Two cheers for the SNP's decision to drop its opposition to munitions manufacturing

Afew clicks west of Gretna in Dumfries and Galloway, a nine-mile stretch of disused Ministry of Defence (MoD) land tells the story of one of the most jaw-dropping episodes in the first world war.

It was here that the British government ran HM Factory Gretna, the largest munitions factory on Earth at the time. It was built in a hurry after Herbert Asquith’s government realised in 1915 that Britain faced an acute shortage of artillery shells on the western front. 

As many as 30,000 workers toiled at the site including 12,000 women known as the “Gretna Girls”. They were employed to mix the highly volatile gun cotton paste – known as “The Devil’s Porridge” – used to produce the cordite propellant destined for the shell-filling factories.

Yet the urgency and Promethean scale of last century’s industrial effort is not simply historical artefact. It has present-day resonance in the UK Government’s Defence Industrial Strategy, published this month, and Scotland’s place in it. 

“Ukraine provides a stark reminder of the imperative of maintaining sufficient inventories of munitions and spares, the fast replenishment and resupply by industry, and a rapid, continual cycle of innovation between industry and the front line,” it warns at one point. 

We are in a “new era of global defence spending”, it goes on. The word “warfighting” is used 11 times in the document. And as you may have noticed, a new ad campaign is now running on buses informing us with Kitchener-like directness: “The Army is recruiting now.” 

Unless it’s not yet clear, we face the most serious set of geopolitical threats for at least a generation – and Scotland will be a key part of the home front in the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War.

This means more munitions, and more jobs. Already 26,100 are supported in Scotland by the MoD, spread across Glasgow (BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce and Thales), Rosyth (Babcock and Qinetiq) and Edinburgh (Leonardo).

The Defence Industrial Strategy pledges £1.5bn for an “always on” pipeline for munitions and the building of at least six new energetic and munitions factories in the UK, one of them in Scotland. 

There’s more. I understand that Germany’s Rheinmetall is scoping out the HM Factory Gretna site as a potential location for an ammunitions factory, possibly at Eastriggs, a 1,000-hectare site central to the production of The Devil’s Porridge. 

Eastriggs was operated by the MoD as an ammunition depot until 2010, and its future has been unclear since. Earlier this month, Dumfries and Galloway Council presented to its economy and infrastructure committee various business cases for the council’s industrial estate portfolio, including Eastriggs.

Rheinmetall’s plan would involve potential investment of up to €400m (£345m), creating around 700 jobs. The facility could be built in a hurry, too. A few weeks ago, the German company opened a new ammunition factory in Lower Saxony, Europe’s largest so far. Construction took only 15 months.

Other countries’ defence groups may also be in the frame. Last year, former Scottish Secretary Ian Murray visited a munitions factory in Singapore run by ST Engineering, the city-state’s defence contractor.

First Minister John Swinney’s volte-face on the issue this month marks a return to common sense and deserves at least two cheers.

Until only a few weeks ago, any such plan in Scotland would have stood little chance of getting past planning given the SNP’s long-standing opposition to munitions manufacturing, rooted in its “bairns, not bombs” anti-nuclear weapons stance of the 1980s.

But First Minister John Swinney’s volte-face on the issue this month marks a return to common sense and deserves at least two cheers. He told the Scottish Parliament that in light of Russia’s war against Ukraine his government would “lift the restriction previously applied to the use of public support for the production of munitions”.

A more geopolitically literate party would have come to this determination long before now. But it looks as if the cold hard reality of – take your pick – the Ukraine war, increased Russian naval activity off Scotland, submarine “grey zone” spying activities in the North Sea, and/or Russian reconnaissance bomber flights close to UK air space has concentrated minds at Bute House.

There may also be an electoral calculus. There are surely central belt centrist voters to be wooed back from Labour who understand the link between defence and jobs. More than 2,000 people are employed at BAE Systems’ Govan and Scotstoun shipyards where the Type 26 frigates will be built for Norway under a £10bn deal just signed with the UK Government.

Meanwhile, defence ties between the UK and Germany have been bolstered with the signing in July of the Kensington Treaty, cementing cooperation across “the full spectrum of defence”, as Germany’s consul general in Edinburgh, Christiane Hullmann, said this month as German naval training tall ship Gorch Fock was docked at Leith.

“A key element of this is maritime security and deterrence. Scotland plays a crucial role here,” she said, pointing out that German air crews recently started working alongside British counterparts at RAF Lossiemouth to strengthen submarine detection. 

Remarkably, this marks the first time German military aircraft have ever operated on UK soil. Could a German munitions factory be next?