Skip to content or view screen version

Barclays £3bn profits make them major target for arms trade protesters

Disarm DSEi | 04.08.2009 21:34 | Anti-militarism

Disarm DSEi has announced Barclays will be a target during protests
planned to take place in the City of London next month, stating that Barclays,
having messed up the economy, is now dependant on financing one of the most
destructive trades on earth in order to maintain their directors big pay
cheques and bonuses.

Barclays has helped to bring the economy to its knees, and deprived
millions of decently paid work, but Barclays Directors and senior staff are
profiting. Board members pocket around £1m a year, and the BBC has
revealed that there are at least 200 senior staff members who rake in even more
– not including bonuses.

One of the main props to their inflated salaries is the money they are
making from investment in the international arms trade, with the investment arm
of Barclays contributing towards a third of their profits.

Sophie Williams, who is part of the DISARM DSEi collective stated:

“Barclays do not care they have contributed to the 740,000 deaths that
occur every year from armed conflict. They do not care that their
investments helped Israel to carry out a massacre in Gaza at the beginning of
the year. We are not prepared to let Barclays bosses and other major
investors get away with living in luxury while they are causing untold suffering,
homelessness, forced migration, and many thousands of civilian deaths and
injuries.”

Disarm DSEi will be heading to the City on 8th September
2009, to coincide with the start of DSEi, Defence Systems and Equipment
International, the world’s biggest arms fair which takes place at the ExCeL
centre every two years.

In previous years Disarm DSEi has coordinated protests in and around the
Excel centre. This year they are focussing instead on the investors
who finance and promote and international trade in death and misery, and will
assemble somewhere in the City at midday on September 8th.

Sophie further stated:

“In previous years we have co-ordinated protests at the ExCeL
Centre. This year we are targeting the investors who finance and
promote this international trade in death and misery, and we will hold them to
account for their actions, even if it means bringing the rivers of blood they
create to The City.”

For further information:

www.dsei.org
 disarm@dsei.org

Disarm DSEi - 8th September 2009 - 12 Noon - City of London
Destroy the banks! Destroy the Investors! Destroy the arms trade!

Disarm DSEi
- e-mail: disarm@dsei.org
- Homepage: http://www.dsei.org

Comments

Hide the following 2 comments

We should always target Barclays

05.08.2009 03:24

Barclays should always be a major target on the calender of any activist/campaign.

When they're not funding companies involved in the arms trade, purchasing shares in vivisection firms, financing deforestation in search of gas/oil/minerals, they're usually found propping up dictatorships and violent regimes around the world.

Bankers are usually wankers, but when it comes to Barclays they're simply in a league of their own.

Green & Black


Useful info

05.08.2009 07:32

I remember there was an animal rights action against Barclay's a while back, against the Chairman of Barclay's Marcus Agius. He is on the Board of Trustees at Kew gardens, and his wife's family own the Rothschild estate (Exbury Gardens).

Don't know if that would be helpful, but they would both be good places for publicity based actions.

Solidarity

SHAC Supporter