Don’t ask for jobs at BAE Systems to be saved – ask for new ones outside of the arms trade to be created

Far from the financial powerhouse that the arms industry is often sold as, a recent report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute put the cost to tax payers at more than £100m a year

As many as 750 jobs are set to go at the Warton and Samlesbury plants in Lancashire where parts for the Eurofighter Typhoon (pictured) are manufactured (AFP/Getty)

The news that BAE Systems is cutting 2,000 jobs due to a slowdown in Eurofighter Typhoon jet orders will have been felt particularly harshly in Warton and Samlesbury in Lancashire, where the combat aircraft are produced. They will bear the brunt of the loss – with 750 jobs coming from those sites alone.

The response of the Unite Union and the Labour Party has been to condemn the cuts and call for orders to be brought forward to save the jobs. However, the bigger discussion must be on how the Government can shift priorities into other industries that rely on the same skill sets but don’t depend on war and conflict to make a profit.

BAE is Europe’s biggest arms company and has a long and inglorious history of arming some of the most brutal and repressive regimes in the world. At present, its Typhoon jets are playing a key role in the ongoing Saudi-led bombardment of Yemen.

There is no question that BAE employs a lot of extremely skilled people, and that government has a role to play in ensuring that their skills should be put to good use. The reality is that the arms trade could not function without the huge amounts of political and financial support it enjoys from Whitehall, Downing Street and taxpayers.

In his autobiography, former Labour Foreign Secretary Robin Cook characterised BAE as having “the key to the garden door” of Downing Street. He further emphasised that from his experience he “never knew No 10 to come up with any decision that would be incommoding to BAE”.

The times have changed, and so have the faces, but the relationship is still the same.

David Cameron worked hand in glove with BAE to promote Typhoon jets to Saudi Arabia. Earlier this year, Theresa May travelled to Turkey to confirm a £100m deal with Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly repressive government. Last month Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon flew to Doha to agree a Typhoon deal with the Qatari dictatorship.

One thing all of these regimes have it common is that they all have appalling human rights records. Even if we put the morality of such sales to one side, should so much support really be getting poured into an industry that is so dependent on the spending whims of tyrants?

At the last election the Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, SNP and Green Party all stood on manifestos that called for a suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and tighter restrictions going forward. They are supported by the public, with a recent poll from Opinium showing that 76 per cent of adults oppose arms exports to human-rights-abusing regimes.

Far from the financial powerhouse that the arms industry is often sold as, a recent report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute put the cost to tax payers at more than £100m a year. This is to say nothing of the huge levels of political and logistical support that the arms companies are offered.

This level of support needs to be shifted to more positive and sustainable industries, such as renewable energy and low-carbon technology, which are crying out for workers with similar skill sets. For example, our research shows that a concerted move towards offshore wind and marine energy could create far more jobs.

Arms exports only count for 0.2 per cent of UK jobs and around 1 per cent of exports. It is a small part of the economy, but there are certain parts of the country, like Warton and Samlesbury, where arms companies are major employers. This must be reflected in any industrial strategy that focuses on shifting priorities from arms to more sustainable jobs.

One particularly positive proposal has come from the Trades Union Congress, which last month passed a motion calling for the Labour Party to set up a shadow defence diversification agency to engage with plant representatives, trades unions representing arms industry workers, and local authorities. The agency would listen to their ideas, so that practical plans can be drawn up for arms conversion while protecting skilled employment and pay levels.

A similar argument was made in 1976 when workers at Lucas Aerospace published an alternative plan for the future of the corporation. Around half of Lucas’s output was based on military contracts and the employees argued that as these were dependent on public funds the money could be better spent on developing more socially useful products.

At the time, neither the government nor the company had the political will to turn the plan into action, but the initiative highlighted the potential for redirecting investment and winning the support of arms trade workers for doing so. The BAE job cuts show just how urgent similar discussions and radical solutions are now.

Andrew Smith is a spokesperson for Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT). You can follow CAAT at @CAATuk