Abstract | The Dreadnought naval race, and the accompanying Mulliner scandal, raised the issue of whether arms manufacturers exerted undue influence on policymakers and defence procurement procedures. To this was added controversy about profiteering during the Great War, resulting in the concerns about the effects of private armament manufacturers enshrined in Art.8(4 & 5) of the Covenant of the League of Nations. This resulted in a shift of attitudes, not least amongst Free Churchmen. Whilst Nonconformist MPs were lambasted in 1914 for owning shares in naval shipyards, twenty years later the Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon (himself a son of the manse) sued a Methodist minister for alleging that he owned shares in these 'Merchants of Death'. The chapter concludes by explaining the origins in the mid-1930s of the Senate Munitions Inquiry in the US and the Royal Commission on the Private Manufacture of and Trading in Arms in the UK and examining the consequences on the UK armaments industry during the Second World War. |
---|