Manchester anti-arms-trade activities

On 17th Jan­u­ary 2009, as the bombs rained down on Gaza, six peo­ple entered the EDO fac­to­ry in Brighton, which makes parts for weapons that have been used against the peo­ple if Iraq, Afgan­istan and Pales­tine. They threw com­put­ers and fil­ing cab­i­nets out of the first floor win­dow and took ham­mers to machin­ery used for weapons pro­duc­tion.

On 17th Jan­u­ary 2009, as the bombs rained down on Gaza, six peo­ple entered the EDO fac­to­ry in Brighton, which makes parts for weapons that have been used against the peo­ple if Iraq, Afgan­istan and Pales­tine. They threw com­put­ers and fil­ing cab­i­nets out of the first floor win­dow and took ham­mers to machin­ery used for weapons pro­duc­tion. Their aim was to dis­able the war machine and to take action against those who prof­it from the aer­i­al bom­bard­ment of Gaza. The offices were out of action for a month and hun­dreds of thou­sands of pounds of dam­age was report­ed.

The EDO Decom­mis­sion­ers always intend­ed to go to tri­al – not as the accused but as the accusers mak­ing the case that their action was law­ful because they were dis­arm­ing an arms fac­to­ry which is com­plic­it in war crimes.

The tri­al date has been moved on a num­ber of occa­sions, and it is now due to start on June 7th. In the run-up to this, Tar­get Brimar are call­ing for sol­i­dar­i­ty with the EDO Decom­mis­sion­ers in Man­ches­ter. On Mon­day 17th May at 12.30 pm we’ll be leaflet­ing out­side Bar­clays on Mosley Street in Man­ches­ter City Cen­tre; please join us.

There has been a five year long cam­paign of direct action against EDO MBM/ITT aimed at per­suad­ing them to stop pro­duc­ing weapons com­po­nents in Brighton. EDO’s com­po­nents are used by the US and UK in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel in Pales­tine.

As ITT’s mar­ket mak­er, Bar­clays act as a ‘mid­dle man’, pur­chas­ing shares from a sell­er and hold­ing them until such a time as a buy­er becomes avail­able. This ensures the sta­bil­i­ty of ITT’s share price by allow­ing share­hold­ers to sell off their assets at any time, even when a a buy­er is not imme­di­ate­ly avail­able, and vice ver­sa. Bar­clays also prof­its from this enter­prise by sell­ing ITT’s shares at a markup.

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We’d also like to remind peo­ple in the North West about our own home-grown arms com­po­nent man­u­fac­tur­er, Brimar in Chad­der­ton, which sells com­po­nents to the Israeli air force and to the British and US for use in Iraq and Afghanistan . Tar­get Brimar holds a vig­il at the fac­to­ry at 4pm on the first Wednes­day of every month and it would be great to see you there on 2nd June, 7th July and 4th August.

We will also be hold­ing a let­ter-writ­ing ses­sion at Nexus Cafe on Dale Street in Man­ches­ter on Sun­day June 20th, 11am-1pm. We’ll have form let­ters to local MPs, MEPs, coun­cil­lors and news­pa­pers rais­ing the issue of an arms fac­to­ry on their patch, so please drop by to sign up and send some off. There will also be mate­ri­als if you want to write per­son­al let­ters to some of the pro­test­ers who have been giv­en unjust and racist sen­tences for demon­strat­ing against the inva­sion of Gaza in Jan­u­ary 2009.

For more infor­ma­tion see:
http://www.targetbrimar.org.uk
http://www.smashedo.org.uk
http://gazademosupport.org.uk/
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=102652103115133&ref=mf#!/event.php?eid=102652103115133&ref=mf