On 18 March, about 30 people attended a Stop the Arms Fair (STAF) organising meeting in Friends House in Central London to build the campaign to resist DSEI, the heinous Defence and Security Equipment International arms fair that will take place in East London in September.
CAAT stepped back from organising around the DSEI protests after 2019, to concentrate on supporting protest at all other UK arms fairs.
Now STAF need more organisations and groups to get involved and think of how they can contribute to the protest (arrestable and not), either in the set-up week from 4 September or during DSEI itself (12 – 15 September), either outside the ExCeL Centre or elsewhere in the country.
In 2021, DSEI brought together over 30,000 arms buyers and dealers, including delegations from countries involved in military conflicts and/or on the government’s own list of human rights abusers.