Steven Schofield has long been advocating arms conversion and has written extensively on the theme. Many of us were disappointed about the Labour government's approach when it came into power in '97. Instead of conversion away from arms production, they set up the Defence Diversification Agency which was as much about 'spin-in' from the non-military sector as diversifying (spin-offs) from arms production. The most recent CAAT newsletter reports that Steven Schofield has just written a new report ' 'Making Arms, Wasting Skills: Alternatives to Militarism and Arms Production'. It doesn't seem to be on their website yet (though keep checking, as I am sure it will be soon).
The printed newsletter quotes parts of the Executive Summary, which advocates deep cuts in defence procurement and cancellation of Trident, amongst other things. And along with this, a 'multi-billion pound investment in renewable energy.... [that would] also generate more jobs than those lost from the restructuring of the arms industry. This way the UK would take a leading role in establishing a new form of international security framework based on disarmament and sustainable economic development.'
Meanwhile, the successor body to at least part of the Defence Diversification Agency, is Ploughshare Innovations which 'manages technology transfer on behalf of Dstl, the Ministry of Defence's Defence Science & Technology Laboratory; an organisation of some 3,500 plus staff devoted to providing the UK Government with independent expertise on defence and security-related issues.'
It's worth remembering at this point another group which incorporates the imagery of swords into plougshares in its name, Trident Ploughshares whose activists have pledged to disarm the UK Trident nuclear weapons system in a non-violent, open, peaceful, safe and fully accountable manner. Their next major initiative to this end is Aldermaston Big Blockade on 27th October. Perhaps Ploughshare Innovations hope to disarm the potency of ploughshare actions of this nature by adopting the name.... Now, how about a joint project in which the disarmers do their bit and the technological innovators do theirs, as Steve Schofield has suggested. That would be some interesting joined-up ploughshare thinking, even though there may be a bit of culture clash to work through in the first instance....
