All the Fun of The Fair

There's a small piece of asymmetric warfare happening right on my doorstep in London's Docklands this week. On one side, hand the Defence Systems & Equipment International Exhibition(DSEi) , on the other an assortment of protesters with a special web site for the event.

The event was heavily policed to prevent any incidents from disrupting the exhibition. Anarchist group Space Hijackers promised to bring a tank and auction it outside the show. The police intercepted a tank approaching the Excel exhibition site, but this turned out to be a decoy and a second tank (pictured) got through. other activities includes marches, mass cycle ride, a candlelit vigil and protests outside hotels used by delegates.

This kind of circus may have little impact on DSEi, but the publicity is having some effect. Organizers Reed Elsevier earlier announced that they would no longer be running the event after this year, apparently after protests by journalists at The Lancet, one of Reed's magazines. Investors including F&C Asset Management and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust both sold shares in Reedbecause of its connection with the arms trade.

The show also generated some negative publicity:

*Two companies were ejected last night from Britain's biggest arms fair for promoting leg irons for prisoners and battlefield captors. BCB International, a British-based firm, and Famous Glory Holding, a Chinese company, were thrown out of the biennial Defence Systems and Equipment show … *

Although the type of leg irons on offer appear to escape the government's ban on the sale and export of equipment that can be used for repression and torture, their promotion is hugely embarrassing to the exhibition's organisers.

*Both the government and Reed Elsevier have been trying to improve the image of the arms exhibition. Arms companies this year were told not to show off cluster weapons which, while not illegal, are widely condemned because many of the unexploded "bomblets" they scatter over a wide area maim and kill civilians. *

It's probably not a coincidence that Oxfam, an organization best known for its work helping famine victims, is now campaigning to close loopholesin Britain's Export Control Act. The Act is meant to stop military equipment reaching oppressive regimes that abuse human rights, but there are ways round it. In Uzbekistan the military (who massacred civilians in Andijan in 2005) have Land Rovers which were manufactured in Britain but assembled in Turkey. Parts are not covered by the act, so the export was allowed.

The Internet, which gives much greater access to information and instant mass communication, seems to give a decisive advantage to the campaigners. In previous years DSEi has gone almost unnoticed; that is never likely to happen again. Anarchist antics may not affect business, but national media attention and upset corporate investors will. More than ever, the battlefield will be the public domain.