On 3 February, Campaign Against Arms Trade staffer Anne-Marie O’Reilly strode onto the stage of the annual ADS arms industry dinner at the Park Lane Hilton in London. She took the microphone and urged the arms dealers present to consider a career change. (Also present were ministers, over 40 MPs, and many top-ranking civil servants and ministry of defence officials.)
Anne-Marie’s opening words were: ‘I’m here tonight because my child is going to be born in four months’ time.... He’s going to be born into a country where one million people have needed to use a food bank in the last year.’
She wrote later: ‘I don’t want my son to grow up in a world where arms dealers can make millions of pounds through encouraging war. I want him to grow up in a world with different priorities, a world that puts social and environmental justice ahead of militarism and war.’
There’s a YouTube video at:
www.tinyurl.com/peacenews1558
Topics: Anti-war action, Arms trade