Made In Britain In The Middle East

If you can run, you do. If you can hold your breath and put on swimming goggles, then tie a scarf around your face for a bit of protection, you should. If you cannot get away you drop low and look for air.

Eventually though, it will get you. The tear gas always does.

Over the past year I have actually forgotten how many times I have been left sucking in air, eyes streaming, throat searing with pain as rocks, bullets, baton rounds and men and women screaming in anger and pain thrash around beside me.

The modern instruments of crowd control are very effective and the regimes that use them with a total lack of discretion - but with varying levels of success - cannot get enough of the stuff.

Good business for the manufacturers.

Yes, great, especially when you find a "Made in Britain" stamp on the side of a shell casing, somewhere near a pool of blood, and more annoyingly, near where you have been running.

Britain, France and the US are all big suppliers of military and crowd-control equipment.

The irony is that the countries that use it most are the very same ones they condemn for suppressing freedom of speech.

In Bahrain, protesters that had been dispersed in large part with live rounds collected a box of baton rounds and CS gas casings that had been used against them. They were all manufactured in the UK and the USA.

Sky News found itself in the uncomfortable position of having to run away with the crowds and witness the damage caused whilst also having to explain that, although our own country had supplied the materials, we were in no way condoning their sales.

Since unrest swept north Africa and the Middle East, the United Kingdom has revoked all armaments trade licences while a review of arms sales to these countries is undertaken - all bar one. Saudi Arabia.

:: PM In Saudi Arabia For Talks On Middle East