(Update – eventually 21 were arrested and taken into custody – all later released)
Today twelve Trident Ploughshares campaigners and one Extinction Rebellion activist were arrested after blocking both entrances to the DSEI arms fair at the Excel Centre in London to disrupt the event and to highlight the role of arms traders in targeting civilians and threatening mass destruction.
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Two cars and a boat on a trailer, along with activists locked on to each other through suitcases and tubes, were used to prevent arms fair traffic from entering the centre in preparation for the fair.
Parts of the blockade remain in place as of 2pm with a police cutting team still chipping away at a concrete lockon making it impossible for them to remove a car from the entrance road.
Those arrested are: Gillean Lawrence, Janet Fenton, (72), Mike Blackshaw, (70), Eoin McCarthy (all from Edinburgh), Barbara Maver from Fife and Jamie Watson from Glasgow, Ben Simpson, an Extinction Rebellion activist from London, Gaynor Lloyd and Peter Wickenden of the London-based Mad Hatters affinity group of Trident Ploughshares, as well as Shelia Mackay, Margaret Bremner, both from Portobello, Caroline Westgate from Hexham and Sue Bennet, all of the Gareloch Horties TP affinity group. Mike Blackshaw, who has mobility problems, was “de-arrested” and released.
The #NoNuclear day of action is the third day of #StoptheArmsFair, a week of disruption at #DSEI2019 and aims to stop arms companies like Lockheed Martin the world’s largest arms dealer from conducting their deadly business at the Defence and Security International. DSEI is hosted by the UK government.
Lockheed make the Trident D5 missiles which are based at Faslane in Scotland as well as manufacturing the fighter jets that the UK government have arranged to be sold to Saudi Arabia and which are being used in its bombing campaign on Yemen where many thousands of people have died and civilians are being intentionally targetted.
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Trident Ploughshares are calling on the UK government to stop the arms sales to countries like Saudi that are using them to commit gross violations of international law, to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear weapons and to disarm the Trident nuclear weapons system. Any use of Trident would inevitably cause catastrophic death and destruction of the environment and be in violation of international humanitarian law.
Brian Quail, from Glasgow, said: “I am sitting in the road here, utterly sickened and disgusted at what is going on, this obscene event and the killing that is going on in the Yemen, and the cops lining up dutifully to defend and protect the obscenity. It is utterly unspeakable.”