Tories' arms bonanza

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AS UNEMPLOYMENT has rocketed and the devastation from social spending cuts has mushroomed across Thatcher's Britain, one area at least is booming: military expenditure. Irradiated in the glow from the Tory cold war policies, and given a boost by the Falklands war, military spending for 198384 will top £16,000 billion - a rise of 22% in real terms since the Tories came to office. During the same period public service spending has gone down 9.5%. "The lift off in defence spending includes massive increases in pay for the armed forces designed to drum up new recruits from the battalions of the unemployed, and also the best part of £l billion per year for the next 12 years to purchase the new and lethal Trident submarines and missiles.

The election of the 'Iron Lady' in May 1979 had been preceded by salvoes of Tory anti-soviet new burst in the ans race led by US President Carter. Carter's plans, since expanded even more recklessly by Reagan, included not only a vast new missiles system - the tenwarhead MX - to be based in the USA, but also the development of new "conventional' weaponry and a 'Rapid Deployment Force' for use in any future Middle East conflict.

Reagan's schemes include the ten tons of deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe, along with vast arsenals of Cruise missiles on US ships and plans, in an all-round $i.6 trillion five-year build-up of nuclear and conventional weapons, which would increase the US stockpile of nuclear warheads by no less than 65%. There are moves afoot to base US nuclear missiles in South Africa and in US outposts in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.

Against this titanic effort, the Tory contribution to the arms race may seem a mere pin-prick: but it would be a big mistake to underestimate it.

In launching the Trident project, Thatcher has given the go-ahead to construct four gigantic nuclear-powered submarines (three times the size of an average destroyer), each carrying 64 missiles armed with a total of up to 896 warheads.

This, compared with the present British strike force of 64 Polaris missiles, is a fourteenfold increase.

On top of this, the Tories are planning to double to 412 the number of aircraft with a nuclear strike capacity. Nuclear stockpiles will double or treble over the next 12 years if the Tories have their way, reaching by 1995 the equivalent of ten tons of TNT for every man, woman and child in Britain.

Isolation

Of course it would be crazy to see this Tory war effort in isolation from that of Reagan. In particular Thatcher has led the pack of European governments prepared to give house-room to American land-based Cruise missiles. 160 are to be sited in Britain - 96 at Greenham Common and 64 at Molesworth in East Anglia - if the Tories are re-elected.

A tactful shroud of mystery hangs over exactly how many US military bases there are in Britain — and how many of these hold stocks of nuclear weapons. It appears that there are at least 52 main sites, including the long range bomber stations at Lakenheath and Upper Heyford, the Poseidon nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch in Scotland, and the arsenal for nuclear shells at Burtonwood.

Alongside this array of nuelear hardware, Thatcher's gang, like the USA it on a much reduced scale, sees the armed forces as not so much for 'defence' as playing a global role in pursuit of imperialist diplomatic and military advantage.

Hence, in the wake the Falklands war, the Tories are committed to a long term massive 3,000-4,000 strong garrison, equipped with the latest weaponry, sustained at enormous cost (£424 million in 1983-4 alone) to 'show the flag' of imperialism in the South Atlantic.

Entrenched

British troops are also expensively entrenched in the six counties of Northern Ireland, and, at an annual cost of £1.9 billion, in NATO bases in West Germany.

Obviously, unlike the US generals two thousand miles away, no British political or military leader could seriously expect to escape a nuclear war in Western Europe. Yet Thatcher, Heseltine and other Tories have slavishly echoed those American warmongers who have argued in favour of NATO's policy of using nuclear weapons first in the event of serious military conflict in Europe.

This is why the Tories' plans - temporarily held up for the election - include measures to compel local councils, council workers, and health workers to engage in so-called 'Civil Defence' preparations.

In effect the plans amount to conscripting the services of tens of thousands of civilians in rehearsing for the ghastly prospect of a nuclear war which in reality would annihilate them all.

Sustains

The Tories - and some right wing union leaders - claim that the military effort sustains jobs in the armaments industry. Yet the fact is that the sums expended are huge - and the potential to convert munitions plants to peaceful use, and divert the workforce to socially useful employment is correspondingly large.

There will be work for the foreseeable future to occupy the scientific research staff NIGHT VISION 6O66LES MIGHT currently employed on the British nuclear programme, who would need to find safe means of disposing of the dismantled warheads of scrapped nuclear missiles, bombs and shells.

In any event experience over the past period shows that rising military spending has run alongside a fall in civilian employment - and indeed the closure of naval dockyards and repair facilities.

Even in the USA, where Reagan's much bigger runaway arms spree does appear to be creating a boost for employment in some of the vast military manufacturers, the cost is estimated at one job per $120,000 spent - four times as much as civilian jobs programmes. Westinghouse expect sales revenue to double, but their workforce to expand There is no argument that justifies the retention of Britain's nuclear arsenal, or the sustained increase in military spending to which the Thatcher government is pledged if reelected.

Vote Labour on June 9 - and keep up both the fight inside the Labour Party, and the campaigning on the streets, for nuclear disarmament. government spent £1 billion in the 1970s.

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Tory plans would build up a stockpile of

TNT for every person in Brit. ain by 1995. Harry Sloan looks at these plans and why they should be fought.