Saudi to cease its anti-Iran policies. The USA is angry about the possibility of Saudi selling its oil for Yuan. The Saudis know that Saddam and Gaddafi were overthrown for accepting currencies other than dollars for their oil. Could the purchase of military equipment from Russia and China be in anticipation of having to defend itself from US? How strong is Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’ s leadership? Could there be another palace coup? Could the Kingdom disintegrate into civil war?
The UK’ s arms industry is very successful and provides much needed well paid employment, but it is evil and should be condemned. Since the end of WW2 Britain has always spent more on defence than any other country in Europe. The cream of university Engineering and Science graduates has been siphoned off into the armaments industry, leaving limited opportunities to work in peaceful engineering products and development.
PEACEFUL ENGINEERING
Japan, Germany, S Korea and Sweden have spent relatively little on armaments over the same period but are now the world’ s engineering“ giants”. The engineering workers of this country should be given the opportunity to work on peaceful energy conservation / green energy projects which could benefit the country, instead of causing world-wide death and destruction. In the summer of 1972 the Lucas factory in Burnley went on strike.
Nobel Peace Prize NOMINATION
The resulting radicalisation of the shop stewards caused both the unions and Lucas Shop Stewards nationally to work towards a socially useful manufacturing base, and away from weapon production. In January 1976 they published“ The Alternative Plan”, which was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Mick Cooney, a Fitter from Burnley said:“ The Lucas combine Shop Stewards wanted to know what machine tools we had.
To do the Corporate Plan we had to think as if we were planning. It really made the shop stewards sit up.” The Plan proposed 150 product ideas in 6 categories: medical equipment, transport vehicles, improved braking systems, energy conservation, oceanics and telechiric machines. The Plan was supported by prominent Labour figures of the time including Tony Benn, Stuart Holland, Mary Kaldor and Hilary Wainwright.
In the 1970s, Danny Conroy a, shop- 24-