St Athan & the Future of Wales

See Cynefin y Werin
(Remember the campaign against St Athans started here with the women of Wales!! St Athans PFI Military Base 2 Jan 2007)

Paper by Stuart Tannock 2007
Introduction

Ever since Wales gained its own national assembly in 1999, Welsh politicians have spoken of building Wales as a world nation, respected globally for its distinct Welsh identity. First Minister Rhodri Morgan talks passionately of putting “clear red water between Cardiff and London.” Plaid Cymru commits itself to social justice, the health of the environment and decentralised socialism. The Welsh Liberal Democrats claim to offer “real alternatives.” The Welsh are committed, it is said, to values of community, voice, collectivism and social democracy. In January 2007, a quite different and altogether sobering reality behind such rhetoric became starkly apparent. Hitching its dreams of national emergence to the global fortunes and adventures of the British military and a consortium of some of the world’s most powerful arms investors and producers (Carlyle, Qinetiq, Raytheon), Wales announced what was by far its largest investment project since devolution: a £14 billion deal to construct a massive, new, privately-operated training centre for the entire British armed forces, to be located in the village of St Athan, some thirteen miles outside of Cardiff. More sobering still, not one of the four main political parties in the “new,” “distinct” and “devolved” Wales stood up to oppose the development; neither did the Wales Trades Union Congress, nor any of the principal Welsh newspapers.

What is the St Athan Defence Training Academy?

The St Athan Defence Academy, if final contracts are all signed as expected, will open fully in 2013 as a mega-training centre or “university” for all three services of the British armed forces. It will be a private facility operated by the Metrix Consortium, which is a joint venture company of Land Securities Trillium and Qinetiq, in partnership with other sub-contracting companies: AgustaWestland, City & Guilds, Currie & Brown, Dalkia, EDS, Laing O’Rourke, Nord Anglia, Raytheon, Serco, Sodexho and the Open University. The Academy represents a major step in New Labour’s effort to “modernise” defence training in the UK, through promoting closer integration between the Army, Navy and Air Force, embracing high technology solutions to military problems, and outsourcing to the private sector. In the future, all British military recruits will come to St Athan to complete Phases Two and Three of their training, taking specialist courses in subjects such as engineering, information systems, communications, logistics, administration, policing, security, languages, intelligence and photography.

Far from being a peripheral or inconsequential development, the St Athan Academy promises to play a pivotal role in defining the future identity and direction of the new and devolved Wales. It represents one of the largest, if not the largest government investments in Welsh history.[1] It is also anticipated by Welsh developers and politicians to have major impacts on the entire regional infrastructure (education, transportation, housing, health) and economy (from aerospace to tourism). Despite its significance, however, the St Athan Academy deal was pushed through with virtually no public discussion and debate. St Athan boosters focused almost exclusively on the economic benefits that the military academy promises to bring to Wales, particularly in terms of new jobs for local people. There are real questions as to how many new jobs – and how many high quality new jobs – St Athan will create for locals. But even before we get to these questions, there is the core matter, which has yet to be addressed publicly in Wales, of what St Athan/Metrix actually represents in the world at large. What exactly is Wales committing itself to when it signs onto the St Athan deal?

(1) A Future Based on Militarism

With St Athan, Wales jumps from being one of the least militarized nations – it currently has the lowest defence spending of any region in the UK[2] – to the forefront of global militarist presence. The words of Metrix CEO Mike Hayle could not be more transparent about what the St Athan Academy vision entails:

Our aim is that by 2013 if you travelled anywhere in the world and talked about military training, people would say that St Athan was the only place to go. It will genuinely be on the world map. People will come from Australia, the Middle East and other parts of the world to train…. The academy will captivate the world.[3]

Welsh politicians could have insisted that the future development of Wales – and beyond Wales, Britain – lay not in investing in the military, but instead in technology and education projects geared to addressing problems of climate change, alternative energy production, disease eradication, sustainable food production, affordable housing, services for the poor and so on. They could have challenged the British government’s massive military outlay and questioned the factors that have led Britain to the world’s second largest military budget.[4] They could have insisted, at the very least, on a moratorium on any further investments in the future of the British military until the troops had been brought back from Afghanistan and Iraq, and a full public investigation, accounting and trial of Britain’s current wars and occupations had been held. Instead, they have opted to commit the future of Wales to a culture and economy based squarely on militarism.

(2) A Stand Against the International Victims of British Military Aggression

While many in Wales and the rest of Britain hold on to an idealized notion of the British armed forces, the real-world nature and role of Britain’s military has sadly all too often been a different story. When Wales opens its arms to the British armed forces at St Athan, it is embracing an institution that, in collaboration with the United States, has recently triggered in Iraq “an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide”[5] as well as “the largest long-term population movement in the Middle East since the displacement of the Palestinians in 1948.”[6] Between March 2003 and July 2006, more than 650,000 Iraqis (or 2.5% of the population) lost their lives because of the British/American occupation;[7] by early 2007, 1.7 million Iraqis had been internally displaced and 2 million were refugees in other countries.[8] This is an occupation, moreover, that is both unjust and, in the eyes of international law, illegal.

Consider what the equivalent would be: if the British military were to do to Wales what their occupation with America has done now to Iraq, then within the next four years, the entire city of Swansea would be evacuated and exiled overseas; all of Newport and Neath would be evacuated and dispersed to refugee camps across Wales; and the populations of Llandudno, Bangor, Aberystwyth, Abergavenny, Monmouth and Newtown would be wiped out and killed off completely, every last man, woman and child among them. This is not to forget that unemployment across Wales would have soared to 70%, health and education systems would have collapsed beyond all recognition, and the country’s remaining residents would have suffered a complete and utter loss of any personal security. In the recent round of celebration over the St Athan investment package, the self-interest of the small, would-be nation of Wales is being pursued in callous disregard for the devastating fate of another nation that has been systematically raped and destroyed.

(3) A Commitment to Selling Welsh Youth on Military Work

It is not just Iraqis and Afghanis whom the British military has killed in its illegal and unjust operations overseas. In welcoming the British armed forces to Wales, Welsh politicians are embracing an employer that has become one of the leading workplace killers and maimers of young Welshmen today. In Iraq alone, at least nine Welsh soldiers have been killed since 2003.[9] Another, Gary Boswell, 20, from Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire, hung himself from a swingset in a children’s playground after a tour of duty in Basra. His parents said that “their son had suffered depression on returning home [from Iraq] but had never spoken of his experiences.”[10] In 2005, Welsh troops discussed on the pages of the Western Mail and over the airwaves of BBC Radio Cymru “how the tragedy they encountered when war broke out haunts them two years on.” They spoke “of seeing young men, fellow soldiers and friends, being killed at their side, of carrying coffins and of surviving roadside bombs – and of how life in a battle zone made returning to life at home so difficult.”[11]

Instead of condemning the military for causing the utterly unnecessary loss and disruption of young Welsh lives, Welsh politicians are now preparing to commit themselves to a project that is oriented explicitly toward selling more Welsh youth on the attractions and justness of military work. The St Athan project came into existence in the first place because of New Labour’s agenda of modernising defence training in the UK. The Ministry of Defense’s (2001) Modernising Defence Training report speaks of “four key drivers which underpin the need for change in our training and education.” One of these drivers is the fact that “the lifestyle and expectations of today’s young people have changed dramatically.” We must “meet the aspirations of recruits from a new generation,” the Ministry of Defence insists, “if we are to recruit and retain the people we need in an increasingly competitive market.”[12] The goal, in other words, is to do a better job of selling young people on the military. Enter St Athan. St Athan will be a brand new, purpose-built campus that offers “top grade single living accommodation for all ranks, with single en-suite rooms for many.”[13] It will have “fantastic facilities,” including a cinema, bowling alley, bars and restaurants on site. It will even have an Olympic-size pool, open a year before the London Olympics begin, that will be accessible to civilians and local children, so that they too can see the pleasures and luxuries a life in the military can offer. [14]

(4) An Acceptance of Green-washing Over True Environmental Accounting

Even environmentalism is fair game for exploitation to sell the youth of Wales and Britain on the justness of the British military. The Metrix Consortium deliberately put environmental concerns at the top of its development plans since, as CEO Mike Hayle explains, “We are dealing with teenagers who are very much more environmentally aware than 20 or 30 years ago when I joined the armed forces. We have to make sure we fit in with their views on environmental issues.”[15] Never mind the environmental devastation that the British and American militaries are wreaking across the Middle East, or the fact that some experts fear that more Iraqis and other citizens of the region will end up dying from the environmental pollution caused by the war and occupation than from the actual military conflict itself.[16] Recruits coming to the new Defence Training Academy can rest assured knowing that St Athan is committed to green space, sustainable practices, energy conservation, waste reduction, recycling, biodiversity, conservation of natural resources, pollution control, the protection and extension of wildlife habitats.[17] We may not give a damn about children in Iraq – over 260,000 of whom are thought to have died since the 2003 invasion[18] – but we can be happy to know that the Metrix Consortium is taking great pains to safely relocate a colony of great crested newts that has been nesting in the St Athan site before they commence construction.[19]

(5) A Commitment to Military Privatisation

Committing to St Athan is about committing to a political project of privatising the British military. The government’s proposed defence training modernisation, in fact, constitutes “one of the biggest, and potentially most lucrative, private finance initiatives … in UK history.”[20] This has been the primary concern of the public sector unions outside of Wales who currently represent military training staff, and who are threatening strike action over the privatisation of defence training agenda.[21] Privatisation of the military, many fear, as is the case in other sectors, can undermine public accountability and erode ideas of public service and the public good, while achieving little if anything in the way of cost savings.[22] “The only winners in the privatisation of defence training,” says Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, “are the shareholders of the Metrix Consortium.”[23]

(6) A Welcome Mat for the World’s Largest Missile Manufacturer

Just who is the Metrix Consortium that the politicians of Wales are welcoming into their country? Even the most casual look through corporate watchdog sites quickly reveals a rogue’s gallery. The most egregious member among these is probably Raytheon, whose work is described as being “at the core of the training system redesign” in the Metrix project.[24] Raytheon happens to be the world’s largest missile manufacturer. It was a Raytheon bomb that hit the Shu’ale market in Baghdad in 2003, killing at least 62 civilians.[25] It was Raytheon guidance systems that directed the bomb that hit Qana in 2006, killing at least 28 civilians, including 16 children. It was Raytheon depleted uranium-tipped GBU-28 “bunker buster” bombs that were rushed by the United States to Israel (via the UK) in the summer of 2006 to be used in the destruction and poisoning of the people of Lebanon.[26] Also concerning about a company with whom the British state is about to sign a massive services contract is the fact that Raytheon has had multiple instances of past business misconduct, including repeated offenses of cost inflation, overpricing, false work claims, and the illegal obtaining of secret government documents.[27] Many of the political leaders of Wales claim to be opposed to the production and use of weapons of mass destruction. Why are they now laying out the welcome mat for one of the world’s largest producers of just such weapons?

Conclusion

There are, no doubt, many other concerns that need to be raised about the St Athan Defence Academy project. What will be the impact of the Academy on local quality of life – on traffic congestion, for example, and housing affordability? What will be the impact on Welsh education, and the social and political values that are taught to Welsh children and youth? Already, Welsh politicians and developers alike anticipate that neighbouring schools, colleges and universities in Wales will be pulled into St Athan’s orbit, re-orienting themselves to provide the skills and outlooks demanded by the British military. For those who are committed to a nuclear-free Wales, they should be aware that the Royal Navy’s Maritime Engineering School, which contains the Nuclear Systems Group, is projected to move from HMS Sultan to St Athan by 2017. The Nuclear Systems Group trains the Naval Officers responsible for operating the nuclear submarines that are the heart and soul of Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons system.

I write these words in the aftermath of the January 2007 announcement at Westminster of the success of the Metrix/St Athan development bid. For many of us in Wales, this was the first we had even heard of the project. It may seem that St Athan is a done deal, that the opportunity to question and challenge it has passed, and that speaking or acting out now is a matter of doing too little, too late. “The Rubicon has been crossed,” as one concerned observer said to me. We can only hope that this is not true. Though it would, of course, have been preferable to organise against the St Athan Defence Academy at earlier points during its development campaign, there are still contracts to be signed and details to be ironed out. At the very least, before any of these things happen, the people of Wales – and indeed, the citizens of the rest of the world – deserve a full public discussion and debate of the St Athan project so that they can be fully informed of exactly what it entails. Far too much is at stake here to demand anything less. For in the end, St Athan is not just about a local development strategy. It is about the future of Wales, and its place in the wider world beyond.

Notes

[1] BBCNEWS (2007) “Military Base Brings 5,000 Jobs.” January 17.
[2] Peter Gripaios (2002) “Regional Spending: A Comment on Mackay.” Regional Studies 36(6): 685-689.
[3] Peter Collins (2007) “’We Want You as Our Recruits….’” South Wales Echo. February 15.
[4] George Monbiot (2006) “Only Paranoia Can Justify the World’s Second Biggest Military Budget.” Guardian. August 14.
[5] Les Roberts (2007) “Iraq’s Death Toll is Far Worse Than Our Leaders Admit.” Independent. February 15.
[6] Mark Tran (2007) “UN Launches £30m Iraq Refugees Appeal.” Guardian. January 9.
[7] Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy & Les Roberts (2006) “Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey.” Lancet. October 11.
[8] Mark Tran (2007) “UN Launches £30m Iraq Refugees Appeal.” Guardian. January 9.
[9] BBCNEWS (2007) “British Military Fatalities in Iraq.” February 10.
[10] BBCNEWS (2004) “Family’s Plea After Soldier’s Suicide.” October 1.
[11] Aled Blake (2005) “Welsh Troops Tell How Iraq Still Haunts Them.” Western Mail. March 19.
[12] UK Ministry of Defence (2001) Modernising Defence Training: Report of the Defence Training Review. London: MoD: p.6.
[13] Defence News (2007) “Metrix Consortium Awarded Preferred Bidder Status Under Defence Training Review Programme.” January 17.
[14] Tomos Livingstone (2007) “What a Week for Wales.” Western Mail. January 20.
[15] Fiona Harvey (2006) “Environment Ranks Highly in Military Training Site Proposal.” Financial Times. June 9.
[16] Michelle Dixon & Spencer Fitz-Gibbon (2003) “The Environmental Consequences of the War on Iraq.” London: Green Party; Solana Pyne (2003) “Leaving a Mess in Mesopotamia.” Village Voice. April 16-23.
[17] Andrew Davies (2006) “St Athan: Wales Goes for Gold.” Western Mail. October 28.
[18] Colin Brown (2007) “The Battle to Save Iraq’s Children.” Independent. January 19.
[19] Fiona Harvey (2006) “Environment Ranks Highly in Military Training Site Proposal.” Financial Times. June 9.
[20] Robin Pagnamenta (2006) “Regions Go to War Over GBP 10 Bn Defence Training Shake-Up.” Sunday Express. July 30.
[21] Prospect (2007) “PFI Training Decision Slammed by Specialist Union.” January 17; Greg Pitcher (2007) “Civil Service Threatens Strike Over Privatization of Training in Armed Forces.” Personnel Today. January 23.
[22] Deborah Avant (2005) The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[23] Public and Commercial Services Union (2007) “Union Anger Over Defence Privatisation.” January 17.
[24] Tim Mahon (2006) “Drafting a Vision: Massive Changes in Store for British Armed Forces Training.” Training and Simulation Journal. August 21.
[25] Cahal Milmo (2003) “Iraq: Marketplace Deaths Caused by Raytheon Missile.” Independent. April 2.
[26] Goretti Horgan (2006) “The Raytheon Nine: Derry Antiwar Activists Face Terrorism Charges.” Counterpunch. August 14.
[27] CorpWatch (2005) “Raytheon.” CorpWatch Website.