UK arms sales serving interest of few in Britain: Expert
Britain’s arms sale to autocratic regimes around the world, especially in the Persian Gulf region, is a long-standing policy which only serves a small portion of the country’s population, an expert says.
Rodney Shakespeare, a British analyst, said in a Thursday interview with the Press TV that the government in London was ignoring the public interest by selling arms to countries that have no moral and democratic authority.
“In fact the arms sale only benefits a small portion of the population in the UK,” said Shakespeare, adding, that the wider interest of the public would have been served if countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, two main buyers of the British arms, were “genuine modern democracies”.
He said that Britain’s warm ties with countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain was purely meant to serve the interest of members of the British government and royal family “who go to these countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and receive gold rings and boxes of jewelry.”
Shakespeare said, however, that the UK government could better serve the interests of the wider British public if it could help democratic movements in the world to oust autocratic regimes that dominate their countries.
He said that Britain’s historic state of warm ties to the South American countries has never been related to arms sale.
“... 200 years ago England helped with the overthrow of the cruel, autocratic governments in South America and as a result we have had good relations with them ever since and even with Argentina. So you see it is not just true that British interests are followed by selling arms,” said Shakespeare.
The expert said the British government had an outdated mindset which was tied to its empire mentality, adding that it has been a tradition for the empire to support the local elites against the democratic aspirations of the people, like it has been the case in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and in the Israeli-occupied Palestine.
“... unfortunately our government has an outdated mindset that is controlled by the Zionists,” he said, adding, “If we had trade with democracies there would be much more wealth created for both those countries and there would be democracy.”
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