Report of Previous Meeting

JANUARY MEETING : "Arab Spring, British Shame"

Sharen Green from Campaign Against Arms Trade gave us a compelling presentation which covered :
- Cameron's recent 'democracy tour' to countries using British Arms
- the arms we supplied in 2008 for Libyan tanks, only to drop bombs on them last year
- the ' if we don't do it, someone else will' argument : but we don't traffic in cocaine or slaves...
- the 55,000 arms export jobs account for under 0.2% of the UK workforce, each attracts an annual subsidy of £9,000, and arms make up just 1.5% of total exports
- some 30% of Export Credit Guarantee Department funding goes on arms, as does about 50% of Government expenditure on research and development
- the arms trade kills people, encourages repression, takes money away from schools and hospitals etc. and increases developing countries' debt
- we say we do not sell to countries with poor human rights records, but Saudi Arabia is our largest customer