO as well as the 36% of Government Research and Development which is spent on military research.
Yes hundreds of millions of pounds of government money is spent propping up these industries.
Sir Richard Evans
Warwick House
PO Box 87
Farnborough Aerospace Centre
Farnborough
Hampshire
GU14 6YU
Stephen Byers
Department of Trade and Industry
1 Victoria Street
London
SW1H 0ET
Campaign Against The Arms Trade website . Veggies/Rainbow Diary