The Westland Affair

The Westland affair was a British political controversy of the 1980s which rocked the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher. It related to the troubled British helicopter manufacturer Westland. Faced with economic difficulties, Westland was forced to contemplate accepting a buyout from another company or group of companies. An initial offer was made by the American firm Sikorsky, and another followed from a European defence consortium.

The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the Westland board of directors favoured the American offer but some members of the cabinet, including Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine, were concerned about increasing Britain’s military dependence on the United States and supported the European offer in the hope that a substantial European defence industry could be sustained.

These divisions within the government led to the resignation of Michael Heseltine as well as fellow cabinet member Leon Brittan. The dispute foreshadowed later more substantial divisions within the Conservative party over European integration and the party’s traditional Atlanticist outlook

Arms to Iraq

The Arms-to-Iraq affair concerned the uncovering of the government-endorsed sale of arms by British companies to Iraq, then under the rule of Saddam Hussein. The scandal contributed to the growing dissatisfaction with the Conservative government of John Major and may have contributed to the electoral landslide for Tony Blair’s Labour Party at the 1997 general election.

Following the first Gulf War of 1991 there was interest in the extent to which British companies had been supplying Saddam Hussein’s regime with the materials to prosecute the war. Four directors of the British machine tools manufacturer Matrix Churchill were put on trial for supplying equipment and knowledge to Iraq, but in 1992 the trial collapsed, as it was revealed that the company had been advised by the government on how to sell arms to Iraq. Several of the directors were eventually paid compensation.

Arms Sales to Zimbabwe

The government broke its own and the European Union’s arms sales rules by granting seven licences for the sale of Hawk aircraft spares to Zimbabwe in February 2000. The breach is regarded as so serious that the committee report recommended that future arms sales licence applications should be subject to prior scrutiny by four committees. The proposal, rejected by the Foreign Office, embarrassed the foreign secretary, Robin Cook, who was battling to retain his ethical foreign policy within Whitehall.

The granting of the licences undermined an EU resolution on arms sales to Zimbabwe – of which Britain was a co-sponsor – instituted because of the country’s instability and its intervention in the Congo civil war. The committee’s report said that the Hawks were used in Congo and that “there remains a clear risk that they might be so again”.