Reed Elsevier employees welcomed to a public meeting on the arms trade.

Oxford arms trade activists have called for a public meeting on the
involvement of prominent local company Reed Elsevier in hosting Europe's largest arms fair, Defence Systems Exhibitions International (DSEi). The meeting will take place on 8th December at the Friends' Meeting House on St Giles, Oxford. Starting time is 7.30pm and there will be various speakers including a representative from the Campaign Against The Arms Trade (www.caat.org.uk).

The meeting is open to all, but the organisers would like to welcome in particular all employees of Reed Elsevier to come along and learn about the links their company has with the arms trade and to explore ideas on how the connection can be broken.

Reed Elsevier is one of the worlds largest publishing companies with
over 13,000 journals and well-known imprints such as Harcourt,
LexisNexis, Ginns and others. This year the editors of its
internationally famous medical journal The Lancet publicly came out against their owner's involvement in promoting the arms trade.
Though Reed Elsevier's headquarters are in London, two of its biggest sites involved in educational publishing are based around Oxford at Wolvercote and Oxford Airport. Both sites have been subject to attention-raising protests by local activists and as a result there has been good feedback from the employees themselves.

There will be two further leafletting sessions at these sites, on 29th
November and 1st December to inform people about the public meeting. For more information please contact Oxford Autonomous Action at  oxautomact@yahoo.co.in

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NOTES
1. Reed Elsevier is the parent company of Elsevier and Harcourt, which have offices in Oxford. Reed Elsevier's division Reed Business, in turn owns Spearhead, the organisers of DSEi.

2. DSEi has been the subject of numerous demostrations and a regular campaign against its promotion of the arms trade. For more information see www.dsei.org. In the past its exhibitors have been exposed for selling illegal landmines, promoting the sale of cluster bombs, hosting oppressive dictators and distributing catalogues of instruments of torture.

3. Oxford Autonomous Action is a loose collective of locally based
campaigners focusing on various issues nationally and in Oxfordshire. Currently it is seeking to persuade Reed Elsevier to sever its links with the arms trade.