CAMPAIGN SPOTLIGHT: Smash EDO

In small and multifarious ways, we can, despite appearances, still win. From the resounding defence of the Camp for Climate Action against police incursions last summer to Smash EDO’s victories on Brighton’s streets and in the courts, there are still explosions of hopeful defiance. Campaign Spotlight is a new fixture in the Corporate Watch newsletter. Through its portrayal of the wide variety of campaigns struggling for social and ecological justice, this column seeks to demonstrate that, whilst imagination is one of the first acts of defiance, action is its mainstay and active resistance persists and flourishes, even as the citadels of power, the state and the corporation, become increasingly powerful. Campaign Spotlight hopes to carve another hole in the prison wall, showing that resistance against corporate power, rapacious exploitation, ecocide and deadening consumerism is still everywhere AND it’s still fertile.

ITT director granted confidentiality after receiving a polite letter

Corporate Watch has learned that the Director of ITT Defence International has applied to the UK government for the right not to file his details with Companies House. Bruce K. Scott, an American citizen, made the application 10 months ago, when ITT took over EDO MBM in Brighton. EDO MBM has been the subject of a concerted direct action campaign over the last four and a half years due to their manufacture and supply of weapons used by the US and UK military in Iraq and Afghanistan and by the Israeli army in Palestine (see here, for example).

RESISTING THE CORPORATIONS Anti-arms protesters say Shut ITT!

Over 400 people took part in a mass demonstration in Brighton on 14th October with the aim of closing the EDO MBM/ITT arms manufacturing factory. Despite a huge police operation, protesters managed to block a main road, while others managed to get to the factory through the woods to decorate it with red paint. EDO MBM/ITT was forced to close for the day.