Lecture on aerial warfare invaded

Sheffield University invited Air Marshal Stuart Peach (CBE) to give a lecture on aerial warfare, a group of around 12 activists disrupted it in protest.

On Thursday 13th December, Air Marshal Stuart Peach CBE came to the University of Sheffield to give a very prestigious lecture on military strategy and the use of aerial power in warfare (

http://www.shef.ac.uk/diaryofevents/event.do?page=daily&event=5133&param=13%253A12%253A2007). A group of local activists, unhappy both with the way that this kind of event helps to naturalise and normalise war, and the horrors of aerial bombing in particular, and with the complete lack of any democratic control by students over the people the University invites to speak, invaded the lecture with a megaphone and a lot of rape alarms, and disrupted the speech. Sadly, we later learnt that the speech was resumed shortly after we left, and one of us was arrested and held for several hours before being released, but we still got our message out effectively - war is not something that is natural, normal or inevitable, it is an artificial process that is deliberately created by men like Air Marshal Peach, and it can and will be resisted.

Anti-militarist

Additions

Brief explanation

15.12.2007 17:14

The original plan had been to occupy the stage, unfurl a banner, and give a brief speech invading our actions, but when as a) not as many people as we'd been hoping had turned up, and b) security was a lot heavier than we'd been expecting, including police on the door, we realised that it was very unlikely we'd be able to pull off a successful occupation, and so sticking around would just lead to more of us getting arrested without accomplishing much. In light of this, we decided that the best strategy would be to just go for maximum disruption, and trust that people could work out for themselves why we might think aerial warfare was a bad idea (and put this up on indymedia - you've found it, and now know what our motivation was, so it seems to have been fairly effective.) We would have been perfectly happy to engage both the air marshal and the audience in debate if the security would allow us to stay there, but I think we can both agree that was never very likely to happen. It's obviously made you think about the issues a bit more than you would've done otherwise, so on that front it seems to have been fairly effective.

Also, didn't think any of the stink bombs had actually gone off, am mildly chuffed about that one.

Anti-militarist

Explanation

15.12.2007 17:20

There was originally a plan to hoist a banner and make a speech about why we were there, but our plans changed at the last minute due to police presence, and the exact use of the megaphone wasn't planned out. Still, the fact that activists managed to infiltrate a well-guarded meeting in numbers and throw it into chaos shows that dissent against the military establishment is alive and well in Sheffield, so I think it could be characterised as a qualified success.

And in fact... men like Stuart Peach hide behind respectability in public, but these are people who cause havoc amongst - all too often - innocent civilians on the ground from a safe distance in state-of-the-art aircraft. Noise, obscenity and disruption brings home the "other side" of the warfare practised by the RAF and its compatriots, the European air forces and the USAAF, in wars across the globe. Our lack of respect for him is a refusal to recognise the legitimacy of who he is and what he does, and in that sense I'd consider it entirely justified.

Someone Involved

Comments

Display the following 8 comments

Lecture — Rozza
Aerial warfare invaded? — angry pee
Great action! — Fuck militarism
Lecture — Rozza
All in all... — A Participant
OTOH — Terry Teacher
Fluffies beware — Anarchrist
Well Done! — Bill Stickers

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Lecture on aerial warfare invaded

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