Britain’s crony government may only be a junior partner to US imperialism nowadays, but its participation in mass murder and destruction in Gaza and Yemen show once and for all that British imperial crimes didn’t stop in the 20th century. And it’s not about ‘keeping people safe’ in the UK. In fact, there are many reasons to believe Britain’s out-of-control military-government love-in actually makes us less safe.
Much of our focus is rightly on the UK government’s complicity in Israel’s genocidal assault on occupied Gaza since 2023, but there is also a long history of British tyranny in Yemen. And this has come into focus yet again with Britain’s involvement in the escalating bombing of anti-genocide forces there in recent weeks.
There are a number of important groups and individuals that are fighting to expose the immense, corrupting power that the arms trade has over Britain’s political system, and how people around the world – including in the UK – suffer as a result. Below is some vital context – both new and old – to inform us as we fight back.
UK was key in Yemen’s humanitarian catastrophe
Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has just released its “Trends in UK arms exports in 2023” report. And it reminded us that, “despite overwhelming evidence of war crimes”, the British government allowed the UK arms industry to remain “central to the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen” that devastated the country from 2015 to 2022 (when a truce took hold). Britain ignored “the clear risks to civilian life and international law” in Yemen, paving the way for it to do the same with Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza from 2023 onwards. But perhaps even more than with the Gaza genocide, “the UK bears significant responsibility for the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen”.
The Saudi war on Yemen had killed around 377,000 people directly or indirectly by late 2021. And following the 2022 truce, 21.6 million people (about half of them children) still needed aid. (The cessation of hostilities, meanwhile, helped to significantly reduce tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023, which was not a pleasing development for Israeli-US-UK interests in the Middle East.)
The revolving door between arms companies and government enabled Yemen’s decimation
BAE Systems – the “biggest UK arms company” – has no interest in human rights, as we can see from its heavy involvement with authoritarian regimes. It’s been very close to Saudi Arabia since the 1980s, for example, and it enabled the Saudi decimation of Yemen from 2015 onwards. Its “close ties with the UK government” helped to ensure there was no accountability, though. As CAAT pointed out, many BAE exports “take place under open licences, making them nearly impossible to scrutinise”. This is the case with “as much as half of the UK’s arms exports” (including those of key parts for Israel’s F-35 jets of destruction).
BAE, in short, “profits from war and repression, often with the tacit or explicit support of UK government policy”. And that’s no wonder, considering:
BAE personnel have been seconded into government departments, while former officials move easily into BAE and other defence firms — blurring the lines between public interest and corporate profit.
CAAT insisted that:
The revolving door between government and arms companies undermines efforts to apply ethical standards in arms exports.
It’s perhaps no surprise to hear, then, that:
The UK signed £14.5 billion of arms export contracts in 2023 alone — the second-highest annual total on record.
The increasing militarisation of Europe amid the artificial extension of the Ukraine proxy war, meanwhile, also served the arms profiteers well – but “with long-term implications for peace and security”.
Documenting Britain’s role in Yemen’s bloodshed
Unredacted has added to the focus on Yemen recently with the release of a project that:
brings together a large collection of documents relating to US-UK military and political involvement in the Yemen war, primarily through its support for the Saudi-led coalition.
It explains that:
Many of these documents shed light on the impact of the war on Yemeni civilians, UK military training of the Royal Saudi Air Force, the history of UK military relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, the legal challenge by Campaign Against Arms Trade in relation to UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia, and decision-making within government about the implementation of UK arms export rules.
To accompany this, Middle East Eye published an article highlighting Britain’s response to the ‘Great Hall Massacre’ in Yemen, which caused the US to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia. UK officials ignored the warnings and kept arms flowing – as a foreign office whistleblower had previously exposed. The UK government then tried to prevent journalists and academics from getting their hands on information about what happened. The understaffing and ineffectiveness of the parliamentary committee responsible for arms export oversight (CAEC), meanwhile, didn’t help matters.
Politicians’ behaviour regarding the Saudi destruction of Yemen, and their ability to get away with it, then paved the way for the same to happen with Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Again, the government officials ignored warnings and kept arms flowing, with the help of political pressure, bureaucratic evasion, and legal manipulation. They did this in full disrespect of arms export laws and human rights, and in full submission to corporate and imperial interests.
The current bombing of Yemen on behalf of Israel’s genocide
These efforts to highlight the destructive impact of the toxic alliance of arms companies and corrupt politicians are all the more important considering Britain’s ongoing support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and for US attacks on Yemen to try and stop its solidarity with Gaza. They also remind us of the long history of British crimes in Yemen.
Britain occupied part of Yemen in 1839, using it as a colonial stopover on the way to and from India. The port city of Aden even “became the main British base for her Far and Middle East interests… after the loss of the Suez Canal” In 1956. But as the struggle for freedom advanced in the 1960s, Britain used “increasingly ruthless repressive measures” to try and suppress local resistance. The “harsh and often indiscriminate” repression failed, though, and British forces left in 1967.
In the 60s, Britain backed “shifty, unreliable and treacherous” forces in Yemen and used violent, covert tactics to impede development and protect its colonial occupation. “As many as 200,000” people may have died during this period.
Then, a turbulent post-colonial period of dictatorships kept many Yemeni people in poverty. A useless, corrupt dictator who opportunistically served US interests faced a revolution in 2011, and then Saudi Arabia’s brutal and pointless bombing campaign only worsened the situation for ordinary people.
Britain is “well aware of the complexities of Yemeni resistance”, as Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) has pointed out. Yet it “now risks repeating the mistakes of the past”.
IT’S. ALL. ABOUT. THE. MONEY.
Why would Britain increase its involvement in what the mainstream media once called “the next Afghanistan”? Why would it enter a quagmire that does not serve the interests of ordinary people in the UK? As AOAV said:
Britain’s deep entanglement in the security industry… reflects a dangerous fusion of state interests with private defence profits.
The country’s “deep economic and strategic ties with the Gulf“ dictatorships, meanwhile, also play a key role. British corporations want profit – and oil and arms are great ways to make money for unscrupulous, unethical actors.
However, AOAV insisted:
by launching airstrikes and closely aligning itself with the US and Israel, the UK risks reinforcing the very instability it claims to oppose.
Why? Because involvement in Yemen:
entrenches [Britain] deeper in a widening regional conflict—one that strengthens narratives of Western aggression and increases the likelihood of further retaliation.
If the money keeps flowing, though, the corporate-government alliance is happy.
The fightback against politicians’ destructive lies
Death and destruction are not necessary. And one voice consistently challenging the war machine is Andrew Feinstein. Standing in solidarity with other independent left-wingers in the 2024 election, the anti-racist and anti-militarist campaigner challenged Labour Party leader Keir Starmer in his constituency, reducing Starmer’s majority significantly.
Feinstein and his colleagues have been raising funds to publish a book that opposes the:
unholy alliance of money, power, and violence [that] has been trying to convince the world that every war is the last war for peace, every civilian death is necessary collateral in the pursuit of human rights, and every weapon sold is bought to make us safe.
They seek to show how:
the ongoing slaughter in Gaza and Yemen have exposed this rhetoric as lies.
Feinstein has previously called the arms racket “the world’s most corrupt trade”, saying “it accounts for around 40% of all corruption in all global trade”. And this is because of “a veil of national-security-imposed secrecy” which allows:
politicians, corporate executives, military leaders, intelligence leaders [to] do things on arms deals that they wouldn’t do in any other sector because they just wouldn’t get away with it.
As a result of bribery and impunity, the war machine keeps on raking in money at the expense of humanity, systemically undermining so-called democracies like the UK in the process.
Fortunately, groups and individuals like CAAT, Unredacted, AOAV, and Feinstein are helping to expose the war machine’s powerful grip on British politics, and the way people in Yemen, Gaza, Britain, and elsewhere suffer as a result. Because by truly understanding this situation, we can unite to fight back.
Featured image via the Canary
