This volume of essays on the arms trade valuably outlines the unconscionable harms and injustices caused by the industry, and how we can fight against it, finds Jamal Elaheebocus

‘What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?
– Only the monstrous anger of the guns’

That is the quotation from poet Wilfred Owen which inspires the title of the new book published by Pluto Press alongside Jeremy Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project. Edited by Rhona Michie, Andrew Feinstein and Paul Rogers, all renowned for their work campaigning against the arms trade, it is a thorough analysis and striking exposé of the arms trade globally in this period of escalating war.

The book reveals an arms trade which is running rampant globally, unrestricted by weak international and domestic laws, and which is producing vast profits for the richest in the world on the back of the deaths of innocent people and the destruction of their communities.

Given Israel’s barbaric war in the Middle East and the bloody battle between Nato and Russia in Ukraine, it is a timely book showing how the arms trade perpetuates war and how it reflects and reinforces the imperialist world in which we live.

Following a compelling introduction from Jeremy Corbyn, the book looks at how the global arms trade operates, the devastating impacts it has on people and the environment and concludes with a section on various campaigns that are fighting the arms trade.

The scale of the beast

A striking element of the opening section is the scale of the arms trade and how enmeshed it is in political and economic life. In the first section, Shadow World Investigations’ Anna Stavrianakis shows how the arms trade has become a transnational operation, with the big companies having subsidiaries across the world and using these to avoid international-law restrictions. She also describes how companies like BAE systems work hand-in-hand with states and banks, who facilitate arms sales and allow money laundering and other criminal activity to go unchecked.

While missiles, tanks and nuclear weapons provide the most pertinent threat, Vijay Prashad describes how small arms and light weapons (SALWs) in the Global South contribute to the instability in these countries. While heavily armed gangs cause suffering for civilians in countries in South America using weapons which are sold by arms companies in the richest countries, multinational companies leach their resources. Thus a vicious cycle of poverty and instability is kept going.

This reflects the other important point, which is that the arms trade reflects and supports neoliberalism globally and US hegemony. Half of global military spending is by the US and the Pentagon uses diplomats and embassies to enforce its policies. These weapons are of course used to carry out the imperial violence which ruins countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The human cost

Using testimony from a variety of countries and regions across the world, the middle section focuses on the humanitarian and ecological impact of the arms trade. Scientist Stuart Parkinson outlines the vast ecological damage that war causes, with the destruction of ecological systems, buildings and the release of pollutants into soil and water. Despite the Pentagon being the biggest polluter in the world, military emissions were excluded or only voluntary in the Kyoto and Paris climate agreements.

The argument that the military can go green is also debunked as unachievable and futile, especially given that military spending vastly outweighs spending on climate and other non-military threats such as poverty and pandemics.

There is a moving testimony from Ahmed Alnaouq, who has lost 22 family members in the Gaza genocide, and shocking stories of weddings and funerals being bombed by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, which is armed by the US and UK. These cases have exposed the weakness of international laws on arms-trade restrictions and the toothlessness of the UN and international community in the face of widespread war crimes.

Fighting the fighters, not their wars

The editors do a good job of representing the array of campaigns against war and the arms trade in Britain and globally in the final section. There is an excellent summary from Lindsey German of Stop the War’s work over the last twenty years and the successes and failures that have occurred over that time. There is also coverage of the work being done by students campaigning against their universities’ involvement in the arms trade and the direct action that has been undertaken by Palestine Action against Elbit Systems, who supply weapons to the Israeli regime.

Campaigns in the Global South against SALWs, led by civil society, are also covered. The campaigns by women in India, such as in the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network, are particularly powerful, given that they reflect a wider fight against gender-based violence and oppression in those countries.

Perhaps the most eye-opening chapter was by investigative journalist Lorenzo Buzzoni on the action workers in Europe have taken to disrupt the war machine. This has escalated over the last year, where dock workers in Italy, Greece and Turkey have all refused to handle weapons and technological devices en route to Israel to fuel the genocide.

This has followed similar actions by Italian dockworkers, who have refused to load weapons to Ukraine and Saudi Arabia in recent years. It highlights an area that the very large Palestine movement in Britain has not been able to reach yet and which Stop the War in particular are attempting to reach into. When accompanied by a mass movement on the scale of the Palestine movement, workers can have a huge political impact when they slow down and disrupt the transport of weapons around the world.

Monstrous Anger of the Guns is a thoroughly researched and eloquent exposition of the arms trade and will serve as a very useful tool for anti-war campaigners and activists.