Ten years ago, some of us were eagerly waiting to see what the new Labour government was going to do about its manifesto commitment to defence diversification. We found out later that the Defence Diversification Agency (DDA) was mostly about spin-ins and spin-offs - i.e. technology transfer between defence and civil sectors in order that both may thrive. The vision of arms conversion that some had in the 1980s - and then reawakened with the possibility of a peace dividend after the cold war - was quietly abandoned.
Now the DDA has been closed, though the government's objectives don't seem to have changed - spin-ins and spin-offs through other means. One of these other means goes by the extraordinary name of Ploughshare Innovations Ltd. This is a 'technology transfer company' set up by The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory "to actively pursue the commercial exploitation of publicly funded research for the benefit of all". Now, my understanding is that this 'all' means that the defence industry benefits still more, as it sells its technological expertise to a wider market. How about dispensing with the swords altogether and just focusing on the ploughshares?
The vision of arms conversion, rather than diversification, still has an important place and is promoted again in a recent CND report, Trident and Employment, in which the writer Steven Schofield says:
"Rather than follow this course [of building a replacement to the Trident system at Barrow in Furness], the UK could adopt an arms conversion policy that sees the savings from the cancellation of FOS [Follow-on System to the current generation of Trident] used to support civil R&D and production. In this way the UK could satisfy 50% of its electricity generation needs from a multi-billion pound investment in offshore wind and wave power, providing 25,000 to 30,000 jobs, that would more than compensate for lost military employment, while significantly reducing carbon emissions and enhancing security of supply."
Swords... who needs 'em!?
