EXCUSE ME, BUT ARE YOU GOING TO THE ARMS FAIR?

Arms dealers are people too. Corporate Watch faces up to them...

It's a damp grey Wednesday morning in Canning Town. We're on the dual carriageway between Canning Town and the Excel centre, where the DSEi arms fair opened the day before. Rumour has it that due to 'passenger' action on the Docklands Light Railway (i.e. people taking direct action to prevent arms dealers arriving at Excel), many of the delegates are disembarking at Canning Town station and continuing their journey on foot or by public buses to the arms fair. What an amazing opportunity, we think, to have a chat with the businessmen (and it is mainly men) who make their money out of war.

It's easy to spot the delegates as they walk through the Newham council estates on their brief journey. It's the well-tailored suits and suitbags slung casually over one shoulder, and the compact travel suitcases wheeled behind. It's a truly multi-racial crowd, too, with military men, mercenaries and arms dealers from around the globe, including official country delegations from Syria, Turkey, Indonesia, China, Colombia and Israel. There are over a thousand arms companies selling small arms, missiles, planes, tanks, military electronics and warships, as well as surveillance and riot-control equipment at DSEi this year.

At Canning Town tube station my curiosity gets the better of me. 'Excuse me, but are you here for the arms fair?' The man looks at me and hurries along, so I follow. 'Excuse me, are you an arms dealer?' I ask. 'I just want to chat with you about how you can justify your livelihood...'.

The next guy is more talkative. 'I work in a legitimate industry, there is nothing illegal about what I do.'

I remind him that, under the 2002 Arms Control Act, it is illegal for UK companies to sell arms to  regimes which could use the weapons for either internal repression or external aggression. That's  around half the countries attending. Besides, a report by Transparency International has estimated that 'the official arms trade accounts for 50% of all corrupt business transactions'. I also remind him that selling arms is totally immoral.

But don't I agree that the British army should have the most up to date weaponry to defend its citizens from attack?

So I ask him how exactly cluster bombs, found to be on sale at DSEi, ensure a country's self-defence. Cluster bombs scatter small explosive bomblets over a wide area causing indiscriminate casualties and sometimes lie unexploded for years after a conflict has ended. And what about depleted uranium, a toxic heavy metal which causes a wide range of cancers and foetal abnormalities, which pollutes soil, rivers and cities, with effects lasting for hundreds of years. Why is depleted uranium on sale at DSEi?

And why exactly does the South African government need to invest £4.8 billion in new toys for its army when there is massive social deprivation there, and no actual military threat?

And what about the regimes that buy arms and other equipment at DSEi to perpetrate genocide? That can hardly be considered self defence.

He shrugs his shoulders and tells me that he only makes the seats for fighter planes and tanks. He doesn't have anything to do with who buys the final product and how it is used.

I walk at least half a mile with a man in a long Burberry coat who tells me that he is proud to be working in a thriving British industry.

I point out that our arms exports are only a tiny proportion of our total exports, between 2 and 3 percent. Jobs in the arms exports industry account for a mere 0.3 percent of total employment. Meanwhile, the trade is hugely subsidised by taxpayers - both in terms of export guarantees (around 25% of the total Export Credit Guarantees Department's budget) and also in terms of research and development, with around 55% of the Government's research expenditure spent on arms.  Taxpayers are also footing the £2 million policing bill for DSEi and around £400,000 to host the delegates. And what about paying the wages of the soldiers who are demonstrating the equipment?

He agrees with me that the 'defence' industry should be able to pay its own way without subsidies, but he can't really justify why, with no good economic reason, the British government so dis-proportionally supports the arms export industry. "Its ultimately about prestige", he admits.

We take a break to sit in a cafe. On the other side of the road, we see a group of smartly dressed men hovering at a bus stop. They stop a delegate and open up their briefcases to reveal case-loads of neatly labelled dismembered Barbie doll arms. “Fancy buying any arms, sir?”. These “performance activists” get on the first bus, along with ten or more delegates. By the time the bus pulls up in front of the Excel centre, many of the delegates are a bright, shame-coloured pink.

“Excuse me, have you just been to DSEi?”
“I certainly have been to DSEi. And do you know what I do? All I do is manufacture paint!”
“So you'll be telling the people inside who make cluster bombs, for example, how much you disapprove of their products?”
“Don't be so stupid. Get a job”.

It's noticeable how many delegates seem to find comfort in accusing protectors of being unemployed. The fifty-year old man marches off, leaving me thinking that next time I will wear a T-shirt saying “I have a job. What's yours?”

On the tube on the way home, we find ourselves sitting next to two executives from Raytheon, a US-based company which has seen a 26% rise in its stock prices since 9/11. We wondered whether they had managed to sell any of their famous Patriot missiles which, according to the US General Accounting Office, only had a 9% success rate in intercepting Scud missiles during the first Gulf war. They decline to comment.

Arms dealers are people too. By taking the time to engage with them we hoped we could move beyond confrontation and hear their side of the story. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to be able to give one. The next day, Trafalgar Square fountain ran red with symbolic blood, delegates were confronted on their way into the official DSEi dinner, and the mainstream media were finally acknowledging the existence of Europe's largest arms fair. “It was all right when it was their nasty little secret” one protester pointed out (note for delegates: she was a celebrity yoga teacher). “But it's out in the open now”.