Category Archives: capitalism

London LGBT Pride – giving publicity to human rights abusers

Posted on by symonhill

This week, I’ve seen two movements that I love become sullied by complicity with the arms trade. First, Church House (a leading Christian conference centre) hosted a gathering of arms dealers and generals. Now, London LGBT Pride are about to allow a section of this week’s march to be used to publicise a company that is complicit in homophobia– and other human rights abuses – around the world.

BAE Systems, a multinational arms company that sells weapons to dictatorships, has been allocated its own section at the Pride march in London on Saturday. This is a march to promote and celebrate the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people. Yet BAE’s biggest customers include Saudi Arabia, one of the most viciously homophobic regimes in the world.

Thus the Pride march will include the symbols and branding of a company that actively works against the very things that the march is calling for.

BAE is not one of the “official sponsors” – though these include some very unethical multinationals, such as the tax dodgers at Starbuck’s and Barclay’s. BAE is one of the companies that have been allocated a section on the march for their workers. BAE have an LGBT employees’ group and it this group that will be on the march, in the same way as there will be other groups of workers from John Lewis and the Direct Line Group. There are also religious and cultural groups (most of them placed near the back, as usual). I will be marching with Christians Together at Pride.

I don’t want to stop BAE’s workers marching at Pride. If BAE employees support LGBT rights, I’m pleased to hear it (especially as their bosses clearly don’t). But they will undoubtedly be wearing, carrying or otherwise displaying logos and publicity from BAE. This will help the company’s bosses in their relentless drive to present themselves as being ethical and pro-human rights.

I tweeted the organisers of the march (@LondonLGBTPride). I’m grateful to them for replying very quickly. However, their reply made a very unclear argument. It said:

“Organisations apply and BAE have an LGBT group. Change can come from within. We will not abandon and disengage with LGBT groups who strive for the right and the freedom to express themselves”.

I’m pleased if the LGBT workers at BAE strive for the right and the freedom to express themselves. I’m glad they’re coming on the march. But it’s either naïve or misleading of the organisers to overlook the fact that by listing BAE Systems as one of the groups on the march, and allowing BAE branding to appear, they are actively helping the company to promote itself.

Of course, I accept that this issue is part of  a wider problem with the commercialisation of Pride. There are various other unethical companies involved. I wouldn’t rate Barclay’s or BP as much better than BAE. You could make an argument that this is just as bad. However, I suggest the nature of an arms company is different.

An arms company cannot become ethical, because of the very nature of the arms trade, which involves selling weapons to virtually anyone who will buy them (if they can get away with it, which they usually can). Further, BAE actively promotes homophobia by arming homophobic governments that oppress their own people. I don’t know what “change” the Pride organisers imagine will “come from within”, unless it’s by the active rebellion of the workers against the BAE bosses (which would be great, but seems unlikely).

Despite the commercialisation of Pride, despite the excessive alcohol, the high prices and the vacuuous celebrities, despite all the things I don’t like about it, I must admit that the Pride march in London has played an significant part in my life. Going toPride was an important moment for me as I decided to be public about abandoning my former homophobia. London Pride was one of the first places in which I told a stranger I was bisexual. In 2011, when I walked from Birmingham to London as a pilgrimage of repentance for my formoer homophobia, the Pride march was the last leg of my pilgrimage. The significance of the Pride march for me makes me feel even sadder and angrier about its misuse by arms dealers.

Please tweet @LondonLGBTPride, or otherwise contact them, about this issue. And remember, you can always wear a Campaign Against Arms Trade badge on Saturday.

Planning land warfare – in the Church of England’s HQ

Posted on by symonhill

Where will a group of generals and arms dealers gather tomorrow to discuss the future of land warfare? A military camp? The Ministry of Defence? An underground bunker? No, it’s the headquarters of the Church of England.

Church House Conference Centre is part of Church House, the building in Westminster that houses the administrative headquarters of the Church Commissioners, the Archbishops’ Council and other parts of the Church of England. The Conference Centre is a wholly owned subsidiary company of the Church House Corporation, whose president is the Archbishop of Canterbury.

This is sad news for many Anglicans, other Christians and other people of goodwill. The Christian Church is founded on Jesus, the Prince of Peace, whose life was a model of active nonviolent resistance to injustice. That’s why the Fellowship of Reconciliation have organised a silent vigil outside tomorrow’s conference.

The Land Warfare Conference is organised by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a military thinktank. It is sponsored by SAAB, an arms company. The speakers include top generals from the UK, US and elsewhere as well as NATO.

Topics for discussion include “Generating fighting power” and “Preparing for future operating environments”. Another topic is “honouring the equipment programme beyond sustainment to development of future capabilities”, which sounds incomprehensible, though I suspect it may be about pushing for high military spending.

Church House came under considerable criticism for hosting an arms dealers’ conference booked by RUSI in November 2012. People gathered to pray outside the event and hundreds more emailed to complain about it. I was invited to meet with a senior member of Church House staff, who defended the decision to host the event.

Despite all those discussions, they are doing it again. And this time it’s worse – because it’s happening twice. In addition to tomorrow’s event, there will be an Air Power Conference on 9th-10th July. That one will be sponsored by some of the world’s largest and most vicious arms dealers, including BAE Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Finmeccanica, all of whom sell weapons to dictatorships as a matter of course. Speakers include not only top air force officers but the head of exports at the Ministry of Defence.

Christians have a variety of views on warfare. I can respect Christians who believe that violence is sometimes justified, even though I disagree with them. But these conferences are not about dialogue or discussion on ethical issues. They are about planning international warfare, which by its nature involves the deaths of countless innocent people. Furthermore, arms companies would hardly be sponsoring these events if they did not think it was good for business. These are conferences that will help the arms trade.

The Church of England rightly rules out investments in companies that make more than ten percent of their money from arms. Several of its bishops – along with many of its clergy and other members – have spoken out strongly against certain forms of warfare, particularly nuclear weapons. Many have condemned the arms trade. Justin Welby and other bishops have rightly attacked many of the coalition government’s cuts to public services and social security, although they have not generally pointed out that cuts to military spending have been minor by comparison (the UK has the sixth highest military spending in the world).

No Christian church should be running a conference centre in an ethically neutral way that merely takes bookings from whoever comes along. To allow these bookings confers an appearance of moral legitimacy on them that they do not deserve. While churches understandably run businesses to fund their work, it is this work – the promotion of the Kingdom of God – that should be our focus. I lose that focus as often as any other Christian; we need constantly to be brought back to it.

Let’s remember Jesus’ teaching that “a bad tree cannot bear good fruit”. Or, as Gandhi put it, “the means are to the end as the seed is to the tree”. We cannot promote the Gospel with profits from arms companies. Let’s seek to be loyal to the Kingdom of God, not the idols of money and militarism.

I hope to see you at the silent vigil tomorrow, running from 8.00am until about 9.00am (if you can’t get there for 8.00, you’re still very welcome). Please feel free to bring banners and placards with messages about peace, faith, nonviolence and the arms trade (without any personally abusive messages of course – let’s love our enemies).

The vigil’s been organised by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (England). The vigil is listed on Facebook. Please invite your friends. If you can’t make it to Westminster in person, please keep the conference and the issue in your prayers and thoughts.

And let’s urge Church House to tell the militarists and death-dealers that they will need to find a new venue for the future.

Where do “British values” come from?

Posted on by symonhill

Schools in which pupils are taught to follow the same values as the government are usually associated with totalitarian regimes. This has not stopped Michael Gove and David Cameron from saying that “British values” should be taught in all British schools.

Despite their repeated use of the word “British”, Gove can determine only what’s taught in English schools, as education in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is handled by the devolved administrations there. This is a thus a policy that fails before it gets to the end of its first sentence.

There have been a lot of jokes about attempts to define “British values”. Will children have lessons in moaning about the weather? Will there be exams on the rules of cricket? Will pupils have to demonstrate an ability to glare at people who jump queues while never actually challenging them?

Perhaps all these jokes going round social media demonstrate that one “British value” is a belief in the importance of laughing at ourselves.

Gove’s supporters suggest that “British values” include concepts such as democracy, free speech and human rights. The irony of teaching people what view they should take on free speech and democracy seems to be lost on them.

There are many countries that can take pride in their traditions of democracy and human rights. Nonetheless, I see nothing wrong with people in Britain being proud of what has been achieved in these areas in Britain. But before we do so, let’s remember two overlooked realities.

Firstly, Britain’s traditions of democracy and free expression have sat alongside other traditions – of oppression, racism and violence. The British Empire was rooted in economic exploitation and justified by a racial view of conquered people. It diverted attention away from poverty at home by telling people to be proud of what their masters were achieving abroad. Wars were fought not only against subject peoples but against other imperial powers that threatened the British Empire’s dominance – the first world war is the obvious example. During that war, the government exercised heavy censorship, lied to the public about what was going on at the front and imprisoned 6,000 critics of the war.

Secondly, progressive traditions of free expression and human rights have survived despite all this. When democracy has triumphed in Britain it has done so in spite of the powerful and not because of them. The great parliamentary reforms of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were dragged out of a reluctant elite by mass public campaigns. In some cases, reforms were desperate attempts to avoid revolution or to buy off one section of society so that they would not ally with another. But such changes would not have happened at all without the reality of grassroots campaigns, even if the reforms often did not go as far as the campaigners wanted. Society was changed from below, not from above. Going back to the seventeenth century, the rule of law was established only when King Charles I was convicted of treason after waging war against his own people, establishing the principle that no-one was above the law.

The human rights and relative democracy that we have in Britain are due to millions of ordinary people going out and campaigning for them over centuries. They did so in defiance of the rich and powerful. Michael Gove and David Cameron have far more in common with the politicians and monarchs who resisted such progress than they do with the people who championed it.

What could illustrate this better than Cameron’s deals with the vicious regime of Saudi Arabia, to whom he continues to sell weapons? Or the government’s use of drones in Afghanistan, killing civilians in a way largely indistinguishable from the “extremists” who Gove is so keen to challenge with “British values”?

Let’s celebrate our democratic traditions. Let’s do it by campaigning against the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few, and by insisting that school pupils must be free to hear a wide range of views, ideas and interpretations – not just those of Michael Gove.

Are disabled people now expected to rely on charity from arms dealers?

Posted on by symonhill

The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Berkshire has recently been given £2bn by the UK government to construct new facilities. The AWE has just donated £1,200 to local disability charities in Basingstoke.

Ministers gave the £2bn to AWE in anticipation of the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system. But Parliament has not yet made any decision on whether to renew Trident. The decision is not due until 2016.

AWE gave £1,000 to Basingstoke Dial-a-Ride and £200 to Basingstoke Shopmobility.

£1,200 is 0.00006% of £2bn. It is the equivalent of six pence out of £100,000.

The AWE, based at Aldermaston and Burghfield, is run by a consortium of Lockheed Martin, Serco and Jacobs. The warheads for Trident are developed and maintained there (the missiles are loaned from the US). It’s no surprise that the owners of AWE want to whitewash its reputation. There have been growing protests there as the UK gets closer to a general election that could determine the future of Trident. Only this week, members of Action AWE and Trident Ploughshares succeeded in blocking all road entrances to the Burghfield site for nearly five hours.

The charities in Basingstoke are understandably glad to have the money. Disability services across the UK are under pressure as a result of cuts from local authorities, whose own budgets have been cut by central government. The manager of Basingstoke Shopmobility told the Basingstoke Gazette that “our running costs are increasing each year, but our grants are decreasing each year”.

Cuts to the welfare state have snatched away the livelihoods of thousands of disabled people, while the government continues to maintain the sixth highest military budget in the world. Such expenditure includes the billions of pounds pumped into AWE, whose weapons are designed to kill millions of people – and disable millions more.

What sort of society have we become, that we are asking disabled people to rely on the charity of arms dealers?

A civilised society would fund a welfare state from which we all benefit rather than preparations for warfare. Trident is supposed to protect us, although we are never told who it will protect us from. With government cuts driving up poverty to previously unimaginable levels, the British people are under attack not from a foreign power, but from their own government.

Now unemployed people are sent on army training schemes

Posted on by symonhill

Poverty and militarism feed off each other. Unemployment has always been good news for army recruiters in need of people desperate for a livelihood. So it’s no surprise that the recruitment of unemployed people has been formalised in a scheme in the English Midlands. Could this be a sign of the way things are heading? The government is already forcing unemployed people to carry out unpaid labour through “workfare” schemes. Will they soon be forcing them into army training?

This might seem an odd suggestion at a time when regular soldiers are being made redundant due to army cuts. But let’s not forget that spending on warfare – or “defence” as it’s euphemistically known – has been cut by far less than many other areas of public expenditure. War is increasingly digitised and reliant on such tools as armed drones rather than large numbers of troops. The government’s policy is to increase the number of army reserves.

The scheme in the Midlands is named “SPEAR”, which stands for “Supporting People into Employment with the Army Reserve”. Perhaps this was the only military-sounding word that they could turn into an appropriate acronym.

Eighteen people in Telford joined the pilot scheme, which involves going through a month-long training programme run by the army. At the end of the scheme, ten of the eighteen applied to join the army reserve. At the other pilot scheme in Stoke-on-Trent, five applied to join the reserves and three to join the regular army.

I don’t know how the participants were selected. It may well be that the people who volunteered for them were more likely to be interested in the army, so more likely to sign up when the scheme was over. This may change as the scheme is extended. It is already set to be run in Coventry, Walsall and Wolverhampton. According to a report by Guardian journalist Ben Quinn, the army now believes the scheme may be implemented across the UK as a result of support from ministers.

SPEAR is run by the army in conjunction with Job Centre Plus. It is not the first time they have worked together. Earlier this year, the army set up recruitment offices in Job Centres, under a project called “More Than Meets the Eye”.

It is just another example of everyday militarism, normalising the role of the army in civilian life and helping the authorities to justify high military spending along with nationalism, hierarchy and other military values.

Labour MP Alex Cunningham has already expressed reservations about the army going into Job Centres. He’s also concerned about unemployed people feeling “pushed into the army” because of a lack of opportunities. He’s now told the Guardian that he would be anxious if benefits were ever to be linked to acceptance of military training.

Cunningham is right to be worried. The government is already forcing people to undertake full-time work for no pay or lose their benefits. Under the most recent scheme, misnamed “Help to Work”, long-term unemployed people will be forced into unpaid labour full-time for six months. Over 300 charities and other voluntary groups have already refused to participate, although the government is still insisting that the scheme will go ahead.

Could compulsory military training for unemployed people be another step in this direction? A few years ago it would have seemed impossible, but then it seemed just as impossible that any British government would introduce forced labour.

The SPEAR scheme is supposed to help people to gain “self-esteem and skills”. No doubt the same words will be used if the scheme becomes widespread, or even compulsory.

In reality, you don’t need an institution based on warfare and hierarchy to gain self-esteem and skills. I do not see how self-esteem can be linked to military ideas such as unquestioning obedience and signing away your right to make ethical decisions. As an institution, the army exists to carry out acts of violence, however decent and selfless some of its individual members may be. Everything else the organisation does is secondary to this.

Furthermore, high unemployment is a result of economic factors; it is not caused by a national lack of self-esteem. It needs economic solutions, not dodgy training schemes and military intervention.

Mainstream parties have been defeated by the monster they created

Posted on by symonhill

Nigel Farage’s smug grin is all over the media this morning. But the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties have been defeated by a monster of their own creation.

They have failed to speak up for the benefits of migration, they have not provided decent housing, they have bailed out banks and punished the poor, they have pandered to the super-rich. It’s no surprise that people look for an alternative.

Unfortunately, the alternative is provided by Nigel Farage’s ragtag army of racists, sexists, homophobes and climate change deniers. Farage, a privately educated former stockbroker, presents himself as anti-establishment. UKIP’s policies include a tax system that would harm the poor and those in the middle while slashing taxes for the rich. UKIP politicians also advocate a big increase in military spending at the same time as greater cuts to the welfare state.

Most of these policies are barely mentioned in the media, which concentrates on UKIP’s views on migration and the European Union. The BBC must bear some responsibility for UKIP’s success. Fascinated with Farage, keen on sensational change, they have given the party vastly disproportionate attention.

Not that this is any excuse for voting for UKIP. I won’t patronise UKIP voters by suggesting they don’t know what they’re doing. Let’s not forget, however, that around two-thirds of UK voters did not even vote in this election. UKIP have received the support of about one in ten of the adult population. Even the majority of those who did vote supported parties that favour EU membership.

The Tories have already shown their willingness to cave into UKIP’s agenda, attacking migrants and the EU at the same time as they demonise the poor to justify their austerity agenda. Labour have a chance to speak up for migration and point out the real problems of spiralling poverty and inequality. Sadly, Labour politicians are already mentioning the need to talk more about immigration – a euphemism for being more anti-immigration and blaming migrants for problems they have not caused.

Thankfully, there is more to politics than choosing between four parties that marginalise the working and middle classes in the interests of the rich. There are alternative ways of voting – such as Green, Plaid Cymru and others.

More importantly, we can aim for a better world in our own lives and communities – by refusing to scapegoat migrants, Muslims or benefit claimants; by staging grassroots campaigns against austerity, prejudice and war; by supporting each other in resisting poor working conditions and dodgy landlords; by choosing kindness over consumerism. We can defy this rotten system not just on polling day, but every day.

Challenging the arms trade on the edge of Farnborough

Posted on by symonhill

This evening, I’ll be speaking about the arms trade on the edge of Farnborough – the home town of the multinational arms company BAE Systems.

The talk will be at 8.00pm in the Chapel in Ash Vale, which is on the edge of Farnborough (just over the country border in Surrey). Many thanks to St Mary’s Church, Ash Vale for organising the event.

Lots of the local people work in the arms industry. This is not surprising; many people have little choice but to take what jobs are available.

I’ll be engaging in discussion with people who disagree with me. I’ll also be challenging the arms industry’s claims about providing jobs. For years, BAE and others have talked about the jobs they offer, only to move thousands of jobs out of Britain when it suits them to do so. Rather than rely on the whims of arms dealers, we need an economy that provides meaningful, long-lasting and socially useful jobs so that the skills of those currently working for BAE can be put to better use.

The talk is also an opportunity to challenge the Farnborough Air Show. This biennial event combines a trade fair (for both the arms industry and the civil aviation industry) with a much more fluffy public air show. This year it will take place from 14th-20th July.

The event this evening is open to the public. More details can be found here. I’m looking forward to it.

Cameron’s “Christian country”

Posted on by symonhill

Since David Cameron spoke about Britain being a “Christian country” two weeks ago, there’s been a lot of controversy around the issue. I’ve written an article about it for the New Internationalist, which you can view here. I suggest that a society that favours the rich and punishes the poor is far away from biblical visions of equality and justice.

Cameron talks about faith, churches and poverty

Posted on by symonhill

David Cameron has spoken this week of his Christian faith. His sincerity has been widely questioned on Twitter, but it’s not for me to judge him. God can see into Cameron’s heart but I can’t. However, the Prime Minister and I have very different understandings of Christianity.

Cameron praised churches for their work with the poor. Thanks to Cameron and his allies, British churches are doing more work with the poor than they have done for decades. This is because the coalition government’s policies have led to a sharp rise in poverty in the UK, with half a million people using food banks, rough sleeping rising by a third in three years and thousands of disabled people losing basic means of support. At the same time, the coalition has cut taxes for the rich and is planning to spend £100bn renewing the Trident nuclear weapons system.

While churches rightly reach out to help those in desperate need, Cameron has good reason to be thankful that they do so. Without food banks and the like, the government might well have a lot more riots to deal with.

I am as biased as anyone else when it comes to interpreting the Bible. My background affects my approach, just as David Cameron’s affects his. I am sure I have misunderstood Jesus in all sorts of ways. Nonetheless, however we interpret Jesus’ teachings, it is difficult to argue that they are not concerned with issues of poverty and wealth.

The Gospels show Jesus declaring he had come to “bring good news to the poor” and declaring “blessed are the poor”. Most of his parables had economic dimensions, however much they have been spiritualised and domesticated by centuries of interpretations in the hands of the powerful.

I suggest that Jesus did not practise charity in the narrow sense of helping out less fortunate individuals. He drew attention to injustice, attacked the priorities of the rich and powerful and challenged us all to repent and live differently. His support for individuals who were ill or distressed was in the context of solidarity and mingled with teachings about the unjust practices that contributed to their suffering.

As churches struggle to cope with the rise in poverty and homelessness, let’s remember a crucial question: are we simply patching over the cracks, or are we standing in solidarity with poor and marginalised people and challenging the sinful systems that lead to poverty and inequality?