By Phil Hearse LONDON — The February 15 publication of the report into the "arms for Iraq" scandal revealed what everyone already knew. In defiance of UN guidelines, Margaret Thatcher's government in the 1980s, and then John Major's in the 1990s, covertly approved arms sales to Saddam Hussein. These were used in the Iran-Iraq war, against rebel Kurdish villagers and to aid Saddam's nuclear program. However, the report, by High Court judge Sir Richard Scott, has caused a political row which goes much deeper. For the inquiry, established by Major in 1992, had unprecedented powers to question witnesses in public, including Major and Thatcher themselves. It revealed a web of conspiracy, intrigue and profiteering going to the heart of government. Major's Conservative government survived the February 26 House of Commons debate on Scott by a single vote; several Tories voted with the Labour opposition. The origins of the scandal are in the 1980s arms-export drive by Thatcher. Thatcher's son Mark, carrying with him the obvious approval of the "Iron Lady", became an unofficial roaming salesman for British arms companies. Mark Thatcher earned himself an estimated A$160 million in commissions in the process, including up to $40 million from a single deal with Saudi Arabia. While sales to most dictatorial regimes caused no particular diplomatic problems (the only protests being from the political left), sales to Iran and Iraq were a different matter. This potentially huge market was stymied by the UN restrictions on sales to both countries, then in the middle of a war in which 1 million people died. The potential loss of the Iraqi market was keenly felt: between 1970 and 1990 Britain supplied the Saddam regime with a vast array of equipment, from VIP armoured cars to tank spares and sophisticated communications equipment. It is now known that British firms supplied weapons to both sides in the 1980s by the simple device of sending them to intermediary countries, which then re-exported them. The British company BMARC, of which former Tory minister Jonathan Aitken was a director, supplied hundreds of light naval guns to Singapore — a country not renowned for the huge size of its navy. Those guns found their way to Iran. Favourite staging posts for Iraq-bound weapons were Oman and Jordan. In 1986 Swedish Customs discovered a European cartel, including British firms, supplying explosives via Jordan.
Tilt
The limited and covert British arms supplies to the two Gulf powers changed decisively because of the late 1980s western "tilt to Iraq" against Iran. The US and Britain feared the spread of Iran-style militant Islam to the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. They feared that if Iran defeated Iraq, domination of the region would fall to the militant anti-western ayatollahs in Tehran. The de facto US-UK position became support for Saddam Hussein against Iran, despite an unfortunate little incident in 1988 when an Iraqi jet fired missiles at the US navy ship Stork, killing several crew members. Secretly, the British government guidelines on arms exports to Iraq were "relaxed". In January 1988, trade minister Alan Clark held a meeting with British arms manufacturers in which he advised them to "downgrade" the official description of arms-related material when applying for export licences — to make it appear to be equipment for civilian use. In his own inimitable words to the Scott inquiry, he gave them a "nod and a wink" and was "economical with the ²¹³¦³Ù³Ü²¹±ô¾±³Ùé" (truth) when outlining government policy in public. The Coventry-based firm Matrix-Churchill began supplying Iraq with machine tools for the manufacture of missiles and shells. It also provided technology, the so-called K-1000 program, to aid Saddam's nuclear weapons project. Shells made by the British government's Royal Ordnance were seen at that time in Baghdad. Another British firm, Ordtec, began supplying military fuses, some of which were used in Iraq's nuclear program. British companies Walter Somers and Forgemasters began to construct components for Saddam's ill-fated "super gun", capable of firing nuclear or biological shells 700 km. British firms also supplied Saddam with sodium cyanide and sodium sulphide for use in chemical weapons, together with 10,000 suits for protection of troops involved in chemical or biological attacks. Also supplied were plutonium, zirconium, thorium oxide and gas spectrometers — all essential for making nuclear bombs. None of this trade was interrupted by the September 1988 massacre of more than 5000 Kurdish civilians in Halabjah and Ekmala by Saddam's airforce using nerve gas, almost certainly made from British components. The arms death merchants and British government had no reason to be shocked by this event; they knew all along the type of regime they were dealing with.Campaign of lies
Inevitably rumours about the arms trade with Iraq leaked out, and from 1989 onwards British ministers began a systematic lying campaign, reassuring members of parliament that there had been "no change' in the arms sales guidelines. But the whole policy was blown out of the water by the British Customs and Excise department. In November 1990, Customs began legal action against four directors of Matrix-Churchill, accusing them of breaking export restrictions. Action was also taken against two other companies, Ordtec and Euromac — and in both those cases convictions were obtained. However, the Matrix-Churchill directors pleaded that they had official approval for their exports, and demanded court access to government documents proving this. It was then that one of the most damning episodes for Major's government took place. On the advice of Attorney General Sir Nicolas Lyell, six government ministers signed "public interest immunity certificates", exempting their departments from having to give up the documents. In effect, ministers were prepared to let the businessmen go to jail, rather than allow their lying to become public knowledge. When the case came to trial, in October 1992, it collapsed suddenly when Alan Clark in open court admitted his encouragement to the arms sellers. Further embarrassment was added when it became known that Matrix-Churchill bosses had supplied information to Britain's foreign intelligence service, MI6. Not only was the government prepared to let arms dealers it had worked with go to prison — it was prepared to abandon people who had been working with the intelligence services, and who gave information about the Iraqi regime, at some risk to their own personal safety! It also transpired that one of the convicted Ordtec directors, Paul Grecian — still wanted today in the US for supplying arms to "terrorist" nations — was working for MI6. The convictions of Grecian and other Ordtec and Euromac directors have subsequently been quashed.Assassinations
A murky coda has been the assassination, by persons unknown, of people investigating the arms trade or likely to reveal inside information. Gerald Bull, arms dealer and inventor of the "super gun", was assassinated in Belgium in a 1990 professional hit. A 28-year-old British journalist, Jonathan Moyles, was killed in Santiago, Chile, the day after interviewing arms dealer Carlos Cardoen. Cardoen had been involved in selling Iraq 50 Bell helicopters containing the ultra-sophisticated Helos guidance system, illegally exported from Britain. Andre Cools, former deputy prime minister of Belgium, was murdered in 1991, shortly after being asked to investigate Belgian involvement with Iraqi arms deals. Speculation still surrounds the death of British Tory MP Stephen Milligan in 1994, apparently the victim of self-imposed bizarre sexual practices. According to some insiders, the MP, who worked for the Defence Ministry, was killed for asking too many questions about arms trade corruption. Self-deluding notions that British public life is "honourable" have been dealt a severe blow by the criticism in Scott's 1800-page report. Three of the ministers who signed public interest immunity certificates (Chancellor Kenneth Clarke, defence minister Malcolm Rifkind and social security minister Peter Lilley) are now senior members of Major's cabinet. The government's most senior lawyer has been caught red handed advising ministers to bamboozle a court and allow technically innocent men to go to jail. Former foreign office minister — and still in the cabinet — William Waldegrave has been caught systematically and repeatedly lying to parliament. Sir Richard Scott is, as he admits, "a member of the establishment myself". His report doesn't accuse ministers of lying, but suggests that their public statements and accounts to the inquiry are, variously, "specious, unfortunate, untrue, bizarre, uninformative, duplicitous, misleading, insubstantial" and — not surprisingly — "unconvincing". While many members of parliament are most concerned that they have been systematically lied to, the more substantial issue is Britain's role as arms supplier to repressive regimes. The same magic circle of ministers, businessmen and civil servants who supplied Saddam are today sending Hawk jets to Indonesia for use against the people of East Timor. The arms manufacturers will rest assured that, should Major be replaced by Labour leader Tony Blair at the next election, no changes in Britain's arms exporting policies can be expected.[Phil Hearse writes for the British socialist journals Militant and Socialism Today.]