19th February 2007

Student Blockade of EDO MBM

Smash EDO Press Release

Contact Andrew Beckett or Sarah Johnson For more
Details

Email - smashedopress@yahoo.co.uk, tel 07875708873

www.smashedo.org.uk

At 6am on Monday morning, outside the premises of EDO-MBM, Home Farm Road, Brighton, 8 students from Sussex University,including Student Union president Dan Glass, have locked themselves to the Brighton arms factory using D-locks and arm tubes preventing access to the factory.

Banners placed on top of the gates say “Books not Bombs”.

Sarah Johnson, spokesperson for the students said “This is part of a continous campaign to highlight how much money has been put into companies like EDO rather than into essential public services. Last every year nearly £1 billion is given to the arms companies, money which would be better spent invested in schools and universities.”

The students believe that, in the face of an 655,000 dead in Iraq as a result of the Anglo American invasion, radical actions are needed to resist the US and UK's illegal wars. Students feel that they cannot sit still whilst spending on education is cut back and defense spending keeps rising.

Pictures available on Request

Smash EDO demonstrate every Wednesday at EDO, 4-6pm, on Home Farm Road, Brighton

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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