Since London CAAT’s formation in 2006, the group has taken a wide variety of actions to challenge the arms trade, from cheeky banner drops inside museums that take money from arms companies to targeting these companies directly.
Early days of the group saw the group gather signatures calling on Islington council to divest its pension funds from arms companies.
A regular action London CAAT carried out were Merchants of Death walking tours around London, visiting the usually anonymous buildings that were offices for arms companies, ranging from BAE Systems to Rolls Royce and other companies in-between.
The DSEI arms fair is one of the world’s largest arms fairs that takes place in East London every two years. London CAAT has been a proud member of the Stop the Arms Fair coalition since its inception and have carried out a number of actions relating to the fair. For example, in the run up to the last DSEI in 2017, we held demos outside some of the arms companies that were going to exhibit at the fair, letting the public know about the companies in their midst and the death and destruction they contribute to globally. We’ve also targeted shows runs by Clarion Events, the organisers of DSEI, letting attendees know about Clarion’s involvement in the arms trade through DSEI/in more dubious/heinous trade shows, targeting the Baby Show, the Horse Show, the Top Gear show and the Spirit of Christmas Fair. The next DSEI is in September 2019 so do get involved in the vibrant campaign to challenge it – sign up here.
Another focus for London CAAT has been museum sponsorship by arms companies, particularly the London Transport Museum’s deal with Thales. We have carried out a wide range of actions as part of this campaign, including infiltrating their Friday late events to drop banners from a bus inside the museum to regular demos outside the museum and a public meeting co-organised with Art Not Oil about museum sponsorship. We have targeted the Science Museum after they had an exhibition sponsored by Airbus. We were also part of the successful campaign that ended Finmeccanica’s sponsorship of the National Gallery.
Our focus at the moment is the UK government’s arm sales to Saudi Arabia and we have held demos outside the Saudi Arabian embassy and street stalls in Walthamstow and Brixton. Related to this, we recently hosted a talk by David Wearing about his latest book on the UK’s relations with Gulf states. We also recently co-organised a demo outside the Royal Windsor Horse Show, where the King Hamad of Bahrain was hosting a race in the company of the Queen as well as targeting a Land Rover showroom as they were sponsoring the show.
So as you can see, we are an active group who love to take mischievous and effective actions against the arms trade. Get involved!