Another City protest

It could have easily passed you by that this week is the DSEI exhbition in the Excel Centre in the Docklands, DSEI standing for Defence Systems and Equipment International.

This has attracted the understandable interest of the protesting community and they seem to have chosen a few targets in the City to visit yesterday before heading down to Docklands today. That’s apparently why the City offices of AXA and BT were attacked yesterday as the Metro relates:

“About 60 activists, many wearing masks, stopped traffic as they paraded through the capital to protest against the Defence Systems and Equipment International Arms Fair taking place at the Excel centre in Docklands this week. After storming the BT building in Newgate Street, they moved on to the head offices of Axa Investment Management nearby.”

Probably to their great surprise they actually managed to get into the BT building and the Metro takes up the story again:

A witness at the BT building said: “They came running in and jumped over the security barriers, smashing glasses and telephones. Some of them went up to two floors above, having a look round and writing graffiti. It could have been really frightening but when they started shouting about BT being involved in the arms trade I knew that they didn’t know what they were going on about. Then they must have got bored and left.”

Maybe if an under-employed training company in the City isn’t able to fill its IT and Secretarial courses they ought to offer courses in effective protesting because I’m struggling to find anyone who understands their list of targets and most of the staff at the companies concerned seem entirely mystified about their supposed involvement. Did you know what DSEI was before you read this??