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

Hide the following 8 comments

Lecture

14.12.2007 17:17

I was at this lecture and the cry of "fuck you you fascist cunt" seems difficult to reconcile with your assertion that you "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."

Still not really sure what it was all about?

Rozza

Aerial warfare invaded?

14.12.2007 19:54

Dear Rozza, all.
I think that the slogan that you said you heard at the lecture demo, namely - "fuck you you fascist cunt", was probably a nice way of saying to the Airforce warmonger and ALL other nasty minded, misguided warmongers the world over that "We don't want or need your nasty, selfish, evil and sick war machines and military industrial complex and we will RESIST YOU, relentlessly, completely and utterly wherever and whenever you show your ugly and UNWANTED selves.

Hope that you NOW or SOON understand what it was all about.

THANKYOU RESISTERS - For resisting.

angry pee

Great action!

14.12.2007 20:36

Give them a medal! A perfectly apt comment I think many would agree. Really nice and inspiring to see some militancy among anti-war students.

Respect...

Fuck militarism

Lecture

14.12.2007 21:28

Again, I find it hard to understand how it was an 'effective' means of protest.

I'm not challenging your point of view. What I am trying to understand is why once you had gained entry to the hall you made no attempt to either engage the air marshall in some kind of discourse or communicate to the audience what you were doing there because we simply had no idea & still wouldn't if I hadn't trawled google

Is making churlish remarks, letting off fart bombs and then vanishing really a serious means of protest?

Rozza

All in all...

15.12.2007 21:44

...it's a good thing campus security can't run very fast.

A Participant

OTOH

17.12.2007 12:31

I understand Rozza's point. The problem being that people who denounce the ineffectiveness of any kind of protest really should come up with viable alternatives if they want to be taken seriously.

Otherwise it appears they are just opposed to doing anything.

Terry Teacher
mail e-mail: terryteacher30a@yahoo.co.uk
Homepage: http://terryteacher.blogspot.com

Fluffies beware

18.12.2007 16:09

Rozza,

I think you have missed the point of the action. This was a No Platform protest. The reason we did not stay to "engage" with the Air Marshall is that it is this exact process which we oppose. It gives him a prestige and normality he is not entitled to. We objected to the very idea of a man who oversees the death of innocent people being given a pedastol in OUR university to propagate his ideas on how to kill further innocent people. the lecture needed to be stopped, full stop.

Your position also exposes a naivete that frankly isn't even worth engaging in. Union security (or the cops for that matter) would not have allowed us to stay and engage in a reasoned and open debate with this man. We already suffered one arrest there was no call for any further. And tbh I couldn't give a s**t how reasonable the people attending the lecture thought we were. The vast majority were military. Students and workers at the university have no involvement in the universities relationship with the military, these are the only people that concern us - we have and will make our cause known to them. I have no interest in high-minded fluffies who think they can change the world by proselytizing to very nasty men.

In terms of alternatives, this is just the first step in a long campaign against the role of the military on campus. We certainly don't expect people to "get it" immediately and this is why our actions are backed by press releases and (an impending) leaflet, info packs etc. I do however expect people to be supportive of our cause as I believe this is clear enough.

Solidarity,

Anarchrist

Well Done!

07.01.2008 17:40

An excellent action, well done for risking it with the cops and security about. It looks like they realised asking a man to talk about dropping bombs on people at a time when the UK government is actually dropping bombs on people, was a tad more controversial than a physics lecture!

To terry and Rozzer: i don't think this was a 'protest'. This was an attempt to take militarism and normalised murder off the agenda. We all suffer from war. We are well within our rights to oppose and stop it.

'what are your alternatives'? To what, invading countries at random using the british army?
Here's my crrrrrazy alternative - don't.

that was hard.

A few years ago you might have talked up the terrorist threat or the WMD's but that's all gone down the swanney now.

Bill Stickers