Tuesday 8 and Thursday 10 September 2009: Anti-arms campaigners took to the streets of London to protest the bi-annual Defence Systems and Equipment International (DSEi) weapons convention, the largest weapons fair in the world.

 

In contrast to previous year’s protests, campaigners from Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) to activists from Brighton-based Smash ITT/EDO targeted the financial backers of the arms trade rather than the weapons convention itself, which is held at the London Docklands ExCel centre.

Tuesday saw a tour of London’s financial district to hammer on the windows and throw shoes at the likes of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Barclays, Lloyds, British Telecom (BT) and Axa, where an attempt to storm the foyer left the main door shattered.

London Mayfair Hilton

Thursday evening is traditionally the arms dealer’s dinner, but this year the event was moved from the usual venue, the Dorchester hotel, to the Park Lane Hilton because Tony Blair’s wife, Cherie, was holding her own dinner event there.

The protest was entirely peaceful, if somewhat noisy, when private security – either from the Hilton hotel or from the arms dealers themselves – attacked the protest. Section 14 of the Public Order Act was invoked and police tried to remove the 30 or so protestors to put them in a caged area, more commonly known as a “pen”.

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The new single and music video from Senser has been released. The video features my footage shot during the G8 protests in Scotland in 2005, the G20 riot in London 2009 and the anti-Nato riot in Strasbourg two days after the g20. Continue reading →