Arms firms have no place in our society

ON Tuesday morning I was arrested, handcuffed and placed in a police cell for over 12 hours while nonviolently protesting at an event glorifying violence: the Cardiff Arms Fair.

Arms companies supplying Israel to kill Palestinians, Turkey to kill Kurds and Saudi Arabia to kill Yemenis were doing business – hosted by the Motorpoint Arena.

There is a crisis of political leadership in our city. Council leaders, local MPs and AMs are not opposing arms companies supplying serial human rights abusers.

The rot runs deep. The Welsh Government has built links between Wales and arms industries – selling it as job creation. It’s time for the Welsh Government to beat swords into ploughshares. In the 1970s visionary trade unionists from Lucas Aerospace produced detailed plans to build road rail buses, kidney machines and renewable energy systems instead of weapons.

Today Campaign Against Arms Trade researches similar “Arms to Renewables” plans showing how a rapid transition from arms industries to green industries could happen, increasing employment, with no job losses. Britain has the highest military spending in Europe and is the second-biggest arms dealer on the planet. Slash the military budget and divert money into rebuilding the welfare state.

Stopping the Cardiff Arms Fair is part of a greater struggle to achieve an anti-austerity and anti-war government that will exit US-led wars, abolish nuclear weapons, leave Nato, support Palestinians, Kurds and others and remake us as a society, exporting aid and doctors instead of weapons and wars.

On the advice of my solicitor I accepted a caution, but I do not accept that I did anything wrong. These arms companies have no place in Cardiff or anywhere else. Adam Johannes Secretary Cardiff Stop the War Coalition