As violence escalates in Israel and Palestine, we take readers through the expanding military relationship between the UK and Israel, which has been erased by the British media. The deepening alliance involves UK military training of Israel for combat, joint exercises, arms deals, as well as intelligence cooperation.
With pro-independence parties poised to secure a significant majority at the Scottish parliament elections, Declassified explores how Scotland could soon forge a radically different foreign policy from the rest of the UK. We asked Scottish politicians, campaigners and thinkers for their views on nuclear weapons, Russia, China, the arms trade and human rights.
The terrible scenes of young people being gunned down by Burma’s military junta should make British diplomats think hard about why their policy of aiding and trading with the regime went so wrong.
The UK government refuses to provide information to Parliament about the role of the military’s special forces in overseas wars, routinely claiming this is a ‘long-standing policy’ – but new research finds this was invented in the late 1980s to deepen the culture of secrecy in Whitehall.
A new book, revealing abuses by the British army in its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, illustrates how the Ministry of Defence and the military establishment try to censor, bully and threaten publishers and journalists, often successfully.
Britain wants to put satellites into space from home soil next year. At first, the futuristic ‘spaceports’ were aimed at commercial users. But now they could become embroiled in star wars, with the military telling Declassified it has met entrepreneurs from more than half of the UK’s launch pad companies.
Seven members of Britain’s armed forces won an award for their ‘vital operational’ work supporting the US military after it killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike last year, Declassified has found.
More than half of the countries in the world rated as ‘not free’ are ruled by regimes that the British government supports.
Britain’s government is offering healthcare workers a 1% pay rise, which is likely to amount to a pay cut after inflation, at the same time as its military spending has just overtaken Russia to become the world’s fourth-largest defence budget.
Ahmed Al-Batati, a Lance Corporal in the British army, staged a public protest against British arms sales to Saudi Arabia in August, concerned that “a child was dying every 10 minutes” in Yemen. In his first interview since becoming a civilian, he tells Declassified that others in the army share his view and that he took action because parliament did nothing.