Tag: Gulf

Understanding the Hypocrisy in UK’s Gulf Policies


Brilliant speaker at the Festival of Humanism

June 2026

Dr David Wearing gave a brilliant speech to the Festival in Bournemouth on the role of the UK in the Gulf. He set his observations in an historical context and provided a cogent analysis of the way we, and other countries in the West, have supported the despotic regimes in Gulf. The recent trade deal was celebrated by the government with no apparent concern for the welfare and rights of its people.

He anchored his talk in the attitudes of Britain’s governing class making the distinction between ‘we’ meaning them and ‘we’ meaning the population at large. Some of the latter are not comfortable with how our governments have joyfully provided arms and succour to these regimes despite their appalling human rights record.

He pointed out the arrant hypocrisy of government ministers and others in the governing class, talking about ‘British power standing for free trade, the rule of law and democracy’, polar opposites of what is happening in the Gulf. We have consistently supported illiberal regimes and quoted a speech made by Tony Blair at the time of the Iraq war.

The 2011 Arab Spring saw uprisings in many North African and Arab states. They were gradually extinguished often by brutal means. He pointed out that the security forces were often trained by the West including the UK.

Oil

The history is basically about oil and its discovery in what was then Persia. Britain set up a series of protectorates around the Arabian peninsular with the primary objective of securing the safe supply of this valuable resource. As the rest of the world gradually moved towards more liberal regimes, the Gulf monarchies were supported first by the British and gradually by America as it became the power in the region.

One of his main points was how closely tied we are to these states. People are aware for example, of investment in football clubs like Newcastle and Manchester City. They are less aware of how much we need their money to fund our deficit. We are aware of the arms sales but less aware of the ‘soft’ exports of accountancy, legal and other services. The economies are closely tied with a high degree of inter-dependence.

He noted that we would find it difficult to support our arms industry without the sales to the Gulf states. Our low investment in defence (defense) is subject to political attention at the moment with the resignation of the Defence Secretary last week.

Self-deception

His main theme is the degree to which we tell ourselves stories. Britain was deeply implicated in the Yemen war with our people and the RAF closely involved in supporting Saudi forces in their bombing campaign. He spoke disparagingly about the head of the Army who talked about the ‘rules based international order maintaining peace and prosperity’. An almost baffling lack of awareness.

It was closely linked to a nineteenth century colonial mindset where we viewed the Middle East as populated by backward peoples in contrast with the civilised and advanced West. Rather forgets the contributions to optics, astronomy, medicine and mathematics from that region (the invention of algebra for example, and the words for the angles of a triangle are Arabic in origin). This thinking by the governing elite makes it easy to carry on supporting Israel with arms sales and ignoring the use of starvation as a weapon of war.

He touched briefly on the actual links between their monarchs are ours with visits by members of the Royal Family to the region and their visits here.

A fascinating talk which made explicit the ‘double think’ in our dealings with the region and where the ordinary voter is excluded from the debate. Money and arms sales dominate the thinking helped by a colonial mindset. Concern for the lives of political opponents, human rights activists and journalists, who are frequently arrested and held for years; the huge use of the death penalty, and the lack of rights of women does not seem to trouble our political leaders. Much play is made of Sir Keir Starmer’s (prime minster at the time of writing) background as a human rights lawyer, yet there is no sign of this, no sign at all, in his speeches on Gulf related matters.

His book AngloArabia – Why Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain (Polity Press) is available.

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Theresa May’s visit to Bahrain


Prime minister’s trip to Bahrain gives a hint to what will happen to human rights after Brexit

Picture: Express

The prime minister, Theresa May, is on an official to Bahrain amid controversy about the poor state of human rights in the kingdom.  It is really quite difficult to grasp quite what the Prime Minister means when she says the ‘UK must not turn our back on the human rights abuses of foreign countries’ as she prepares to sign various trade deals which does precisely that.  There is a growing hint of riddle like statements from her including the meaningless ‘Brexit means Brexit’.

There now seems to be a desperate urge to secure trade deals ahead of our departure from the EU and the Gulf states are fertile ground.  She is quoted in the Guardian (5 December 2016)

There will be some people in the UK who say we shouldn’t seek stronger trade and security ties with these countries because of their record on human rights.  But we don’t uphold our values and human rights by turning our back on this issue.  We achieve far more by stepping up, engaging with these countries and working with them.

So the argument is that Bahrain has a questionable human rights record and that by working with them, and doing business, we can exert some kind of influence to encourage them to stop torturing or otherwise mistreating their people.  Since we have been trading there for some time, we would expect that the country would be slowly improving as a result of our influence.  The problem is that it isn’t.  As Human Rights Watch and Amnesty have said:

Bahrain’s 2016 “reform” agenda has consisted of an assault on core elements of civil society and jailing or deporting government critics.  Last month, Amnesty International accused UK Ministers of acting like “overexcited cheerleaders for Bahrain’s woefully inadequate reforms.”

On December 4, Human Rights Watch and others wrote to Prime Minister May to complain about the British government’s ‘abject failure to exert any positive influence’ in Bahrain.  We didn’t call on the UK to end trade or security ties, but rather to use the UK’s influence to help put a stop to an orchestrated attack on rights that has badly undermined any prospect of the reform that the UK claims to support.

What exactly “working with” Bahrain to “encourage and support” reform amounts to, remains to be seen.  But one thing is clear – human rights will not be at the center of the UK’s relationship with Bahrain.

This is especially worrying in the context of the post Brexit world.  The UK will be in a tough position trying to develop trade outside the EU.  We will not be in a position to exert any kind of influence on countries like Bahrain if we want to continue to sell them weapons.  There will be lip service of course and meaningless phrases from the prime minister and other ministers to assure us that persuasion has been applied to improve human rights.  The reality is we will have to accept what’s on offer and be thankful for it.  In the context of the Gulf states for example, we export more to them than to China, a situation unlikely to change anytime soon.

Ministers cannot quite bring themselves to say that in reality, there is little they can do and often little they want to do.  We must remember also the ‘revolving door’ through which ministers, senior civil servants and top military brass, pass to secure lucrative directorships with the very companies doing the deals in countries like Bahrain.  There is little incentive to upset the apple cart.

See also College of Policing.

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