Phil McMahon – London Campaign Against Arms Trade

London CAAT were outside the Excel centre on Monday protesting the DSEI arms fair – the world’s largest weapons fair, to which dictators and leaders of repressive regimes around the world are invited. Today the focus was on weapons sales to Israel, as well as on Israeli weapons companies, who make use of the horrific acts of the Israeli Defense Force against Palestinians to advertise their ‘battle tested’ weapons.

There’s a great article by open democracy on the UK’s continued support for the Israeli regime here. .

During the day we heard harrowing stories from people who have lost family, friends and students through the actions of the Israeli Military – a force the UK continues to support and arm. As ever, the police ignored these stories and continued to assist the DSEI organisers by dragging protestors off the road to enable military equipment to arrive at DSEI.

There were brilliant energy levels – with a sound system, street theatre, a Dabke workshop, a performance by Potent Whisperer, live music and even a Stop Arming Israel Cake!

There are a few more photos from the day below, or you can see the full album of photos and videos from the day here (note – unedited ).

Palestinians killed by the Israeli state

On 26 October London CAAT returned to the London Transport Museum, at the entrance of the museum’s ‘power, play and politics’ late night event. We were there to highlight the London Transport Museum’s relationship with the weapons manufacturer Thales, who in 2012 were the world’s 11th largest arms dealer.

In return for sponsorship money, Thales gains the legitimacy of being a partner of the museum and in the past the company has used the museum’s room to meet UK DSO, the government body responsible for licensing arms exports.

London CAAT has been campaigning against this relationship for a long time, but have met with indifference when we wrote to the museum’s management, despite a series of banner drops from the buses inside the museum, and campaigning outside to make visitors to the museum aware of the situation.

Our focus over the last year shifted away from the museum, instead campaigning to get the UK government to Stop Arming Saudi Arabia (upcoming demo next Monday – 26 November), but an event called ‘power, play and politics’ was too good to resist – an event discussing protest movements couldn’t be left to go unchallenged, when the venue it was hosted in is in the pockets of a weapons company who sells weapons to countries currently engaged in the devastating attacks on Yemen, that have left over 10,000 civillians dead and over a million people in need of humanitarian aid.

We set up our banner outside the museum as people were arriving for the event and started handing out leaflets and talking to visitors about the museum’s sponsorship and why it’s problematic. One person who stopped to talk to us actually worked for Thales.

Our next action is this coming Monday at 5pm. If you want to get involved in future London CAAT demonstrations then come along to one of our meetings – we meet on the third Tuesday of the month in the CAAT offices near finsbury park – our next meeting is on 15th January at 18.30.

Author: Phil McMahon

DSEI Day 1 – Stop Arming Israel!

London Transport Museum: Stop Endorsing Thales!