4.00pm Monday 14th March

The Shut Down Heckler & Koch campaign has been picketing the factory in Lenton for over 4 years now. With more recent events in the Middle East, a new urgency is apparent to consider where such weapons are ending up, arming represive regimes.

The Shut Down Heckler & Koch campaign has been picketing the factory in Lenton for over 4 years now. With more recent events in the Middle East, a new urgency is apparent to consider where such weapons are ending up, arming represive regimes.

The campaign had been contacted by a bunch of media students, wanting to do a project on the motives of those campaigning there. They had arrived before most and had been told to shift by a police community support officer. No explanion being given. For years I have been photographing this and other camera folks have done the same without incident over this time.  I suggested that they should resume doing what they were doing.  No obstruction was being commited. A while latter, this PCSO returned and saying 'I thought I'd told you to shift!' I chimed in asking why and for what reason?  The officer made no reply, simply parked her bike in the factory grounds and appeared to make a radio call for assistance. 40mins later, a police car arriverd and officers spent the rest of the time, looking at us from their heated interior. I would have thought that if offences were being commited, then we/they should have been spoken too. The standard of warden and PCSO officers makes me dispair, honestly! 

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Anyway ..... people had gathered at the gates to the UK headquarters of Heckler & Koch, based within the Easter Park Industrial Estate on Lenton Lane, Nottingham. [Unit 3 in fact]. 

One would have thought that a city infamous for its gun crime would be a poor location for a warehouse full of guns. Not according to H&K, who do great business equipping war-mongers on any side. 

Proud owners of H&K weaponry include the brutal militias of Darfur - the Janjaweed. Funnily enough, despite the outcry against the massacres in Darfur, they obviously weren't quite bad enough to stop selling weapons to the perpetrators. Even a recent arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against a senior Sudanese politician accused of selling H&K weapons to the Janjaweed hasn't seemed to stem the flow of H&K guns to a militia accused by everyone including the US of committing genocide. (H&K guns also fill the arsenals of the US Dept of Homeland Security, US Navy Seals & the FBI amongst others). 

H&K have a 'strategic partnership' with the world's largest mercenary company Blackwater. H&K supply the guns to the Iraqi and Afghan puppet governments, and Blackwater provide the training. 

There was a plan for H&K to produce special edition 'Blackwater' weapons - complete with the Blackwater logo on them. However, after Blackwater made the headlines for killing 17 innocent Iraqis (not the first time that Blackwater have killed innocent Iraqis, but the first time that it made the news in a major way), the plan was shelved. 

Interestingly, local media also came under pressure; Trent FM, who had shown some enthusiasm about reporting these demos, received a word in their ear from both H&K's press office as well as the police, warning hacks that it would be 'irresponsible' to publish the fact that H&K has a warehouse full of weapons in Nottingham, as it may prompt criminals to try and steal them. 

In response the campaigners pointed out to the radio station that H&K's address was published at Company House, as well as in several business directories. About the radio station being leaned on, the campaigners said that "If the security policy of H&K and Notts police relies on no-one finding out the company's location, then clearly it is they who are irresponsible, not our campaign and not the media. A large warehouse stocked with high-power assault rifles and submachine guns with inadequate security to prevent a robbery is clearly a significant danger to the public, and publicisng such a danger is very much in the public interest." 

The H&K warehouse, located at Easter Park, Lenton Lane, Nottingham, is next to the 'Trent Vineyard', an evangelist church that held the funeral of Danielle Beccan, a 14 year old girl who was killed in a drive-by shooting. At her funeral service the then mayor of Nottingham said, "Guns have no place at all in our community - not in Nottingham, not in my city nor any other city in Britain." 

One campaigner said: "The arms trade relies on secrecy. Most people abhor the idea of factories and warehouse making and selling weapons around the world, and arms companies know this. By lifting the lid on the business, anti-arms protesters can make a put the pressure on the government/corporate killing machine to stop killing for profit." [schNews] 

As you can see from the front board, Unit 3 is simply 'let'. One feels that they might just be a little embarrassed about their presence on the Easter Park Estate. Previous occupants had been the Royal Small Arms Factory. Even during wartime, they had a sign on the gate, saying who they were! Another example might be British Aerospace Works at Filton, Bristol. Again, they say who they are on the gate. This lot still remain shy of folks knowing of their activities. 

In my opinion, lights need to be shone into dark corners. 

*****

The campaign pickets H&K on the second Monday of every month from 4:00 to 5:30 at the gates of Easter Park, Lenton Lane, Nottingham NG7 2PX.

Middle East dictatorships armed by H&K [feature]

http://nottingham.indymedia.org/articles/981

Campaigning against Heckler & Koch Weapons in Germany and the UK [feature] 

http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/426678.html 

and ..... on German Indymedia at: 

http://linksunten.indymedia.org/en/node/4708 

Shut Down Heckler & Koch Campaign 

http://nottsantimilitarism.wordpress.com/heckler-koch

http://www.shutdownhk.org.uk

Poster / Flyer PDF of H&K leaflet 

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2009/01//418368.pdf 

Notts arms dealer in trafficking conspiracy [Feature]

http://nottingham.indymedia.org/articles/992

____________________________________________

ALAN LODGE 

Photographer - Media: One Eye on the Road. Nottingham.  UK

Email:                 tash@indymedia.org

Web:                   http://digitaljournalist.eu

Member of the National Union of Journalists [NUJ]

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"It is not enough to curse the darkness.

                                   It is also necessary to light a lamp!!"

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