No Christmas Cheer as Arms Giant Lockheed Gets Locked Out

“We nev­er for­get who we’re mur­der­ing and spy­ing for”. Cor­ner­stone of the UK mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex / Orwellian state, US-based arms firm Lock­heed Mar­tin was tar­get­ed ear­ly on Thurs­day morn­ing (13th Decem­ber) at its cen­tral Lon­don HQ as activists from Tri­dent Ploughshares and Lon­don Catholic Work­er deliv­ered a sea­son­al mes­sage to the com­pa­ny, lock­ing work­ers out of the build­ing for 45 min­utes.

“We nev­er for­get who we’re mur­der­ing and spy­ing for”. Cor­ner­stone of the UK mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex / Orwellian state, US-based arms firm Lock­heed Mar­tin was tar­get­ed ear­ly on Thurs­day morn­ing (13th Decem­ber) at its cen­tral Lon­don HQ as activists from Tri­dent Ploughshares and Lon­don Catholic Work­er deliv­ered a sea­son­al mes­sage to the com­pa­ny, lock­ing work­ers out of the build­ing for 45 min­utes.

Lock­heed Mar­tin, whose cor­po­rate slo­gan is “We nev­er for­get who we’re work­ing for”, was paid a vis­it on Thurs­day morn­ing by a group of non-vio­lent activists from a Tri­dent Ploughshares affin­i­ty group called the Muriel Lesters, and Lon­don Catholic Work­er. The group chained shut and blocked off all the entrances to the build­ing for 45 min­utes, from around 8am. The anony­mous build­ing (Man­ning House, 22 Carlisle Place, Lon­don. SW1P 1JA), hid­den away in a side street near Vic­to­ria sta­tion, hous­es the UK cor­po­rate head­quar­ters of the arms giant, which makes Tri­dent nuclear weapons (war­heads and mis­siles) and pro­duces sur­veil­lance sys­tems used by intel­li­gence ser­vices to spy on the pub­lic and for com­mer­cial espi­onage. Sev­er­al ban­ners and plac­ards were on dis­play, includ­ing one that read “Lock­heed Mar­tin — Nuclear Crime Scene”, and work­ers and vis­i­tors to the build­ing were leaflet­ed, as well as passers by.

A crowd of work­ers and vis­i­tors try­ing to gain access to the build­ing had gath­ered on the pave­ment with­in a quar­ter of an hour. Sev­er­al accept­ed leaflets. Bel­gravia police were called to deal with the pro­test­ers. There was a delay as the police await­ed bolt-cut­ters and back-up, but the chains were even­tu­al­ly removed from the front door, after which the pro­test­ers block­ing the back entrances, includ­ing an elder­ly lady in a wheel­chair, decid­ed to unchain the doors and move round to the front. Police were admit­ted to the build­ing for dis­cus­sions, but no arrests were made (either of the peace cam­paign­ers or the arms deal­ers). The pro­test­ers were allowed to con­tin­ue demon­strat­ing and leaflet­ing peace­ful­ly out­side the build­ing, until final­ly leav­ing of their own accord at 9.30am.

Father Mar­tin Newell, a Catholic priest from east Lon­don, says: “I feel it is my duty as a Chris­t­ian to fol­low the prince of peace and oppose the hor­ror of nuclear weapons.”

Myra Gar­rett from east Lon­don says: “I felt I had to tar­get the com­pa­ny because of the new nuclear weapons facil­i­ties they are devel­op­ing right here in the UK, at Alder­mas­ton.”

Chris Gwyn­to­pher from east Lon­don says: “the build­ing had to be closed in the inter­ests of pub­lic secu­ri­ty and world peace. Unlike Lock­heed, I feel my pur­pose is to save life, not destroy it. I wish the work­ers would leave the build­ing for good and seek more humane employ­ment.”

Irene Willis from Essex says: “Christ­mas seems an appro­pri­ate time of year to reflect upon the hor­rif­ic effects the arms trade and nuclear weapons have in the world and to ask our­selves whether we real­ly need them.”

The group intends to pay the com­pa­ny anoth­er vis­it in the near future.

Notes:

1. Lock­heed Mar­tin, SERCO and — cur­rent­ly — British Nuclear Fuels Plc (BNFL) are equal share­hold­ers in AWE Man­age­ment Ltd, which the UK Min­istry of Defence has award­ed a mul­ti-bil­lion pound con­tract to man­age and oper­ate the Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment (AWE) sites at Alder­mas­ton and Burgh­field, both in Berk­shire, until at least 2025. This is where Britain’s nuclear weapons are devel­oped and main­tained, and where new facil­i­ties are being con­struct­ed to enable the pro­duc­tion of a new gen­er­a­tion of nuclear weapons.

http://www.awe.co.uk/main_site/about_awe/the_company/index.html
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/11/385666.html
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/11/385357.html
http://www.awe.co.uk/main_site/scientific_and_technical/publications/Strategy_Plans/index.html

2. Lock­heed Mar­tin pro­motes itself thus:

“Our vision: As an increas­ing num­ber of nations of all sizes around the world indi­cate the desire and capac­i­ty to devel­op nuclear, chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons of mass destruc­tion, it is nec­es­sary to expand our field of vision.

“Our aim: To sus­tain capa­bil­i­ty to design a war­head to suc­ceed Tri­dent by facil­i­tat­ing pro­duc­tion of British nuclear war­heads.

“Our pri­or­i­ties: The key ele­ments of the sci­ence-based pro­gramme we are putting in place to main­tain the country’s nuclear stock­pile.

“Our future: We can now look for­ward to a long-term sta­ble future for AWE and for the UK nuclear weapons pro­gramme.”

Lock­heed Mar­tin is the world’s largest arms com­pa­ny. Besides nuclear weapons, it pro­duces a host of killing and spy­ing machines, devices and sys­tems, includ­ing ‘bunker buster’ bombs, clus­ter bombs and land­mines.

The com­pa­ny also pro­vides mil­i­tary inter­roga­tors for places like Guan­tanamo Bay and Iraq. It is also a lead­ing part­ner in the Ech­e­lon glob­al sur­veil­lance net­work. Its employ­ees work along­side the Amer­i­can NSA (Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency) at Men­with Hill spy sta­tion in York­shire.

See the fol­low­ing for details of the above: http://censusalert.org.uk/lockheed_martin.html

As well as being one of two lead bid­ders for the 2011 UK Cen­sus
http://censusalert.org.uk/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/09/census_boycott/ , Lock­heed Mar­tin also has civil­ian con­tracts in the UK with:

Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Ser­vice
http://www.lockheedmartin.co.uk/products/metpolice.html

Trans­port for Lon­don
http://www.lockheedmartin.co.uk/products/lul.html

Net­work Rail
http://www.lockheedmartin.co.uk/products/networkrail.html

Rail­ways — Pos­i­tive Train Con­trol
http://www.lockheedmartin.co.uk/products/ptc.html

Roy­al Mail
http://www.lockheedmartin.co.uk/products/ai.html

More on the com­pa­ny here: http://www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news402.htm

The company’s cor­po­rate web­sites:
http://www.lockheedmartin.com
http://www.lockheedmartin.co.uk

3. Tri­dent Ploughshares is com­mit­ted to bring­ing about the dis­ar­ma­ment of British nuclear weapons through peace­ful non-vio­lent direct action. They call upon the British gov­ern­ment to stop deploy­ing its sub­ma­rine-launched Tri­dent nuclear weapons sys­tem with imme­di­ate effect, safe­ly decom­mis­sion every one of its war­heads as soon as prac­ti­ca­ble, reverse its deci­sion to renew / replace its (US-depen­dent) Tri­dent sys­tem, and insist that the UN adopt a glob­al Nuclear Weapons Con­ven­tion out­law­ing all nuclear weapons at the very ear­li­est oppor­tu­ni­ty.

See: http://www.tridentploughshares.org

Reports on recent Tri­dent Ploughshares actions against Lock­heed Mar­tin (Oct 2007):

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/384043.html
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/384284.html

Reports and pics from Tri­dent Ploughshares Lon­don ‘weapons inspec­tions’ ear­li­er this year (Feb 2007), which includ­ed Lock­heed Mar­tin:

http://www.tridentploughshares.org/article1485

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/363646.html

Reports from pre­vi­ous Tri­dent Ploughshares actions at Lock­heed Martin’s UK head­quar­ters:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/09/351270.html

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/06/314195.html

http://www.tridentploughshares.org/article1248

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/oxford/2004/12/302877.html