DUP rejoice as money robbed from healthcare to feed war machine

As Stormont’s strained finances fail to hold together essential services, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) have hailed £50 million being thrown away on the machinery of mass death.

Speaking in response to the launch of Westminster’s Northern Ireland Defence Growth Deal, party leader Gavin Robinson said:

I welcome the Government’s commitment to invest £50 million in Northern Ireland’s Defence Growth Deal. This is a significant opportunity to strengthen a sector that already supports around 9,000 jobs across Northern Ireland.

Of course, military spending is an incredibly ineffective way to create jobs, compared to investment in education or health care. A Brown University study found that, in the United States:

…military spending (including both federal defense spending and various private military industries) produces an average of five jobs per $1 million in spending, including both direct jobs and jobs in the supply chain.

By contrast, 13 jobs are created for every $1 million in education spending – nearly three times as much employment. Healthcare spending creates 84% more jobs than military spending, while infrastructure and clean energy create from 24% to 64% more.

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However, as Clara Mattei recently pointed out, military spending is the most effective way to boost an economy without giving anything that benefits the working class.

If there’s a good public health care system, you’re less worried about losing your job, as you’ll always get treated if you’re ill. That gives you more power relative to your boss. A political class bought off by capital – i.e. employers – don’t want you to have that power. Military spending can grow the economy at least a bit, without this ‘flaw’.

War spending linked to destruction of climate and basic rights

Brown University has conducted a wealth of additional research into the costs of ploughing money into what our own Joe Glenton refers to as ‘Big Death‘. Among their findings were that:

War contributes significantly to climate change: The U.S. Defense Department is one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters.

Also:

[Post-11 September 2001] wars have been accompanied by erosions in civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad.

By sheer happenstance, Britain’s ramping up of military spending has also coincided with its destruction of basic rights.

Robinson continued to celebrate the deal that Labour minister Luke Pollard said is an “incredible opportunity” for the north of Ireland:

This funding should be a foundation for further growth, keeping Northern Ireland competitive and firmly positioned within the UK’s defence and security industry.

Of course for a unionist, this is another boon of British defence spending in the Six Counties – it ties the region closer to Westminster. London is going to be less keen on a united Ireland if it’s going to lose a lot of defence tech in the process. On the other hand, the presence of war factories also makes the north of Ireland a target for violent retaliation in the event that Britain faces an actual threat, instead of the ones the press hallucinates.

Sinn Féin speak up but must do more to shut down arms racket

Sinn Féin voiced their opposition to the expansion of the murder machine, and refused to send a representative to the launch event. Party leader and Stormont first minister Michell O’Neill described it as “weapons of war over people”. She went on:

I would much prefer, if I had £50 million, to be spending it in other areas that are really, really crying out for support right now, whether that be people through the cost-of-living crisis or our health service or education or child care.

However, Sinn Féin has a far from perfect record on the arms industry, and has often had to be dragged by activists to a civilised position on the matter. They backed the presence of a Raytheon factory in Derry which was ultimately shut down by local direct action campaigners. Similarly, they were ambivalent about the north of Ireland being used as a base for genocidal F-35 warplanes until local activists brought the matter into the spotlight.

The Northern Ireland Defence Growth Deal forms part of Britain’s Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS), in which they will place defence hubs all over Britain. This is a tried and tested method of embedding the war machine for years to come. You put a factory in as many constituencies as possible to ensure there will be plenty of MPs voicing opposition to job losses should a government ever attempt to roll it all back.

Behind the jargon: the truth on funding Big Death

The official documents of the DIS are overloaded with incomprehensible promotional jargon. Fortunately the Canary has joined the AI race by investing literally pennies in reprogramming an old Raspberry Pi held together with masking tape, which we’ve used to translate this shite for your enlightenment. Apparently the DIS will be:

• Making defence an engine for growth

Translation – We’ve chosen the least effective way to grow the economy because it won’t give you proles anything useful

• Backing UK-based businesses

Translation – We’re doing a big corporate handout

• Positioning the UK at the leading edge of defence innovation

Translation – We’re going to come up with even more effective ways of helping ‘Israel’ kill kids

• Developing a resilient UK industrial base.

Translation – We’re going to build lots of factories, but not for anything useful

• Transforming procurement and acquisition systems.

Translation – We’ll make buying stuff even more corrupt than it already is

• Forging new and enduring partnerships.

Translation – If you’re a tyrant and/or genocidaire we haven’t sold to before, please give us a call

Long story short – this is a racket of grift and mass death. The focus on war keeps the public distracted by illusory foreign threats, and avoids spending on things that actually benefit most people.

The sound of more, better paying jobs sounds nice, right? Then let’s have extra nurses and teachers on higher salaries. Jobs that improve life, rather than end it.

Featured image via the Canary

By Robert Freeman

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