Civil disobedience and the arms trade

Yesterday a jury in Brighton cleared a group of peace activists and Palestine campaigners of conspiracy to cause criminal damage at the EDO MBM factory near Brighton.  The defendants admitted all of the acts that they were accused of, indeed they had made videos of themselves before breaking into the factory.  However, they used the ‘lawful excuse’ defence by arguing that the company involved produced components that were used by the Israeli military in the occupied territories, in contravention of export regulations.  This occurred during Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, so the activists argued that they were attempting to prevent worse crimes being committed by hindering the supply of matériel to the Israeli military.  Fortunately for the activists the jury agreed with their defence and acquitted them (they also seem to have had a sympathetic judge who allowed them to put forward this defence, but had this occurred anywhere other than Brighton I suspect that the verdict might have been different).  There is an article about this here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/30/activists-arms-factory-acquitted.

This is an interesting story and it raises some interesting points.  The arms industry, naturally, has a bad reputation; making equipment to help kill and maim people and selling it as widely as possible is a difficult activity to justify.  As such, it is very easy to instinctively take the side of the activists.  On the other hand, for those who believe, as I do, that the armed forces are necessary and that war can be legitimate then clearly someone needs to build and provide the equipment used.  Without wishing to defend this firm in particular, I don’t know enough details to come to a conclusion, it stands to reason that if war can, in principle, be legitimate, then the manufacture and supply of matériel can also be legitimate.

As an aside, this strikes me as a major gap in the just war literature, I am unaware of any systematic treatments of the arms trade in a just war framework.  It is a particularly interesting area as, whereas the relationship between soldiers and the state is governed by military law and the moral rules that apply to soldiers in combat are specific to those circumstances, the arms industry remains within domestic, civilian, law and the moral rules that apply are those of everyday life.  This will probably make it much more difficult to develop a just war framework for thinking about the arms industry as some of the exceptions and caveats that apply to soldiers in combat will not apply, or will not apply in the same way.

However, whilst I want to avoid a knee-jerk reaction to this case where the arms industry is automatically seen as bad, I still think that the correct verdict was reached.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  Firstly, the immediate aim of the activists and the fact that this firm was selling components to the Israeli military.  The attack on Gaza, the blockade, and the overall treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli armed forces and government are completely unacceptable and immoral, as well as being a massive violation of international law.  Any attempt to hinder the Israeli armed forces is legitimate and can be both morally defended and legally defended as an attempt to prevent greater crimes being committed.

More generally, though, I also fully support the right of civil disobedience.  Having re-read the previous sentence I realise that it’s nonsensical; the point about civil disobedience is that it is a violation of or challenge to the legal rights within a state, on the basis of a desire to change them.  It is precisely because there is no legal right to civil disobedience or direct action that they can be understood as such and are effective; they challenge the status quo.  So, to rephrase, I fully support the ability of individuals to invoke a moral right that they believe is important in order to challenge the prevailing legal and moral orthodoxy.  In the case of controversial and morally challenging issues like war and the arms trade this is even more important.  To carry out acts of civil disobedience requires a commitment to the cause and an acceptance that if the jury cannot be persuaded of the justness of the act that a prison sentence is likely, that is the risk that is being run.  And it is certainly not the case that I would agree with all acts of civil disobedience in general, each one has to be taken on a case by case basis.  On the other hand, if the jury acquits then an even bigger challenge is posed to the status quo as it shows more widespread support for the activists than simply the activist community and the entire legal system is temporarily subverted as it is used to support a challenge to the law, rather than being the way in which the law is enforced.

Society, even domestic society, needs to be a little anarchical (thanks to Hedley Bull for that phrase!), and civil disobedience is one of the ways in which it remains so.  To go back to my earlier disucssion about the arms trade and just war theory, I would suggest that possibly one of the ways in which the arms trade can be reconciled with the just war tradition is through the possibility of civil disobedience.  In other words, civil disobedience might be the equivalent in domestic society to the duty soldiers have to refuse to obey illegal orders (such as to kill civilians or prisoners) under military law.  This raises a final point, which is that perhaps civil disobedience needs to be studied in more depth as a central part of political theory; rather than consider the best, or ideal, or just society, we should think about civil disobedience as an integral part of any society to challenge its injustices and posit alternatives.  Any such ideas would probably grow out of the Rousseauian and republican tradition and would pose a useful counterpoint to those who see a dichotomy between stability inside the state and anarchy outside it.