Pounding the pavements to raise pounds for CAAT

 

Robin Lane, of St. Stephen’s Church in Dulwich, recounts a sponsored walk from the leafy suburbs to the heart of the speculative city. 

On Saturday, 7 August, myself and Ian Pocock completed a walk to raise funds for Campaign Against the Arms Trade CAAT). We walked a total of 6.2 miles, starting at St. Stephen’s church in Dulwich, and finishing at the Stock Exchange in the City.

 

Robin and Ian at the beginning of their walk

The idea for the walk came about after I had decided on a walk to raise funds for St. Stephen’s. However, I soon decided on a joint walk to raise funds for CAAT also. I wanted to bring the message to the congregation that the arms trade is an unnecessary evil, and to impress upon them the importance of world peace.

I was pleased by the response I got, with around 80 percent of supporters opting to support both the church and CAAT, including both the curate and vicar. In fact, the curate and his wife had previously attended a CAAT protest at the Millennium Dome! Each sponsor also received a CAAT leaflet.

After strolling through leafy Dulwich, and luckily missing the earlier rain, we soon hit the Walworth road, and made our way up to the Elephant and Castle, a contrast from the peacefulness of Dulwich Village; and only a couple of miles between them!

 

Journey's end - Robin and Ian outside the stock exchange

As we made our way across the river we could see St. Paul’s Cathedral, our destination on the first leg of the walk. A short walk across Paternoster Square brought us to the Stock Exchange, our final destination. The walk took about two hours in all. We are pleased to have raised several hundred pounds.

 

 

Any further donations can be made at http://my.artezglobal.com/personalPage.aspx?SID=301677 or sent to CAAT, 11 Goodwin St, Finsbury Park, London N4 3HQ.

Farnborough: an arms fair operating alongside a civil aerospace exhibition, obscured by an airshow

Ian Prichard, CAAT’s Research Co-ordinator, describes his day at Farnborough 2010: an arms fair operating alongside a civil aerospace exhibition, all obscured by an airshow.

Finmeccanica's squashed golfball

10.00am – Arrived at Farnborough. My first view is of the vast Finmeccanica exhibition – several buildings including something akin to a squashed-golfball, and plenty of outside space. Helicopters were everywhere, with the odd Eurofighter and drone. Amongst its many business dealings it currently supplies the authoritarian Algerian regime to meet both “battlefield and internal security requirements”, and supplies Turkey with attack helicopters to fight separatist Kurds.

What BAE brings to an airshow

11.00am – Made my way to the opposite end of the exhibition to visit the BAE building. As well as a Eurofighter sitting outside there was a huge howitzer – a strange item for an “airshow”. This was mirrored inside by another artillery piece as well as armoured vehicles. BAE were impossible escape throughout the exhibition, with staff everywhere and adverts featuring schematics of aircraft, tanks and soldiers.

Pakistani-Chinese fighters on export push

12.30pm – Before going to the four main exhibition halls, I walked along the static aircraft display. Set aside from the numerous US military aircraft were two Pakistan-built Chinese JF-17 fighter aircraft (with Russian engines) with a raft of Chinese missiles. The “partial” arms embargo on China obviously didn’t extend to inhibiting an export push of fighter aircraft! So it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that a Chinese military delegation was also invited, though this was mysteriously missing from the initial list of delegations, only being added at the last minute.

MBDA helping out at Futures Day

1.30pm – Near the JF-17s was the base for “Futures Day”, a “new and exciting programme” for 7-21 year olds aimed at “Inspiring Young Minds towards a Career in Aerospace, Defence & Security”. A large number of universities and companies were represented, including MBDA, Europe’s dominant missile producer. Clearly aspirations are different for different people, but aspiring to a MBDA future…!

Branding on the UKTI DSO stand

2.00pm – Went into the main exhibition halls at last, four of them, each with hundreds of companies. In prime position in hall 1 was a large UKTI DSO stand. Two years ago, the stand was smaller and UKTI-only (i.e. focussed on civil aerospace), but this year it was jointly branded. UKTI DSO also had its own private chalet purely for its arms promotion activities. Hosting 40 military delegations and ensuring that companies have the right access to them is not something you would want to do on a shoestring.

Mock-up of Boeing's Phantom Ray armed drone

3.30pm – Kept running into drones, as well as the odd robot. Boeing had a building full of them, there was a specific drone pavillion, and individual companies displayed them in their exhibition space including BAE, Israel Aerospace Industries, Northrop Grumman, Finmeccanica, Thales and QinetiQ. And of course General Atomics, the makers of the CIA’s preferred assassination-drones in Pakistan, were well represented.

The Russian state arms export agency

5.00pm – That was definitely enough for the day. I had one last look round the emptying stands and went out past the Russian arms export agency and contingent of companies, including MiG, Sukhoi and Tactical Missiles Corporation. Time to head for the shuttle bus.

Rage Against The Arms Trade

Rage Against The Machine in Finsbury Park

Agenda item at Campaign Against Arms Trade’s weekly meeting: We’ve been invited to have a stall at the Rage Against The Machine gig in Finsbury Park on Sunday 6th June. Is anyone interested in helping run the stall?

“Me! Me! Me!”

I couldn’t believe my luck. Less than a month in the job and I got to see one of my favourite bands.

Remember the 2009 campaign that got RATM’s 1992 single Killing In The Name to Christmas number one in order to keep Simon Cowell’s X Factor winner from the top spot? Well this was the free gig that the band put on to say thank you to British fans.

The CAAT stall

We set the stall up at 14:00. The main theme of the stall was our UKTI Armed & Dangerous campaign – calling for the closure of the Defence & Security Organisation (DSO) – a quango that squanders millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money promoting arms exports.

The gates opened and the fans began to arrive. People were drawn to our stall by a Rage Against The Machine-themed board out front that displayed apposite lyrics from the band, dynamic protest pictures and quotes about CAAT from Mark Thomas and Noam Chomsky.

Gig-goers signing up at the CAAT stall

It was a long gig with three support acts, and our stall got a lot of attention throughout the afternoon. Altogether, 172 people signed Demolition Orders to be sent to local MPs calling for UKTI DSO to be closed, 70 of whom wanted to get more involved with the campaign. A great day for CAAT!

Finally it was time for the headliners to take the stage. Reasoning that there would be no more interest in our stall, we closed up and pushed into the crowd of 40 000.

Rage Against The Machine played a blistering set. I know they’re not everyone’s cup of tea but I was made up: Here was a band I’d missed the opportunity to see years ago, and when they broke up thought I’d never get the chance.

Appropriately for us, the band played Bulls On Parade – their polemic against the military-industrial complex and the ignorance fostered by governments that allows the industry to prosper:

Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes
Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal
I walk the corner to the rubble that used to be a library
Line up to the mind cemetery now
What we don’t know keeps the contracts alive and moving
They don’t gotta burn the books; they just remove ‘em
While arms warehouses fill as quick as the cells
Rally round the family; pocket full of shells!

I’m glad to say that the band has lost none of their righteous anger and revolutionary zeal. Their lyrics are all about fighting back against injustice, and there can be no greater injustice than arms corporations profiting from war and repression.

See Flickr for the full set of pics.

Nottingham anti-arms trade activist convicted

…. while arms company boss remains evasive in court.

On 20 May at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court, anti-arms-trade activist Kirk Jackson was found guilty of aggravated trespass for his part in a protest that shut down an arms company for a day. He was given a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £350 court costs.

Anti-arms trade protesters on H&K rooftop

The charge arose from a 18 February protest at the Nottingham warehouse of international arms company Heckler & Koch. Before dawn, four activists locked themselves to the gates, preventing employees from entering, while Kirk and another activist climbed onto the roof and displayed banners accusing the company of “arming repressive regimes”.

Heckler & Koch has been the target of demonstrations since 2007 when Nottingham residents discovered its presence on the Lenton Lane industrial estate. The company has a long history of supplying weapons to unstable regions, and using licensed production deals in order to evade arms embargoes. This was the first direct action taken against the company.

The offence of aggravated trespass is committed if a person does something while trespassing that is intended to obstruct or disrupt lawful activity. Kirk argued that his only intention in displaying banners on the roof was to create a photo op for the attending media but the three magistrates accepted the Crown prosecutor’s argument that he was in a “joint enterprise” with the activists locked to the gates.

The other five activists had already pleaded guilty and been sentenced on 17 March.

Mike Thornton, the Managing Director of Heckler & Koch was in court as a witness. He seemed nervous and avoided eye contact with the defendant and his supporters, but his performance was revealing: Having sworn to tell the whole truth, he baulked when cross-examined about his company’s activities.

Mike Thornton, Managing Director of H&K Nottingham

Most notably, when asked if his company carried out manufacturing at its Lenton Lane industrial unit, he looked very uncomfortable and asked the magistrates “Is it necessary to discuss that?” His response confirmed campaigners’ long-held suspicions that the warehouse is used to assemble automatic weapons.

Mr Thornton was given a copy of the Shut Down H&K campaign’s December 2009 open letter to him and asked if he had seen it before. He admitted to having received the letter, in which serious concerns about H&K were raised, and to having decided to ignore it. He did however concede that citizens have a legitimate right to protest against companies such as his.

Arms dealers love euphemisms and Thornton is no exception. He described his business as “defence sector”, his lethal wares as merely “product”, and when asked about the impact of the protest, he said “we were held back in what we were trying to achieve.” Spectators were struck by the similarities between Mr Thornton and the villainous arms company execs from Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s recent film Micmacs.

The prosecution’s police witness was Chief Inspector Stephen Haylett, who characterised the protest as “as good natured as a demonstration gets”. This left the prosecution struggling to convince the court that Thornton was a victim of intimidation. In his statement, the arms company boss claimed that the protest left him feeling “vulnerable and intimidated.” ”It was not known if [the protesters] were armed with any type of missiles,” said the man with the warehouse full of guns. (In fact, the reams of police video footage played in court showed the defendant wielding nothing more threatening than a cheese & pickle sandwich.)

It was Chief Inspector Haylett who told the activists on H&K’s roof that their banners would be returned, but in court he claimed that he couldn’t remember this, and so the bench agreed to the Crown’s request to destroy them. Fortunately, the campaign has already received a replacement banner from fellow anti-militarists in Germany.

Despite the disappointing verdict, Kirk remains positive. “I’m glad I took the case to trial,” he said. “Companies like Heckler & Koch are profiting from war and repression with the support of the UK government. The arms industry must be opposed.”

The six activists have been left with a total of £825 in fines plus costs but this is a fraction of the cost to the company of being closed down for a day. On an average working day, Heckler & Koch’s Nottingham unit exports over £35,000 of arms and makes more than £12,500 profit.

If you would like to help the activists to pay their costs, you can donate via the Shut Down H&K website.

Thanks to Shut Down H&K for letting us reproduce this blog.

A global referendum on militarisation and climate change

Ian Mackinnon reports from the People’s World Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba, Bolivia

At the Peoples’ World Conference on Climate Change  from 19-22 April 2010, activists and grassroots organisations from around the world gathered to address what they see as the failure of governmental climate policy at Copenhagen.

Working Group 4 was charged with developing a proposal for a global referendum on environmental issues. However, the debate among the participants ranged frequently and profoundly into issues of war, militarisation and occupation.

Discussion at the PWCC, Bolivia, April 2010

The group concluded two and a half days of discussions by submitting to the plenary session a document outlining their plans for the structure and preparation of the referendum. Their proposal recommended that it comprise the following five questions:

1) Do you agree with changing this capitalist model of over-production and super-consumption, and re-establishing harmony with nature, recognizing and respecting the rights of the Mother Earth? YES or NO

2) Do you agree that countries and transnational corporations reduce and reabsorb their greenhouse gas production proportionally to their emissions and historical responsibilities in order to halt global warming? YES or NO

3) Do you agree with transferring all that is spent in wars and for allocating a budget bigger than used for defence to climate change? YES or NO

4) Do you agree that our countries be transformed into territories of peace, free from occupation by troops and foreign military bases? YES or NO

5) Do you agree with a Climate Justice Tribunal to judge those who destroy Mother Earth? YES or NO

Marta Harnecker, Chilean author and activist, was the proponent of question 4, which was accepted by group consensus. She said:

“It was a surprise, yes. Of course it still hasn’t been voted on, but it seems a very positive thing to me that the people here are so sensitive to the subject of peace. It’s a very important theme, which we must include in this process of fighting to change the system that causes so much war, just as much as it damages nature. This way many more people can join together around this referendum. There are people that don’t support political parties, but they want to fight for peace and fight for nature.”

Joel Marsden, elected co-president of the working group and director of the documentary World Vote Now, stressed to the group that only questions acceptable to organisations like the EU would be able to take advantage of existing election infrastructure, though he was equally supportive of including the subject of militarisation. He commented:

“I wanted to actually put more of it in, but it made its way into two of our five questions, which is great. Now it’s interesting that it was so universal, it was like all arms spending should be put towards the environment, but it’s just not realistic somehow. I would much rather guide something that really is obtainable, even though it can be quite radical.”

He is enthused about the prospects for global referendum following eight years of research for his film into democratic movements under difficult conditions. This included visiting elections in countries flooded with weaponry, like the Democratic Republic of Congo: “Illegal arms or official arms just destroy democracy and then to fight back with ballots is a much slower process. But it happens, and it gives me hope. Well, we saw the first election happen. People voted for the constitution and approved it.”

Military at the PWCC, Bolivia, April 2010

Question 3, on diverting arms spending towards environmental protection, remained unchanged from the initial draft written by Bolivian president Evo Morales Ayma. Given this initial governmental statement of pacifism it was surprising to see a large presence of military personnel at the conference, patrolling, running stalls and also participating in working groups. Military leaders also formed a large component of the official international guests at the president’s opening and closing addresses.

Coronel Rafael Marcelo Villaroel Vargas explained the Bolivian Army’s activities pertaining to the environment. “The army is totally involved in the environment in two different situations, one of security, protecting our flora and fauna, and the other is education. We train around 60,000 soldiers annually and this includes reforestation, composting and building solar cookers. Apart from this we train them in domestic matters like sorting organic and inorganic waste. We’re only reaching one member of the family, which is only one quarter, but for us it’s an important step.”

Meanwhile, protestors outside the event displayed banners of government spending statistics that attributed twice as much money to the armed forces as to education and health combined, and in La Paz the government faced accusations from opposition parties that the climate summit was a smokescreen for militarisation efforts.

Throughout the referendum talks, participants showed a wide-ranging knowledge of militarisation issues, and were keen to tap the educational potential of a global referendum by densely packing the questions with references to important themes.

Brazilian activists from the international peasants’ movement Via Campesina and the pro-referendum organisation Consulta Popular explained to the working group the current situation in central America and Colombia, where vast US military bases are located in prime positions to guard natural mineral and fuel resources, undermining local decision making on extraction and usage and imposing a dangerous and destructive environment on existing populations and habitats.

Many practical details of the referendum were left open as the group decided it was crucial to defer autonomy to national and regional committees, including the right to alter questions to address local concerns and worldviews. National governments will be invited to stage the referendum, though in regions where they are unable or unwilling the working group is calling on non-governmental groups and people to begin preparing for the referendum autonomously.

Amalia Cuaquira Calani, member of the Bolivian peasant women workers’ group the Bartolinas Sisas was the other co-president of Working Group 4 and was responsible for building consensus among the participants through discussion and voting. She said:

“I’ve learnt this in my long life, if we don’t dream, if we don’t have hope we can’t create. We are creating a process for the referendum. We know that it’s not going to happen in a year, two years, but with these questions we’re launching the referendum. Now it depends on the activists and organisations to defend the mother earth. I have that hope. It’s going to be long term, but the important thing is to start, because we’re talking about human life and I believe it’s important that everyone joins in. We’re going to move forward.”