British Imperialism on the fiddle in Uganda
William Hague, former Conservative leader and current
Foreign Secretary, has personally intervened in a dispute involving two British
oil companies and one of the world’s poorest nations.
Documents obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act revealed that Hague, along with Conservative MP Henry
Bellingham, lobbied heavily on behalf of Tullow Oil, who was embroiled in a tax
dispute with the Ugandan government.
The quarrel emerged after Tullow acquired
Heritage Oil’s assets in Uganda in a deal worth almost £900 million. However,
Heritage, registered in the tax-haven of Jersey, owed the Ugandan government
£250 million in capital gains tax. The company paid £75 million and
subsequently refused to settle the remaining £175 million. Uganda justifiably sought to reclaim the considerable sum, by which time the wrangle began
upsetting Tullow Oil’s market price and gained the attention of the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office (FCO).
Reports have exposed that Bellingham ‘lobbied
strongly for Tullow Oil’; in direct meetings with Ugandan President Yoweri
Musaveni; in bilateral discussions with several African ministers; and with the
FCO Director for Africa. In published email exchanges between Tullow and the
FCO, it was announced that “Tullow Oil have hit serious problems…which threaten their…investment in Uganda. Recommendation that we intervene urgently
at Ministerial level with President Museveni.” Days later, William Hague
personally contacted President Museveni, resulting in the announcement that the
bill would not have to be settled and that Tullow could begin extracting
millions of barrels of oil from the country.
Further complexity is added when we
consider that both companies are headed by wealthy Conservative party supporters.
Tullow Oil’s chief executive, Aidan Heavey, donated £10,000 in the run up to
the last general election, whilst Heritage Oil’s Tony Buckingham donated
£50,000.
Buckingham has played a significant role
in British imperialist interests in Africa for some time. In 1993, he
established the mercenary outfit, the aptly titled Executive Outcomes, with
infamous Old Etonian Simon Mann. It proved a wealthy venture, protecting oil
installations from rebel groups across a number of war-torn African states. He
later became a leading figure in Sandline International, another mercenary
collective, whose activities in Sierra Leone highlighted the hypocrisy of
Blair’s early ‘ethical’ foreign policy when it came to light that the Foreign
Office was complicit in arms sales.
Depicted as privileged adventurers, with
undertones of romanticism and mystery, by sections of the bourgeois media,
Buckingham and his associates were the hired representatives of British
imperialism, engaged in the modern scramble for Africa’s rich mineral reserves
including oil, gold and diamond mining. Illustrative of this seedy relationship
between the British state and hired mercenaries, the aforementioned Mann
counted heavily on fellow Etonian, and the Conservative MP in question, Henry
Bellingham to raise his case in the House of Commons following his
incarceration after a failed coup d’état in Equatorial Guinea. Mann received a
Presidential pardon in 2009.
Whilst the vehicle of exploitation
employed may have changed from mercenary outfits to legitimate oil companies,
the intention of pillaging Africa in the service of British imperialism remains
constant. Tullow Oil will surely now reap tremendous profits from the Lake
Albert basin in Uganda, whilst Buckingham’s Heritage looks towards the oil
fields of northern Iraq. The personal intervention of William Hague stands not
only as a shameful example of corruption and conflict of interest, but
indicative of British imperialisms flagrant violation of national sovereignty,
political transparency, and third world development.
In related news, a study by the Bureau for
Investigative Journalism has publicised that City tycoons accounted for
approximately half, £11.4m, of Conservative party funding in 2010. Further,
David Cameron’s recent visit to Egypt’s military interim government, following
the deposition of imperialist-sponsored dictator Hosni Mubarak, has been
exposed for the opportunistic sham that it was after it was revealed that he
was accompanied by representatives of eight major British defence firms.
Simultaneously, Defence Minister Gerald Howarth and fifty British arms
companies were marketing themselves at an arms export show in the United Arab Emirates, attended by generals of various dictatorial regimes.
Similarly, William
Hague’s ongoing threats to withdraw arms sales licences from Libya, coupled with disingenuous remarks about humanitarian concerns, are noteworthy considering a
recent European Union report highlighted that Britain and several other EU
states have considerably increased their arms sales to several governments in
the Middle East and North Africa in recent years. This includes Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and, of course, the genocidal apartheid regime in Israel.