How Much Are You Paying To Support The Arms Trade?

How the UK Arms Oppressive Regimes

Cameron takes arms dealers with him on Egypt visit to promote democracy: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1359316/Prime-Minister-David-Cameron-takes-arms-dealers-Egypt-promote-democracy.html

Global Day of Action on Military Spending 12th of April

What you can do:

5 minutes: Five new people:

Use the day as a hook to ask 5 new people to take an online action. Write a couple of sentences telling your friends or family why you think they will want to:

• Add their voice to CAAT’s This is not OK petition
• Write to their MP calling for a fundamental shift in the UK’s approach to arms sales: no more promotion to repressive regimes and countries in conflict!

5 minutes: Use Twitter to tell the treasury what you’d do with its £35 billion military budget

The UK government is saving the military budget at the expense of welfare and continues to push arms sales to dictators. For one day, let the Treasury’s communications team deal with a storm as we tell them what its priorities should be instead!

On 12 April, if you use Twitter, help create a Twitter storm by tweeting better priorities to @hmtreasury with #gdams

e.g. @hmtreasury If I had £35 billion, I wouldn’t be spending it on pointless aircraft carriers. My local youth centre could be saved 300,000 times with that money! #gdams

30 minutes: Spread the word with This is NOT OK posters and leaflets

Take two minutes now to order free This is NOT OK leaflets and posters. On the day set up a display in your workplace, local library, church or community centre and take the opportunity to let others know why you support the campaign.

The leaflets include a petition for people to sign and the chance for them to add their voice to the This is NOT OK campaign.

2 hours: Run a street stall

There is massive public scrutiny of the government’s spending priorities and its weapons sales to repressive regimes. A street stall is an important way of turning public interest into widespread action.

Order posters, leaflets and resources. Borrow a CAAT tablecloth. Have a look at our top tips for planning a street stall, and have a think about ways to make your stall have visual impact.

Our simple This is NOT OK action asks people to write a message to the government in their own words. You might like to download and print giant speech bubbles of embarrassing quotes from government ministers to contrast with statements people leave at your stall:

Cameron on arming Gadaffi: “It’s obviously difficult to get it right every time.” PDF (41KB)
Hague on promoting arms company BAE: “We take a much more rigorous approach to this than the last government” PDF (45KB)
Luff on promoting weapons sales: “There will be a very, very, very heavy ministerial commitment to the process. There is a sense that in the past we were rather embarrassed about exporting defence products. There is no such embarrassment in this Government.” PDF (44KB)

2 hours (and a bit more preparation): Get creative and plan an action!
Maybe you’ll take inspiration…
From the Granny Peace Brigade in New York who invented the “penny gizmo” as a way of highlighting that the government’s spending priorities are massively out of step with those of the people.
Or from constituents who organised peace vigil outside Vince Cable MP’s surgery in response to weapons sales to Libya and Bahrain.
Or from the samba band who got together and with just ten people managed to close down the Business Department for an hour.
Or take action to highlight that the arms trade is on your doorstep. Find ideas here.

from the Campaign Against Arms Trade