Peaceful Alternatives to the Military-industrial Complex: Arms Conversion Beyond the Lucas Plan

Introduction

There has been a revival of interest in arms conversion, with calls for a new, national ‘Lucas Plan’, based on the original proposals of the Lucas trade unionists in the 1970s for socially-useful production to replace work on armaments at their company.    Support for  conversion is welcome but applying the Lucas model to what has become a group of specialised, military prime contractors seriously underestimates the industrial and technological barriers to factory-based conversion. Public funding released from cuts in military spending and necessary for investment in new civil manufacturing risks being wasted, when the priorities are to generate skilled employment, overcome regional inequalities and develop a post-carbon economy that addresses the existential threat from climate change.

Arms Conversion – A Brief History

Any evaluation of arms conversion policy rests, initially, on the massive redeployment of both workers and industrial capacity from arms production  at the end of the Second World War. Despite serious concerns that the economy might experience recession, 3.25 million were transferred from military to civil work in 1945-46, along with 3.5 million demobilised from the armed forces. The Attlee government benefited from some favourable economic circumstances, including  savings accumulated during the war that were spent on consumer goods. Also, companies returned to pre-war production in what was, essentially, a reconversion exercise. (1)

But the political dimension was, perhaps, the most important factor. The Labour movement was determined that, never again, would working people experience the poverty and mass unemployment of the 1930s. Despite serious issues of government debt accumulated during the war, Labour carried out an ambitious programme of nationalisation and public investment. Skilled work and full employment were at the heart of this political vision for a post-war economy. (2)

But the onset of the Cold War in the early 1950s brought with it rearmament and sustained, high levels of military spending. The UK developed one of the world’s largest, post-war arms industries, with production dominated by a relatively small group of prime contractors. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, these companies carried through various forms of rationalisation and concentration of production as arms employment declined. (3)

The Lucas Plan and Arms Conversion in the 1970s and 1980s

It was in the context of a redundancy programme announced by the management of Lucas Aerospace in 1975 that the shop stewards developed an alternative plan. Representatives from the various Lucas sites around the country put forward detailed proposals for civil production, including medical equipment, environmental technologies and public transportation  that would draw on the skills of the workforce and the company’s manufacturing capacity. The simple and compelling proposition was that the government could transfer military spending to civil investment, protecting jobs and contributing to socially-useful production. (4)

Although normally considered a departure from traditional trade union activities, the Plan reflected a broader, working-class  radicalism based on a strong organisational structure and on mass campaigns for workers rights. The Labour government had already carried out a programme of nationalisation during the mid-1970s, including aerospace and shipbuilding companies in the arms sector, and there were demands for forms of workers control and cooperative ownership in the face of other redundancy threats. (5)

Despite support for the plan from workers in the company and the wider labour movement, it failed to gain the backing of the Labour leadership and was rejected by the Lucas management. However, it did inspire other conversion initiatives around the country, including a worker-led campaign by the Barrow Alternative Employment Committee (BAEC), during the mid-1980s, for alternative, civil work to the Trident ballistic-submarine programme at the shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria. Its main report argued that Barrow should be the location for a government-funded, marine-technology research centre, with a particular focus on offshore wind and wave power, given  the potential contribution that renewables could make to UK energy needs and to skilled employment in engineering and shipbuilding. (6)

Contemporary Arms Conversion

The context for conversion policy in the 2020s has fundamentally changed from the 1970s and 1980s, following a sustained period of deindustrialisation and the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs, including many in the arms sector. Estimates vary, but overall, direct arms employment in 2023 was around 135,00 compared to 400,00 in the early 1980s. A process of corporate consolidation saw BAE Systems emerge as the dominant prime contractor, responsible for nuclear submarines, naval shipbuilding and fighter aircraft production, concentrated at a small number of sites around the UK. Employment at those sites has also declined significantly, e.g., the Barrow shipyard workforce was around 14,000 at the peak period of Trident production in the late 1980s and early 1990s but is now below 7,000 on the new Trident programme. (7)

The specialised nature of these sites cannot be over-emphasised. They integrate an already complex range of sub-systems for military platforms (fly-by-wire avionics, nuclear reactors, etc.), that have to be operational under extreme conditions of war fighting. These are ‘baroque’, industrial and technological cathedrals to the god of militarism. No civil equivalents for systems integration exist at that level of complexity, even in associated sectors of aerospace and shipbuilding. 

Factory-based conversion that attempts to maintain a similar network of suppliers, production capacity and levels of employment, risks the waste of scarce, public resources in a costly and time-consuming reconstruction.  But this was the model put forward in a report published by Common Wealth in 2024, calling for a new, national Lucas Plan covering all the prime contractor sites in the UK. Emphasis was placed on public investment in renewable energy programmes at these sites and the transferable skills of the workforces. (8)

Interviews were also done with a small group of workers, indicating support for civil production, based on previous experience of civil contracting carried out by their companies, on how the interviewees’ skills could be applied to civil work, and the desire to contribute to socially-useful objectives like the reduction in carbon emissions. But it is not clear to what extent the interviewees saw civil work as an alternative or as complementary to arms production. In other words, this may simply be support for a diversification exercise that provides additional work without fundamentally challenging the military specialisms of their companies.

If the priority is to maximise the potential economic benefits from disarmament then an ‘economic conversion’ model offers greater opportunities for socially-useful production, an accelerated, renewable energy programme at dedicated, civil manufacturing facilities, and a fairer regional distribution of public investment than that of military spending, favouring employment in the South (and London), 42,300,  the South West of England, 33,600, and, to a lesser extent, the North West, 16,900,  according to estimated figures for 2023 from the MoD. (9)

On present trends the UK will not reach the government target of 55 GW of installed offshore wind power until 2048. Equally concerning is the limited UK industrial base for the full range of offshore wind technologies, with most turbines built by overseas companies. Siemens, located in Hull, is the major turbine manufacturer, supplying east coast wind farms, such as the Dogger Bank array, but most turbines are built by overseas companies. Also, there are no nacelles manufacturers in the UK, that house the gearing and electrical generating equipment inside the turbines. (10)    

This lack of capacity is nothing short of a national scandal, when with sustained public investment, the UK could have been self-sufficient in renewables and ended its dependency on overseas energy supplies. The benefits are substantial, not only in reducing carbon emissions but in skilled employment. If all the existing renewable capacity had been provided by UK manufacturers it is estimated that an extra 98,000 jobs could have been generated, many in the poorer regions of the UK. (11)

Economic conversion, has a decisive role to play in the goal of energy self-sufficiency. Deep cuts to military spending are combined with a public investment programme over the full range of renewable technologies. Accepting that the transition will involve the closure of specialised arms-manufacturing sites, a period of eighteen months to two years should be sufficient to run down production while new manufacturing capacity comes on stream.

The Future for Arms Conversion

The prospects for conversion look bleak, at least in the short term. The Starmer government is determined on a policy of rearmament in response to the Ukranian crisis and growing international tensions. A full security review is underway but the commitment is to raise overall military spending from 2.2% to 2.5% of GDP,  or even higher, towards £70 billion a year. (12)

At the same time it has slashed  funding for renewable energy investment from an original £25-£30 billion to £5 billion, little more than seed money intended to attract private investment. (13) Depressingly, Starmer stressed the role of  arms companies as, somehow,  foundational to the economy, and as successful, high-technology exporters, despite the appalling record of the UK in selling military equipment to authoritarian regimes around the world. (14)

Is it possible to mobilise a popular movement, as in the Cold War crisis years of the early 1980s, with an alternative vision based on disarmament and economic and environmental security? The Green New Deal represents an example of an alternative economic strategy that gained popular support during the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party, including a ‘Just Transition’ through  retraining and employment opportunities for workers displaced from the fossil-fuel industries, in ways that are directly applicable to arms-industry workers. (15)  A new framework, incorporating disarmament and arms conversion, has the potential to make a significant contribution to economic and environmental security that generates similar support.

Conclusion

The major powers seem determined to turn the world into a giant military barracks. Global arms spending stood at $2.44 billion in 2023 and is set to rise even further. This, at a time when the existential threat from the climate emergency is reaching a critical stage and when the international community should be mobilising resources on a similar scale to create a post-carbon economy. (16)

But the  military-industrial complex (MIC) has a vice-like grip, institutionally embedded at the highest levels of government and feeding the giant arms corporations, such as  Lockheed Martin in the United States and BAE Systems in the UK, that have dominated arms procurement for over fifty years. Despite various waves of innovation that might have been expected to disrupt this relationship, the latest being the application of Artificial Intelligence, these behemoths  have  complete confidence that funding will be guaranteed for each  new generation of their ever-more sophisticated and expensive, ‘baroque’ military platforms. (17)

Any conversion policy rests on closing down the MIC and creating a new institutional structure for disarmament and civil investment, using broader forms of economic democracy and popular planning. For example, a range of economic models could be considered, from a traditional growth model based on renewable energy to one of de-growth, a transition from fossil fuels but also an overall reduction in energy demands and the material throughput of the economy. (18) Here, the emphasis is on retrofitting the existing housing stock with insulation, decentralised energy distribution and battery storage, integrated public transport to replace private vehicle journeys and self-sufficiency in food production. 

Whatever model emerges from these forms of democratic planning, the objective must be to devolve economic decision-making, as far as possible,  to local communities and to maximise the economic benefits for working people, such as skilled work, democratic ownership of industry and the circulation of income locally.

Transformation on this scale is ambitious, since it involves a rapid end to the MIC and to the fossil-fuel economy. But it is no more ambitious than the post-war Labour government’s programme for arms conversion, full employment and economic modernisation, at a speed and on a scale that many people thought impossible to achieve.

The question is do we accept the inevitability of a global arms race and irreversible climate change? Or do we build a new economy based on the labour movement’s proud traditions of internationalism and support for disarmament, where the skills of working people can be directed to socially-useful production rather than to weapons of mass destruction?

Steven Schofield, Jan 2025