Marchers at the Durham Miners’ Gala, July 13, 2024Photo: Neil Terry / neilterryphotography.co.uk
DEMANDS for action by the Labour government to end child poverty, end arms sales to Israel and abolish all Tory anti-trade union laws were cheered at the 138th Durham Miners’ Gala.
The gala crowd of tens of thousands roared on Saturday as speakers called on Labour to use its record 172-seat majority in the Commons to transform society for working people in Britain.
Speakers called on the government to end arms sales to Israel and Britain’s complicity in the continuing slaughter in Gaza.
The 138th Durham Miners’ Gala began with the traditional marching of dozens of proudly raised trade union and campaign banners and brass bands through the streets of the city to the gala field for Durham Miners’ Association’s (DMA) Big Meeting.
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The gala celebrated the 40th anniversary of the miners’ strike against pit closures, and Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), praised the courage of the miners for the strike which he said “has been vindicated ever since.”
He said the strike had also seen the power of the state unleashed. “They used the press to lie, the police to batter, the courts to lock people up for defending their jobs and communities,” he said.
He warned: “That was the message from the boss class in 1984-5.
Of course, straight after 7/10, mainstream journalists were quick to promote the deployment of planes and personnel to support “our ally” in the region.
While the Sun splashed photos of British jets and frigates heading to the eastern Mediterranean with the headline “United We Stand”, the BBC basically reproduced a Ministry of Defence press release in its story, “UK to deploy Royal Navy ships to Middle East to ‘bolster security’.”
On 2 December, the Ministry of Defence released a short statement on UK military activity in the region, ostensibly to secure the release of (only) Israeli hostages.
The BBC, along with other news outlets, immediately ran a story repeating the MoD’s words verbatim (with a sprinkling of additional text from the Pentagon) as if these were to be innocent “surveillance flights” despite the fact that over 15,000 Palestinians had already been killed in brutal air strikes since 7/10.
This was followed by a flurry of highly bullish coverage of two further military interventions directly related to bolstering UK support for Israel – evidence of the “extensive defence and security cooperation” between the two countries that was embedded in the ‘Roadmap’ agreement signed in 2023 (and ignored by the media).
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Censorship by omission
This lack of interest in the British government’s military links to Israel shouldn’t suggest, however, that there is nothing to investigate.
Indeed, Declassified UK has published multiple stories on the more opaque actions of the UK government that have been largely ignored by mainstream news including the deployment of a British spy team in Israel since 7/10, the dozens of flights by UK military aircraft to Israel in this period, the surveillance activities in support of Israel and the training of Israeli military personnel in the UK. Almost none of these have been followed up in broadcast bulletins and articles.
There is one area, however, in which the media do appear to have engaged with this topic: British arms sales to Israel that, according to the Campaign against Arms Trade, amount to £576 million since 2008.
That there were 2,648 stories mentioning “arms sales to Israel” and “UK” between 7 October and 19 June 2024 might suggest this is a major area of concern for journalists.
Not so fast. 85% of all stories appeared after 1 April when three UK citizens were among seven aid workers killed when Israeli jets attacked the food convoy they were managing.
For the 177 days between 7/10 and 1 April, the media (with the exception of the Scottish National, Guardian and BBC Parliament) showed little inclination to open up discussion on the issue.
Despite serious concerns that, through its exports of weapons to the Israeli military, the UK is complicit in ongoing war crimes, major news outlets only started to show an interest in the topic once British people, not Palestinians, were the story.
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Response to Rishi Sunak’s extremism speech at Downing Street 1 March 2024. Second version of this image with text slightly altered.Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
SHIFTY Sir Keir Starmer was left squirming today as he dodged election questions about his past conduct and present and future plans.
The lacklustre Labour leader failed to come clean on Gaza, Jeremy Corbyn or his volte-face on public ownership.
Speaking in a radio phone-in, Sir Keir also repeated shadow health secretary Wes Streeting’s controversial call for junior doctors to call off their strike action.
“Don’t strike during the election campaign because we’re very close now to the opportunity for a different approach with a Labour government if we get over the line,” he said.
“So don’t strike because that causes all sorts of issues.”
On the Gaza crisis Sir Keir waffled when asked whether a Labour government would stop arms sales to Israel.
The lawyer said that he would have to “look at the legal advice” and hold “a review.”
He also refused to agree that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide.
“You need the evidence in front of you to make a decision,” he slithered, as if the whole world has not seen an amplitude of such evidence over the last nine months.
The Labour leader was also uncomfortable when he was put on the spot as to whether he would have served in a Corbyn-led cabinet had Labour won the 2017 or 2019 general elections.
He repeated his argument that he “did not think Labour would win” and insisted that the question was “hypothetical,” a silly answer because it was evident to everyone at the time that he would have done.
Human rights groups say UK is ignoring its own rules on arms exports after hundreds of Palestinians killed
Campaigners block the road in East London outside the DSEI arms fair Photo: @CAATuk / Twitter
The UK government has no plans to suspend arms sales to Israel, despite human rights campaigners warning its exports have been used to kill civilians, openDemocracy has been told.
The UK has approved millions of pounds worth of licences for military equipment to Israeli forces since 2015. They include components for F-35 fighter jets, which can deliver ground strikes and have been recently pictured in social media posts from the Israeli Air Force.
In response to Hamas’ attack on Israel which killed hundreds of civilians, Israeli forces have fired thousands of bombs into Gaza since 7 October. As of yesterday, 2,750 Palestinians have been killed and 9,700 wounded in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza strip, according to the Palestinian health ministry. This figure was given before an attack on al-Ahli Arab hospital that reportedly killed 500 people.
Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, warned last week that “Palestinians are in grave danger of mass ethnic cleansing”.
openDemocracy asked the Department of Business and Trade if it would suspend and review its export licences for arms to Israel in light of the reported civilian killings. In response, the department said the licences were “under continual review” but there were “no immediate plans to stop arms export licences to Israel”.
Emily Apple, media coordinator for the Campaign Against the Arm Trade, said: “It is disgusting that the Department for Business and Trade is refusing to suspend and review arms licences to Israel given the mounting evidence of war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza.
“UK industry is responsible for 15% of the components used in the F35 stealth combat aircraft that are being used in airstrikes, and the UK is therefore complicit in war crimes committed by the Israeli government.”
Any UK company wishing to export military goods to other nations must apply for a licence to do so. The government has a number of criteria that must be met before licences can be granted.
One of the criteria is to “not grant a licence if [the department] determines there is a clear risk that the items might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”.
Officials are also told not to grant licences if there is a “likelihood that the items would be used in the territory of another country other than for legitimate purposes including national or collective self defence”.
The campaign group Palestine Action, which has taken direct action in the UK against Israeli arms company Elbit, said it was “no surprise” that the UK government is continuing to allow arms exports.
“Numerous weapons factories, including ones owned by Israel’s largest weapons firm, continue to operate on our doorsteps, who market their weapons as “battle-tested” on the captive population of Gaza,” a spokesperson for the group said.
The UK has in the past paused export licences in response to reports that its criteria may have been breached.
In 2019, the then foreign secretary Dominic Raab suspended arms exports to NATO ally Turkey after it invaded Syria, on the grounds that it risked worsening the humanitarian crisis in the country.
The UK revoked some arms licences to Israel in 2009 after hundreds of Palestinians were killed in airstrikes by Israeli forces. During the 2o14 conflict, the government warned it would suspend licences again if hostilities continued, but ultimately did not go-ahead with the decision.
The decision to continue supplying arms to Israel comes after MPs and campaign groups raised concerns about a growing lack of transparency from the government over exports licences.
In October, an enquiry led by MPs found that despite pledges from the government to improve transparency “progress has been limited” and that “there is a worrying lack of openness and data on compliance”.
The Campaign Against the Arms Trade told openDemocracy that there is a “disturbing lack of transparency over arms sales to Israel”.
“The UK government has hidden behind exemptions and refused to supply CAAT with data regarding recent exports by Elbit subsidiaries, and a large proportion of UK sales are hidden by open export licences where it is impossible to monitor the amount of weapons sold,” it said.
Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s chief executive, urged the government to reverse its decision to continue supplying Israel with arms.
“The UK’s arms export system is based on the principle of avoiding a clear risk of British weapons being used to commit serious violations of international law. There’s mounting evidence that Israel’s military conduct in Gaza during the last week has included indiscriminate attacks which have killed and injured large numbers of Palestinian civilians.
“The government needs to follow its own rules and urgently suspend export licences for all arms transfers to Israel that risk being used to commit further unlawful attacks.”
