11th December 2005

Dear Editor,

We wish to thank everyone who attended the anti-EDO MBM rally and march on Saturday for their composure and solidarity in the face of another display of excessive policing by Sussex Police.
Police tried to accost speakers at Churchill Square and cameras were constantly trained on newcomers as well as known activists to maintain an intimidatory atmosphere.

Earlier in the week we announced that we wished to march down Queens Rd, North Street, London Rd and on to the Level. Immediately people began to gather in Churchill Square they were handed a notice to enforce the exact same route, threatening arrest if this route wasn't adhered to. At the bottom of North Rd police forced marchers to deviate from this route onto Richmond Place. Police aggresssively prevented people leaving the narrow confines of the police cordon to hand out leaflets to other members of the public in a clear attempt to stifle our democratic rights.

The large numbers of Sussex Police were again joined by officers from Surrey and the Metropolitan forces. As taxpayers we wish to ask Superintendant Moore of the cost of this operation.

Camera teams followed some marchers afterwards in an unnecessarily sinister manner after a peaceful march against an arms company that is clearly unwelcome in our United Nations Peace Messenger City.

The high turnout on Saturday is further evidence that the campaign against EDO MBM is growing despite attempts to stifle the right to protest.

Yours faithfully,
Andrew Beckett, Smash EDO press spokesperson

Notes for Journalists

Brighton & Hove is a UN Peace Messenger City

The injunction referred to was served under the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act (originally designed to protect women from stalkers) and is the first of its kind directed at activists outside of the animal rights movement. Crucially it is a civil injunction but carries criminal penalties. It affects anyone deemed to be a protestor. Initially EDO/MBM requested a large "exclusion zone" comprising the whole of Home Farm Industrial Estate.

They and Sussex police also wanted to limit demonstrations to two and a half hours, with less thanten people who had to be silent. Judge Gross refusedto impose these conditions at the initial hearing of an interim injunction, which was put in place in the period before the full trial to be heard at the High court in London from November 21st. In his summing up he said, "The right to freedom of _expression is jealously guarded in English law" and consequently refused to impose the requested limits on size, timing or noise made at demonstrations. He also said that he doubted that protesters were 'stalking' employees of EDO MBM.

EDO MBM Technologies Ltd are the sole UK subsidiary of huge U.S arms conglomerate EDO Corp, which was recently named No. 10 in the Forbes list of 100 fastest growing companies. They supply bomb release mechanisms to the US and UK armed forces amongstothers. They supply crucial components for Raytheon's Paveway guided bomb system, widely used in the "Shock and Awe" campaign in Iraq.

EDO also withdrew a threatened libel action against Indymedia over being named as "warmongers".

Lawson-Cruttenden & Co
Solicitors firm working for EDO have been instrumental in developing the Protection of Harassment Act 1997 from a measure designed to safeguard individuals to a corporate charter to make inconvenient protest illegal. Theyhave pioneered to use of injunctions to create large "exclusion zones". They have secured numerous injunctions against anti-vivisection and anti-GM protestors.

Campaign against EDO MBM
People involved in the anti-EDO campaign include, but are not limited to: local residents, the Brighton Quakers, peace activists, anti-capitalists, Palestine Solidarity groups, human rights groups, trade unionists, academics and students. The campaign started in August 2004 with a peace camp. It's avowed aim is to expose EDO MBM and their complicity in war crimes and to remove them from Brighton.

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