In the dewy eyed days just after Labour's victory last May, one of the nicest, warmest, cuddliest notions to come out of the mouth of the New Labour government was that put forward by Robin Cook, that there was to be an ethical foreign policy.
Just the notion itself was enough to make New Labour sound good. For 18 years Britain's foreign policy had been run by a bunch of Tory shysters for whom the word 'ethical' simply did not exist. Money was everything. Embargo or no embargo, they would sell arms. Dictatorship, democracy, butcher or tyrant such categories were irrelevant as the government shored up the British arms industry.
Whilst subsidising the poor was something to be frowned on, subsidising the arms manufacturers was not only acceptable but highly laudable. Indeed the government went so far as guaranteeing that the taxpayer would bail out the arms manufacturers should any of their clients fail to pay. Several government ministers were also directors on the boards of arms manufacturers, and one had even gone as far as procuring prostitutes for wealthy potential customers. That particular pimp and gun runner ended up losing all in the courts.
Eventually, as things began to unravel and it was shown that the government had connived to sell arms to the infamous 'Butcher of Baghdad', who only a little time earlier had been the 'Beacon of Goodness of Baghdad', the government fled, leaving a few arms dealers to carry the can. There was not an ethic in sight in the whole nasty farce. Cue Robin Cook!
However, fine words butter no parsnips. What of deeds? Strangely enough, the first thing Robin did was to explain that all ethics had to be suspended until current unethical contracts ran out. One of the first beneficiaries of this 'ethics in abeyance policy' was, irony of ironies, the Suharto regime in Indonesia. Not a good start, then. Nor did things get any better on the ethical front, when Robin, a long time socialist, fell head over heels in love. I talk not of his marital affairs, but of his deep, passionate and loveblind affair with Bill Clinton.
While the rest of the world stood aloof or was at best lukewarm to the idea of once again raining bombs on innocent Iraqi civilians, Robin seemed to have taken up the role of the army shrink in the Arlo Guthrie song 'Alice's Restaurant', who leaps up and down with his potential recruit to the Vietnam War gleefully shouting, 'Kill, kill, kill.' That it didn't come to that owed nothing to Robin's ethics, and everything to popular resistance to the project, particularly by the masses in the Middle East.
Never mind Robin could still march on. Now it appeared that new ethics meant that not only was the government to be hand in hand with arms dealers, but would also give a nod and a wink to a firm that sells not just machines that kill, but the men who'll do the killing for you. Perhaps in all this the problem was Robin. It's all very well going on about ethics, but what do we know of Cook's ethical qualifications? Perhaps he was just the wrong man in the wrong job.
It was just the right time for a man with a Degree, Higher Diploma, nay Masters and Doctorate in Ethics, the world's second greatest Christian, Tony Blair! Tony didn't let us down. 'Look, ya, all right, mercenaries are not nice people, but they helped get rid of an evil dictator in Sierra Leone. In the battle of ethical conflict, the higher ethic won democracy triumphed so what's the problem?'
Ah, yes, and Britain's great ally in this victory for democracy? Er, Nigeria, the most brutal and undemocratic regime in the region. Could it possibly be that diamonds are an ethical government's best friend. Sadly Tony seemed to be failing us. Nor did things improve when he was seen kissing the backsides of royal Saudi potentates with that wonderful slogan 'Buy Bloodshed. Buy British'.
All this is to protect British jobs, we are told. It's funny how whenever ethics are challenged it's jobs, not profits, that are the motivating factor. You can imagine, can't you, the arms manufacturer whose reasons for building weapons of destruction are entirely benevolent. 'Well, if there's three things I hate in this world it's unemployment, dictatorship and human suffering, so I build armaments to provide jobs for my compatriots, get rid of despots, and generally bring joy to all who come into contact with them.'
The truth is that like all other capitalist enterprises they will employ as few workers as they possibly need.
Nor will the nature of the regime they deal with matter. It never has. It never will. Just as the US backed every tinpot dictator in Central and South America, as long as they were deemed friendly, just as successive Australian governments, Labour and Tory, have bent over backwards to say what a nice reforming man Suharto was, so Britain cuddles up to dictators, brutes and mass murderers, as long as they're friendly to British interests and their trade is profitable.
There can be no ethical arms trade and, no ethical foreign policy. Therefore, with a government committed to the market, to profit, to capitalism, talk of ethics can sound like a breath of fresh air, but in reality it ends up with the same foul stench of chicanery and immorality as its predecessor.
Who killed Cock Robin? Why, the arms trade, of course!