Home | Friday 8th October 2010 | Issue 742
ITT'S HAMMERTIME
Smash EDO are holding a mass demo at EDO/ITT in Brighton on Wednesday 13th October. Anti arms trade campaigners plan to lay siege and shut them down for the day. This will be the first mass demonstration since the EDO Decommissioners, who smashed up the Brighton death dealers during Israel’s massacre in Gaza, were acquitted by a unanimous jury verdict (See SchNEWS 729).
Info for the Day: Meet at the Wild Park Cafe at 10am, or if you’re coming a long way a convergence space will open on the 12th. There will be a meeting about the demo at 7pm at the Cowley Club, an anarchist theme pub, 12 London Rd on the 12th where you can find out more about the demo and convergence space locations.
Previous mobilisations at EDO have seen paint pelted at EDO from Wild Park, windows put in after a mass invasion of EDO’s property, MD Paul Hills’ car redecorated and thousands of activists targeting companies investing in EDO in Brighton’s city centre. Smash EDO press spokesperson Andrew Beckett said, “this time the message is clear – our aim is to close down the factory for the day. The police cannot stop us from surrounding EDO/ITT”.
Sussex Police, gearing up for a charm offensive while dusting off their teloscopic koshes and ordering in extra pepper spray, have recorded a YouTube appeal calling for Smash EDO to negotiate with them. Smash EDO have always maintained a non-negotiation stance on the grounds that “dissent is meaningless if it can only occur with state approval”.
Despite the PR veneer, police attempts to clamp down on the campaign continue. This week a five year restraining order was slapped on Smash EDO campaigner Elijah Smith. One of the EDO decommissioners (see SchNEWS 729), he was convicted of witness intimidation after making a political outburst at Brighton Magistrates’ Court while he was on trial for another EDO related offence. Smith had been on remand for the previous six months and was understandably pissed off. The order will impose an exclusion zone, preventing him from continuing to protest against EDO/ITT.
The judge used a new amendment to the Protection from Harassment Act (PHA) 1997, a law originally used to protect people from stalkers, but now frequently used against protesters.
Restraining orders, which can now even be imposed on people who are found not guilty, may turn out to be a replacement for the increasingly out of fashion ASBOs. Previous attempts by EDO to slap injunctions on anti arms trade activists resulted in a year long high court battle ending in failure (see SchNEWS 492).
