With the failure of the protests at DSEI maybe it is time to look at those who "planned" the actions.

Before the event a number of people used Indymedia's newswire to raise questions about the people involved in the Disarm DSEI and other groups, explanations were sought as to why a known BAE Systems spy for example having been thrown out of CAAT was allowed to be right at the heart of Disarm DSEI. Others raised concerns about fund raising and where the money was going to. As an example of this a group requested donations to support the production of a paper telling local residents what was happening - a good idea but the paper never came out and the money - who knows. A couple of weeks later a different group had the same idea and made the same request for money - did anything happen ?

The actions on the day saw several groups being split up by the "organisers" it seems under the guidance of the police, why was this allowed to happen ? It looked very co-ordinated to me. The protest on the quay accross from the Excel was also suspicious with people being sent on a long and winding route to get there by Disarm DSEI people meaning they arrived late, tired and not able to take part on the main protest - who decided this ?

The protests at DSEI failed not because there was a lack of people, in fact there were many hundreds if not thousands but they were kept apart by the very people who we would have thought should have been getting everyone together, Infiltration of the protest groups by police or other security agencies (perhaps private) seems the most likely explanation.