Author: Ian Pocock

Say no to the war on Yemen, January 25^th

Over 250 organisations will be taking action on January 25^th to call for an end to the war on Yemen and for an end to western arms sales to the Saudi-led coalition. Since the war started, over 112,000 people have been killed and there have been many devastating attacks on hospitals, schools and funerals. This is a war run with western support, including billions of pounds of arms sales from the UK government and it must be stopped.

Due to the Covid-situation, all UK plans have had to move online but there are still events planned. London Students for Yemen are holding a rally with speakers such as Molly Mulready, a Former UK Foreign Office Lawyer and Andrew Feinstein. You can register for that here. This will be followed by a global online rally at 7pm, where you can hear from Ahmed Al-Babati, the Yemeni soldier who protested about the war outside Downing Street and others. You can sign up for the rally here and share it on Facebook here. More actions you can take and further information about the day of action are here.

The war on Yemen is carried out with UK weapons and support and we must end our involvement in this war now as Yemen can’t wait. The day of action will also put pressure on Joe Biden to keep his promise to stop the sale of weapons to the Saudis – a recent article indicates he might keep that promise but we have to keep the pressure on so join us to call for an end to this heinous war.

What a year of campaigning!

It’s been quite a year of campaigning against the arms trade and CAAT have had some notable successes. From taking the government to court over arms sales to Saudi Arabia to exposing the UK’s complicity in police violence globally and stopping arms fairs in places such as Liverpool, it’s been great to see such a wide range of fantastic and inventive actions. Thank you to everyone who contributed to CAAT’s important work. Read more about this extraordinary year of campaigning here.

Say no to the war on Yemen, January 25^th

London CAAT will join over 160 other organisations to take part in a global day of action on Yemen. Taking place on January 25^th 2021, organisations will come together to call for an end to the war on Yemen and an end to western complicity in the war. London CAAT will be carrying out our own action in support of the day so look out for more details on our social media pages and in next month’s bulletin.

The war is only possible because Western countries — and the United States and Britain in particular — continue to arm Saudi Arabia and provide military, political and logistical support for the war. Another level of UK support for the Saudis’ war was recently revealed in that British troops were secretly deployed to defend Saudi Arabian oil fields. The disaster in Yemen is man-made. It is caused by the war and blockade. It can be ended. Organizations from the US, UK, Yemen, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, India, Italy, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and across the world, are demanding that our governments:

*Stop foreign aggression on Yemen
*Stop weapons and war support for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
*Lift the blockade on Yemen and open all land and seaports
*Restore and expand humanitarian aid for the people of Yemen.

Individuals and organizations are asked to call for protests – with masks and other safety precautions – in their towns and cities on that day and make clear that the World Says No to War on Yemen.

You can sign up for the day of action here and add an event here.

Boris Johnson’s dangerous pledge on military spending

Boris Johnson has said he will increase defence spending to £16.5bn over four years – this is the largest rise in UK military spending for three decades. In the height of a pandemic, this is a totally irresponsible move. This money would be much better spent on the climate emergency, tackling poverty, preventing homelessness and providing free school meals, among other more socially beneficial things. This ludicrous amount of money will not provide security for this country and increases the risk of a new arms race. Read the response from various peace organisations to this dangerous move here and Andrew Smith from CAAT’s response here. See this page for actions you can take about this foolish move.

The government have also cut foreign aid, another short-sighted move that could affect Middle East countries most in need and won’t increase our security either – read more here and here You can sign Action Aid petition’s on this here.

London CAAT meetings

We are having one final online meeting of the year on December 15^th at 6.30pm. Do let us know if you would like to join us – please send an email to londoncaat at riseup.net and we will send you the details.

Virtual tour of companies that have supplied weapons used on BLM protesters

The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, among others, sparked a wave of protests across the US. These protests were met with a violent response from the police. London CAAT and Rainbow Collective produced this video to highlight the companies that have supplied weapons used on these protesters. These companies are complicit in the violent reaction to the protesters and help maintain the structural racism and violent nature of the police. On top of the companies mentioned in this video, it has also been proved that UK shields from the company DMS Plastics were used by the US police in confrontations with protesters.

The video contains a number of actions you can take, such as using CAAT’s arms companies database to contact any of the companies that may be near you as well as writing to your MP about the cancellation of arms export licences to the US. There is also a petition you can sign and a crowdfunder to support. We also urge you to support organisations campaigning on wider issues of structural racism and police violence such as Black Lives Matter UK and the United Families and Friends Campaign.

CAAT launches new legal challenge to Saudi arms sales

As the UK government continues to ignore clear evidence that violations of international humanitarian law are being carried out by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, CAAT have launched a new legal challenge to stop the sale of UK weapons for use in this war. The government resumed sales to the coalition in July, a frankly ludicrous and astonishing decision.

UK rules explicitly prohibit the sale of weapons when there is a “clear risk they might be used in violations of international humanitarian law.” Thousands of civilians have been killed and schools and hospitals have been targeted. These awful incidents have been carried out with UK-made bombs and CAAT estimates the value of sales to the Coalition since the beginning of the war to be at least £18 billion.

The government’s review of these sales was a whitewash and somehow concluded that any violations of International Humanitarian Law committed by the Saudi coalition were ‘isolated incidents’. This shocking decision cannot be allowed to stand and the legal case will hopefully stop these sales once and for all. Read more about the legal challenge here.

Oppose the Immigration Enforcement Centre in Newham

The Home Office are proposing to open an Immigration Enforcement Centre in Newham, one of the most multicultural boroughs in the UK. People whose immigration status is being assessed by the Home Office would be required to sign in here (and could be booked onto deportation flights).

This is an awful move and would create a hostile environment for the residents of Newham. The proposed site for the centre is Warehouse K at the Royal Victoria Docks. This sites the centre right next to the ExCeL centre, where the DSEI arms fair takes place every couple of years. This fair is where deals to sell weapons to countries with dubious humans rights records are made, weapons that then cause people to flee their countries. This makes the proposed move from central London particularly cruel.

Black Activists Rising Against Cuts have organised a petition against the proposed move, which you can sign here and the Newham branch of Stand Up to Racism organised a demo against the centre.

Liverpool’s electronic arms fair shut down

After an excellent campaign by local campaigners, the Liverpool electronic arms fair that was due to take place in November has been cancelled. They set up a petition and called on people to write to the Mayor and local councillors. Even better, they secured a commitment from Liverpool’s Mayor, Joe Anderson, to establish an ethical events charter. You can read CAAT’s statement on this commitment here. You can also see a powerful message about the cancellation from the mother of the murdered Gaza paramedic Razan Al-Najjar here. Massive congratulations to all those who took action. The campaign was supported by Palestine Solidarity Campaign, CAAT, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and BDS National Committee.

British complicity in Saudi war on Yemen continues

The UK continues to be complicit in the death and destruction in Yemen. A UN report has warned that the UK could be ‘aiding and assisting’ Saudi Arabia war crimes through their arms sales to the Saudis. Also, Declassified has exposed that the British training of Saudi pilots is continuing despite the renewed bombing of Yemen. The hypocrisy of the Tories praising the UK’s aid contributions to Yemen while continuing these sales was laid bare in a recent parliamentary debate. You can write to your MP regarding these heinous arms sales here.

London CAAT meetings

Our meetings are still taking place online so if you want to attend a meeting, please send an email to londoncaat at riseup.net and we will send you details. The meetings are the third Tuesday of every month at 6.30pm.

Finally, you can also check out CAAT’s awesome new People Not War zine – download a copy from their homepage.

Soldier arrested over stand of conscience against the war in Yemen

Soldier Ahmed Al-Babati stood outside the Ministry of Defence on August 24th wearing a sign saying ‘I refuse to continue my military service until the deal with Saudi comes to an end’. He blew a whistle every ten minutes to signify the death of a child in Yemen as a result of the war as well as saying he did not want to be “part of a corrupt government that continues to arm and support terrorism”. He was arrested by military police.

London CAAT is in full support of Ahmed’s principled stand and we call for no action to be taken against him. Stop the War Coalition have a petition in support of his actions here and you can read more about his protest here.

Ahmed has set up an organisation called Stand for Justice “to make the world a better place” and you can listen to Ahmed’s passionate explanation of his actions here.

Getting ready for next year’s DSEI arms fair

In place of our usual meeting, we will have a roundtable organised by CAAT. It will be an opportunity to discuss the purpose of the Stop the Arms Fair network, reflect on and adapt our approaches to resistance, solidarity, and campaigning, and look ahead to the DSEI arms fair due to take place in September 2021. It will be on our usual meeting date of September 15th but at the slightly earlier time of 6pm. You can register for the roundtable here.

The awesome Quaker Roots are gearing up for DSEI as well and are having a series of workshops throughout September – check out their website for details.

Farnborough targeted online

The Farnborough International Airshow takes place annually in July and this year went online. That didn’t stop us from following it there and pointing out that it is an arms fair. When companies such as BAE Systems and Raytheon are giving talks and likely meeting military delegations virtually (in 2018 Farnborough invited representatives from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates Bahrain: all part of the coalition that has so devastated Yemen), you’re an arms fair.

There were also sessions on combat aircraft design and insights from young professionals in defence and aerospace, featuring companies like Boeing Defence, MBDA Missile Systems and Rolls Royce. Stop the Arms Fair’s Twitter actively targeted the fair, following their schedule closely and highlighting the true nature of the companies speaking at the show. Check out their Twitter feed for the fantastic series of tweets they posted.

Government resumes arms sales to Saudi Arabia

Last month the government made the ludicrous decision to resume licensing arms sales to the Saudi-led coalition bombing Yemen. These arms sales were put on hold following CAAT’s victory at the Court of Appeal last year. In light of this move, CAAT will be exploring all options available to challenge this decision.

The basis for this decision was the Secretary of State for International Trade Liz Truss’ written statement that said the government had completed that review, and concluded that war crimes committed in the attacks on Yemen were “isolated incidents”. Which is manifestly untrue – the bombings of weddings and funerals, schools and hospitals prove otherwise and are a pattern of repeated breaches of International Humanitarian Law.

The UK government is complicit in this through the licensing of at least £5.3 billion of arms sales since the war began in 2015. UK weapons – warplanes, bombs and missiles – are being used by the Saudi-led forces in Yemen. This has to stop for the sake of innocent civilians in Yemen.

Read more about the resumption of sales here.

Our meetings

Our meetings are still taking place online so if you want to attend a meeting, please send an email to londoncaat at riseup.net and we will send you details. The meetings are the third Tuesday of every month at 6.30pm.

Black Lives Matter

London CAAT have been exploring how we can show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and also help them in their call for justice for all black people and to create a world free of anti-Blackness. The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and Tony McDade in the US have led to massive protests there and globally. But this is not solely an American problem and the UK has it’s own issues with structural racism. Since 1969, just one police officer has been convicted for their role in the death of someone in their care. Black people are more than four times more likely to die of Covid-19 than the white British population.

CAAT have produced some fantastic resources that outline the UK’s role in the crackdown on US protests, what individuals can do to help and how groups can support the movement. Their blog posts covering this are here and here. There has also been coverage of the UK’s exports of tear gas, rubber bullets and riot shields to the US. Since 2010 the UK has licensed £2 million worth of security and para-military police goods to the US police and £18 million worth of ammunition sales to the US military and police, including crowd control ammunition, CS hand grenades, and tear gas. The USA is the second biggest buyer of UK arms in the world. CAAT also has an action where you can tell your MP to demand an end to licensing crowd control equipment to the US.

London CAAT will continue to explore how best to support the Black Lives Matter movement as we want to show proper support to the movement and not take action without considering how we can support the movement on a long term basis and as best we can help to bring about the structural change needed in this country.

Arms sales to Saudi Arabia in the Supreme Court

It’s one year since CAAT’s amazing victory in the Court of Appeal that ruled UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia were illegal. That means the export of new weapons for use in the war in Yemen have been stopped and a multi-billion pound deal to sell more fighter jets to Saudi Arabia remains on hold. Unfortunately the government is appealing to the Supreme Court for a final decision, with the hearing scheduled for 23-25 November. Shockingly, the government has not complied with the ruling that it should retake its previous decisions to allow weapons sales, and it is continuing to supply the war in Yemen. All the opposition parties have called for urgent action – read more about this here. Please sign CAAT’s petition to the International Trade Secretary demanding an end to the arms sales now.

Our meetings

Our meetings are still taking place online so if you want to attend a meeting, please send an email to londoncaat at riseup.net and we will send you details. The meetings are the third Tuesday of every month at 6.30pm.

CAAT are also organising online panel events and reading groups on July 9th and 16th onwards – you can read more about these here.

The Saudi regime has no place in the Premier League

Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund, which is chaired by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, is planning to buy Newcastle United FC, one of the Premier League’s largest and best supported clubs. In light of the serious humans rights concerns around the regime and the Saudi-led coalition’s devastating assault on Yemen, this would be a travesty of a decision if the purchase was allowed to go ahead.

Lawyers for Hatice Cengiz, the widow of Jamal Khashoggi, have written to the Premier League asking them to prevent the deal from taking place, citing the killing of Khashoggi and the rules of the league. Cengiz wrote a powerful editorial in the Guardian.

We sent an email to the Premier League chairman Richard Masters urging him to take into account the Saudi regime’s woeful human rights record and stop the sale. This sportswashing of the Saudi regime cannot be allowed to take place and the Premier League must not be party to this sportswashing.

The military and arms companies’ carbon destructiveness

Scientists for Global Responsibility have produced an illuminating report on the carbon emissions of the UK military and arms companies. They produce more carbon emissions than 60 individual countries and, according to the last data available, pumped 6.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent into the Earth’s atmosphere in 2017-2018. This large figure is despite a senior military commander saying that the threat posed to UK security by climate change is just as grave as that posed by cyber attacks and terrorism.

Unsurprisingly, BAE Systems were the largest contributor to Britain’s arm industry’s emissions, contributing 30%. These companies should focus on the real security concerns facing the UK and the globe and work on more socially beneficial products. You can read more about the report here and download it here.

Our meetings

As we said last month, we have moved our meetings online – if you want to attend a meeting, please send an email to londoncaat at riseup.net and we will send you details. The meetings are still the third Tuesday of every month at 6.30pm.

Global Day of Action on Military Spending

This month has been the Global Day of Action on Military Spending and we took online actions on April 27th to coincide with the release of SIPRI’s figures on UK military spending. In 2019 the UK’s military spending was a massive £47bn. That’s the equivalent of 22,000 hospital beds or 9,400 ventilators. We know what we would rather the UK government spent the money on. In time of a global pandemic, it is become starkly clear that the massive amounts of money spent on the military has been at the expense of other more pressing concerns. Just think how different this crisis could have been if we had spent money on preparing for a pandemic, as the government were warned last year about the risks of such a pandemic and did not implement the recommendations in the briefing.

We did a series of posts about this and asked people to sign CAAT’s/our petition calling for a global ceasefire. If you’ve already signed this, you could write to your MP about it too. We also highlighted the International Peace Bureau’s petition calling on the General Assembly of the United Nations to reduce military spending in favour of healthcare and all social and environmental needs.

Shocking increase in arms sales to repressive regimes

The government have just released the 2019 figures for UK arms sales and there was a £1bn increase on sales to repressive regimes compared with 2018. This is an increase of 300% and once again shows the government putting profits before human rights. They even ignored their own advice and sold £849m worth of arms to states on the Foreign Office list of countries having human rights issues, an increase of 390% from 2018. They sold £1.3bn worth of weapons to 26 of the 48 countries that are classed as “not free” by a US government-funded pro-democracy institution. These sales show a flagrant disregard for the human rights of the civilians that will be on the end of these weapons and the government must abide by its own frequently stated ‘robust’ arms export controls. You can read more about these figures here.

Online activism

As you can see from above, we have taken our activism online. With that in mind, we have written a blog post with some tips on online activism and about how to run meetings online. You can read the post here and hopefully you can find some useful tips in there. We have moved our meetings online (they are still the third Tuesday of every month at 6.30pm) – if you want to join them, please send an email to londoncaat at riseup.net

People show support for the victims of the Yemen war

For obvious reasons, we couldn’t hold our vigil for Yemen at the UK Trade and Investment Defence and Security Organisation, so we held an online day of action (as well as partaking in the Europe-wide day of action). We asked people to post about the devastating effect of the war on the Yemeni people and the UK’s complicity in it as well as asking them to write to the Attorney General to ask him to move forward with the prosecution of Airbus on corruption charges regarding a deal to supply communications equipment to the Saudi Arabian National Guard – you can do that here. With the situation in the country still dire, the country would struggle to cope with a coronavirus outbreak. It is also in danger of being forgotten about. The vigil got a lot of traction with many people posting messages highlighting the ongoing crisis in the country and calling on the UK government to stop fuelling the war with arms sales to the Saudi-led coalition. Thank you to all those who took action.

Lots of shocking developments in the arms trade

The last fortnight has seen an unfortunate bonanza of concerning developments regarding the arms trade. In another incident of the revolving door between the arms trade and government, the Guardian highlighted that a number of employees from arms companies such as BAE Systems. MBDA and General Dynamics UK have been on secondments within the Department for International Trade. Their secondments in influential positions has no doubt influenced the government’s export strategy, supporting arms sales at the expense of the Yemeni people and more important issues such as the climate crisis. Read more here.

Continuing with the Yemen war, Physicians for Human Rights and the Yemeni human rights group Mwatana released a report outlining that hospitals and doctors in Yemen have been targeted at least 120 times during the war. This has obviously had a devastating effect on the country’s healthcare system, leading to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. It was also revealed that a third of all airstrikes on Yemen were hitting civilian targets. Emily Thornberry also wrote an article about the war’s anniversary which included an excellent suggestion for taking decisions about arms exports away from politicians. Finally, in a skewed sense of priorities, the government has drawn up plans to lend other countries £1bn of public money to allow them to buy British-made bombs and surveillance technology – read more here. It is unbelievable that in a time of a global pandemic, the UK government is STILL trying to sell as many weapons as possible. And using taxpayers money to do it.

London CAAT meetings

In light of the coronavirus situation, all London CAAT meetings have been cancelled for the moment. There will also be no outdoor activities for some time but we will still take action against the arms trade where we can, for example for the Global Day of Action on Military Spending so do get in touch if you want to be involved and keep an eye on our social media pages for any actions we do take.