At Gallery 46, a carefully renovated Georgian house in Whitechapel, curator Zayna Al-Saleh has gathered big names in art activism such as Vivienne Westwood, Gavin Turk, Adam Broomberg and Jeremy Deller.
Far from street protest, where Art the Arms Fair has its roots, some pieces are expected to fetch tens of thousands of pounds at auction.
Just as the DSEI arms fair four miles away offers luxurious hospitality to its corporate and military clients, this exhibition comments, with…
The direct action group Palestine Action (PA) has won its first acquittals. On 30 August, a judge at Walsall magistrates court found Iola Davies, 73, and Jasmine Murphy, 23, not guilty of highway obstruction despite the fact that they had locked-on to vehicles blocking entrances to the UAV Engines factory in Shenstone.
PA has a long-running campaign of disruption against British weapons factories owned by the Israeli arms company, Elbit Systems. UAV Engines, which is owned by Elbit…
Nine peace activists were arrested on ‘No Faith in War Day’, on 7 September, in front of the the ExCeL Centre in East London, where preparations were being made for the Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms exhibition and conference, Europe’s biggest arms fair.
Earlier, several hundred people had attended a Quaker meeting for worship, followed by an Anglican service and, later, a Pax Christi liturgy of resistance, at one of the gates to the ExCeL Centre. People…
The direct action group Palestine Action (PA) has seven prisoners to support (there was a day of action for them on 22 July) and at least eight trials going on, but PA is still keeping up its campaign of disruption against British weapons factories owned by the Israeli arms company, Elbit Systems.
PA’s ‘siege’ of the UAV Tactical Systems factory in Leicester which began on 1 May was still continuing at the time of writing. UAV is owned by Elbit.
On 9 July, in a new tactic, PA…
Widespread repression and fraud in the recent Turkish elections shows arms sales to Turkey must be immediately suspended. There is no democracy when president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan controls the media, where opposition parties are not only not given equal air time or coverage, but journalists covering alternate perspectives are persecuted and jailed.
There is no democracy when there is intimidation at polling stations, and there is no democracy when women cannot campaign freely for…
There have been dozens of arrests of Palestine Action (PA) activists since our last report.
At least 41 people have been arrested as part of the group’s main action in May, a mass ‘siege’ of UAV Tactical Systems in Leicester. The company is owned by the Israeli arms company, Elbit Systems. The siege started on 1 May and was continuing as PN went to press.
In another case, four PA activists are waiting to be sentenced after a seven-week trial at Wolverhampton crown court which…
After falling for two years, British arms sales using Single Individual Export Licences (SIELs) more than doubled to £8.5 billion in 2022, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) revealed on 16 May. Over half of these exports were for countries rated ‘Not Free’ by Freedom House, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Türkiye.
The government only reports values for SIELs. CAAT estimates that slightly over half of UK arms exports are conducted more secretively using ‘open’ licences, which…
On 18 March, about 30 people attended a Stop the Arms Fair (STAF) organising meeting in Friends House in Central London to build the campaign to resist DSEI, the heinous Defence and Security Equipment International arms fair that will take place in East London in September.
CAAT stepped back from organising around the DSEI protests after 2019, to concentrate on supporting protest at all other UK arms fairs.
Now STAF need more organisations and groups to get involved and think…
Universities across the UK draw millions of pounds of revenue from arms-trade-sponsored research, sometimes with explicit weapon-development research aims. Universities turn to the arms industry to make quick profits from consultancy work, while arms companies use universities as a base for recruitment and PR. British universities also have funds – sometimes tens of millions of pounds – invested in arms companies either directly or indirectly through fund managers and banks.
This is…
Palestine Action (PA) has kept up a hectic pace recently in terms of court dates, and has also carried on its campaign of property damage against British arms firms supplying the Israeli Defence Force (IDF).
PA, founded in July 2020, has branched out from its focus on Elbit UK, the British subsidiary of Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems, which supplies military drones to the IDF for use against Palestinians.
For example, on 19 January campaigners in Scotland…
After eight years of war, the people of Yemen are enduring one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Oxfam says that ‘24 million people – 80 percent of Yemen’s population – need emergency aid, the greatest number in any country in the world.’
A quarter of the population is malnourished.
There were some signs of hope in January; a new truce may be agreed soon between the Saudi-led coalition and their Houthi opponents.
However, according to one study, there have been…
On 3 December, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) organised a day of action in solidarity with the people in Yemen and against the companies fuelling the war there, in the run-up to their legal challenge to British arms sales to Saudi Arabia, due to be heard in the High Court on 31 January.
Some events took place before the official day of action. On 2 December, there was a demo outside BAE Systems in Holyhead, on Anglesey, and, in Lancaster, Demilitarise Lancaster, Solidarity…
A five-week trial involving members of the direct action group Palestine Action (PA) is due to start at Snaresbrook crown court on on 10 October.
The eight Palestine Action activists (including cofounders Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard) have been charged with burglary, criminal damage and ‘blackmail’ – for which the maximum sentence is 14 years.
The charges relate to the first six months of PA action against the British subsidiary of the Israeli arms company Elbit Systems,…
All year, it has been infuriating to watch the debate about Boris Johnson as pressure built up against the British prime minister until he was finally forced from office on 7 July by his own party – which believed he would damage its chances of winning the next election.
Johnson was sacked by the Conservatives for his personal weaknesses, such as dishonesty and irresponsibility. This was what the media also focused on. Near the liberal extreme, the Guardian editorial on his…
The woman who is likely to be the next prime minister of Britain approved £289m of UK exports with potential military use to Russia before the invasion of Ukraine, Matt Kennard of Declassified reported on 28 July.
Liz Truss (now foreign secretary) was secretary of state for international trade from July 2019 to September 2021: she was in charge of regulating the export of British arms and ‘dual use’ (possibly military) equipment.
According to Kennard, Truss approved…
