Farnborough Arms Fair
Andrew Wood | 27.07.2004 16:59 | Anti-militarism | Globalisation
Farnborough, 19 - 25 July, is rightly the focus of campaigners against the arms trade. Campaign Against Arms Trade was there and this is what happened.
Textron Cluster bomb at Farnborough
Welcome to Farnborough
We could have airdropped our leaflet into the Farnborough Airshow on the Saturday 24 July but we decided to do it the hard way. Handing out the ‘Take the arms fair out of the airshow’ leaflets to visitors was Ruth with Leyla, her knee-high daughter. There was Lysa with her smart red and white outfit – Arsenal Football Club would have been proud - emblazoned with ‘Peace’ and ‘Say no to the arms fair’, and the rest of us of course; ten in all. We welcomed the visitors: ‘Hi-ya’, ‘Good morning’, ‘Would you like a leaflet’; we answered their questions, and smiled. This was public engagement. We were surprisingly well received with only a few hostile remarks – the most perceptive being – ‘you’re got a nerve’. Too right we have, we take the courage of our convictions plus the training we’d undertaken a few weeks beforehand and tell it like it is. Farnborough is an armsfair, and it should have no part in a family day out to celebrate flight.
Not far away were the Pretzels, a street theatre group, who accompanied us that day. Dressed as the Red Arrows they proceeded to entertain the steady stream of visitors to the airshow – 110,000 visitors over the weekend. The Pretzel’s dance or flight routine included flashes from the underside of their Hawk jet wings with startling facts about the use of the military aircraft – their use in the horrendous conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo for example.
Leafleting outside the pedestrian entrance riled the organisers of the Airshow. They came out and told us we couldn’t be there. When referred to the police the organisers were informed that we were perfectly within our rights. At first the police were concerned about people chaining themselves to the entrances and asked if we can any handcuffs! The day ended peacefully though, as intended, and we achieved our goal - several thousand visitors have read our leaflet and learned about the arms fair they call an airshow.
Farnborough – it’s the business
The opening day of Farnborough week, this year was on Monday 19 July, is always marked by an announcement of new business deals – some in civil aerospace but many in the military sector. This year it was $9 billion of deals with prominence given to Thales for winning the $1.5 billion WATCHKEEPER UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) programme – a surveillance plane for the British army. By Tuesday the figure rose to $19 billion as announcements from Geoff Hoon, Secretary of State for Defence, regarding public expenditure were taken as indication of the Government’s commitment to buy the second batch, or tranche as its known, of the Eurofighter Typhoon, as well as Nimrod aircraft. Both are built, at least in part, by BAE systems. While the armed forces may be cutting staff the arms companies are seeing no cuts in orders – quite the opposite. By the end of the week deals worth $20 billion were announced.
At the peaceful demonstration on Monday we marked the first trading day by showing the subsidies given by Government to companies for the sale of arms abroad. So we had a Tony Blair look-alike deliver a huge cheque to the gates at Farnborough showing the £888 million subsidies a year. That’s £13,000 for each job exporting arms each year. That money buys: the 600 staff at in the civil service at the Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO); Export Credit Guarantees for arms exports– cheap insurance if you like; the time of Ministers, Diplomats, Embassies; equipment demonstrations by the armed forces; research and development grants and a lots more. Incidentally Farnborough saw 42 official military delegations visit the show. Our message, on placards and the cheque was ‘Stop Export Subsidies to arms Companies.’ Leaflets, looking like, well, cheques of course, were distributed to visitors of Farnborough’s ‘trade days’, as they’re known. The day ended well. There was lots of police attention including examining our cardboard missile props – just in case they were real – perhaps they should have looked inside the airfield.
Disbelief
Farnborough sees a huge amount of sponsorship and advertisement. All sorts of things can be sponsored including the children’s face painting. Lloyds TSB sponsored the president’s enclosure this year. Many CAAT supporters have written to Lloyds asking them to stop sponsoring an arms fair. But Lloyds continue to insist that Farnborough is not an arms fair. Perhaps they should listen to Secretary of State Geoff Hoon who announced: “Farnborough is an important event in the defence calendar and I am pleased to be here to give my support to the defence industry.” This year CAAT has nominated the Textron Cluster bomb, shown both on the trade and public days of Farnborough, as the most despised weapon.
Picture shows Textron Cluster bomb at Farnborough, more at
http://www.caat.org.uk/campaigns/farnborough/farnborough04-pictures.php
We could have airdropped our leaflet into the Farnborough Airshow on the Saturday 24 July but we decided to do it the hard way. Handing out the ‘Take the arms fair out of the airshow’ leaflets to visitors was Ruth with Leyla, her knee-high daughter. There was Lysa with her smart red and white outfit – Arsenal Football Club would have been proud - emblazoned with ‘Peace’ and ‘Say no to the arms fair’, and the rest of us of course; ten in all. We welcomed the visitors: ‘Hi-ya’, ‘Good morning’, ‘Would you like a leaflet’; we answered their questions, and smiled. This was public engagement. We were surprisingly well received with only a few hostile remarks – the most perceptive being – ‘you’re got a nerve’. Too right we have, we take the courage of our convictions plus the training we’d undertaken a few weeks beforehand and tell it like it is. Farnborough is an armsfair, and it should have no part in a family day out to celebrate flight.
Not far away were the Pretzels, a street theatre group, who accompanied us that day. Dressed as the Red Arrows they proceeded to entertain the steady stream of visitors to the airshow – 110,000 visitors over the weekend. The Pretzel’s dance or flight routine included flashes from the underside of their Hawk jet wings with startling facts about the use of the military aircraft – their use in the horrendous conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo for example.
Leafleting outside the pedestrian entrance riled the organisers of the Airshow. They came out and told us we couldn’t be there. When referred to the police the organisers were informed that we were perfectly within our rights. At first the police were concerned about people chaining themselves to the entrances and asked if we can any handcuffs! The day ended peacefully though, as intended, and we achieved our goal - several thousand visitors have read our leaflet and learned about the arms fair they call an airshow.
Farnborough – it’s the business
The opening day of Farnborough week, this year was on Monday 19 July, is always marked by an announcement of new business deals – some in civil aerospace but many in the military sector. This year it was $9 billion of deals with prominence given to Thales for winning the $1.5 billion WATCHKEEPER UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) programme – a surveillance plane for the British army. By Tuesday the figure rose to $19 billion as announcements from Geoff Hoon, Secretary of State for Defence, regarding public expenditure were taken as indication of the Government’s commitment to buy the second batch, or tranche as its known, of the Eurofighter Typhoon, as well as Nimrod aircraft. Both are built, at least in part, by BAE systems. While the armed forces may be cutting staff the arms companies are seeing no cuts in orders – quite the opposite. By the end of the week deals worth $20 billion were announced.
At the peaceful demonstration on Monday we marked the first trading day by showing the subsidies given by Government to companies for the sale of arms abroad. So we had a Tony Blair look-alike deliver a huge cheque to the gates at Farnborough showing the £888 million subsidies a year. That’s £13,000 for each job exporting arms each year. That money buys: the 600 staff at in the civil service at the Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO); Export Credit Guarantees for arms exports– cheap insurance if you like; the time of Ministers, Diplomats, Embassies; equipment demonstrations by the armed forces; research and development grants and a lots more. Incidentally Farnborough saw 42 official military delegations visit the show. Our message, on placards and the cheque was ‘Stop Export Subsidies to arms Companies.’ Leaflets, looking like, well, cheques of course, were distributed to visitors of Farnborough’s ‘trade days’, as they’re known. The day ended well. There was lots of police attention including examining our cardboard missile props – just in case they were real – perhaps they should have looked inside the airfield.
Disbelief
Farnborough sees a huge amount of sponsorship and advertisement. All sorts of things can be sponsored including the children’s face painting. Lloyds TSB sponsored the president’s enclosure this year. Many CAAT supporters have written to Lloyds asking them to stop sponsoring an arms fair. But Lloyds continue to insist that Farnborough is not an arms fair. Perhaps they should listen to Secretary of State Geoff Hoon who announced: “Farnborough is an important event in the defence calendar and I am pleased to be here to give my support to the defence industry.” This year CAAT has nominated the Textron Cluster bomb, shown both on the trade and public days of Farnborough, as the most despised weapon.
Picture shows Textron Cluster bomb at Farnborough, more at
http://www.caat.org.uk/campaigns/farnborough/farnborough04-pictures.php
Andrew Wood
e-mail:
enquiries@caat.org.uk
Homepage:
http://www.armsfair.com
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COURT OF APPEAL RULES ON FAIRFORD DEFENCE
27.07.2004 17:17
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21 july 04
At the end of June, the Court of Appeal heard
pre-trial submissions from both Crown and defence
lawyers in the cases of the five peace activists
who undertook to damage US-owned military hardware
at the air base at Fairford, Gloucestershire, in
the weeks before the Iraq war. Paul Milling and
Margaret Jones disabled support vehicles used to
supply bombs and fuel to B-52 bombers. In two
further separate incidents, Philip Pritchard and Toby
Olditch, and Josh Richards, were arrested while
on their way to disable a plane.
The main point at issue: the defendants’ right
to argue that they carried out their actions to
resist an illegal war.
This morning the Appeal Court judges hearing the
appeal - Lord Justice La tham, Mr. Justice Gibbs
and Judge Richard Brown - ruled it is “not
necessary” to consider the legality of the war in Iraq,
for the accused to have a defence in law. There
is no need, the judges say, even to debate whether
an English court has the right to rule on
government policy in the case. The judges find no
“established rule” which defines the international
crime of aggression by a government as being also a
crime in English law. So the accused are unable to
claim “preventing the crime of aggression” as the
basis of their defence.
At trial, the defendants will still be able to
rely on the defence of “lawful excuse.” They will
be able to argue from the Criminal Damage Act of
1971 that, in damaging support vehicles for B-52
bombers, or in breaking into Fairford air base to
try and disable a plane, they were defending a
“property, right or interest,” that they honestly
believed was in need o f protection.
Since this defence under the Criminal Damage Act
does not specify whether the action a defendant
seeks to prevent must something illegal, the
Appeal Court judges again found it possible to avoid
considering the possible unlawfulness of the Iraq
war.
Three weeks ago, at the start of the hearing that
led to today’s ruling, a four-page witness
statement was submitted to the Appeal Court by Sir
Michael Jay, head of the Diplomatic Service. In the
statement, Sir Michael said he had been instructed
by the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, to warn
that for a UK court to express any opinion on the
legality of the Iraq war would have negative
effects on UK foreign relations. Any such ruling would,
Sir Michael wrote, “provide encouragement” to
terrorists, “weaken the Government’s hand in its
negotiations with other states,” and “tend to
undermine the new Iraqi Interim Government.”
In view of this warning from the highest levels
of government, today’s Court of Appeal judgement
comes as no surprise. Defendants will now discuss
with their lawyers whether they have grounds to
for a further appeal, to the House of Lords.
In the Court of Appeal hearing, Paul Milling and
Margaret Jones were represented by James Lewis
QC, and Josh Richards by Keir Starmer QC.
Professor Vaughan Lowe represented Philip Pritchard and
Toby Olditch.
More information: Louise James or Daniel Bonich,
(Solicitors, Stokoe Partnership) Tel. 0208 – 558- 8884
Or Hugo Charlton, barrister for Josh Richards:
Tel. 07990-580 600
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more information from CND site here:
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what about the rest of the week
27.07.2004 19:03
Peejay
DSEi protest
29.07.2004 10:50
At first I thought this was down to the pigs but it no just apathy.
Jim boy
very poor
30.07.2004 10:45
.