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01-Mar-2006

Prize-winning authors call on London Book Fair's organisers to stop running weapons exhibitions

by: Andrew Frisicano

Protester outside the 2005 DSEi.
PHOTO: Richie Andrew/ CAAT ,

Britain: The group of writers, which includes two winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature and six winners of the Man Booker Prize, have signed a public letter, to be published 2 March in the Times Literary Supplement, condemning the portfolio of international arms fairs operated by Reed Exhibitions, an arm of global publishers Reed Elsevier and organisers of the London Book Fair. “We call upon Reed Elsevier to end its involvement in a dirty and damaging business; and upon our colleagues to encourage Reed Elsevier to take the book trade out of the arms trade."

Coordinated by the UK-based Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), the letter is signed by AS Byatt, JM Coetzee, John Carey, Nadine Gordimer, Mark Haddon, Nick Hornby, Mike Leigh, Yann Martel, Ian McEwan, Will Self, Graham Swift, Adam Thorpe and Arabella Weir. In it they single out DSEi (Defence Systems and Equipment International), Europe's largest arms fair, last held by Reed Exhibitions in September 2005 at the same venue as the London Book Fair, the ExCel Centre in London's Docklands. Reed Elsevier maintains the fair is run responsibly, though invited guests to last year’s arms fair included various countries with poor human rights records, such as Colombia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and China. The fair is subsidised partially by the British government, putting much of the cost on British taxpayers despite the controversy surrounding the event.

The writers' public call follows criticism from Reed Elsevier's own flagship medical journal, The Lancet, which in September called on its owners to end their involvement in the arms trade after a critical statement issued by public health experts from five continents.

Anna Jones, events coordinator for the Campaign Against Arms Trade, said, "Reed's arms fairs oil the wheels of the global weapons trade. Last September, in the conference centre where Europe's leading publishers and writers will be gathering next week, Reed Exhibitions brought together companies offering weaponry ranging from small arms - the cause of an estimated 500,000 deaths each year - to tanks and cluster bombs, and buyers from some of the world's most repressive regimes. As a publisher, Reed is risking its reputation - and the support of the book trade - by continuing to promote weapons proliferation around the world."

CAAT’s campaign against arms fairs is just one of the areas the group is working in to weaken the arms trade in Britain. CAAT is also organising a campaign to remove the influence of the arms trade from government, as well as encouraging organisations to divest from the trade. The issue of divestment has met with some success as the Church of England recently voted to divest from Caterpillar Inc for its role in selling bulldozers that actively violated human rights to Israel. Student unions at places like Oxford, York and Lancaster have worked to make arms divestment a growing issue at their universities. The School of Oriental and African Studies, part of the University of London, recent sold its arms shares after being alerted by a CAAT study to the extent of its investment in them. See the February and March 2006 issues of Peace New (2470, 2471) for more information on divestment campaigns.

In spite of local protests during the 2005 fair, the 2007 DSEi is still planned to occur. One local group, East London Against the Arms Fair (ELAAF), holds regular musical protests outside the ExCel Centre asking the organisers to cancel the event. ELAAF invites everyone to their meetings on the second Monday of each month at the Garden Café (7 Cundy Road, London E16 3DJ). For more information write to ELAAF c/o C.I.U. Durning Hall, Earlham Grove, London E7 9AB or email action@caat.org.uk. Full coverage of the 2005 DSEi fair, and the effort to stop it, can be found in Peace News 2465, http://www.peacenews.info/issues/2465/index.php. More information on the Campaign Against Arms Trade can be found online at its website, http://www.caat.org.uk.

Source: CAAT/ Mike Lewis