AS pressure mounts on the British government to stop sending arms to Israel, Brighton residents set up a peace camp next to the L3 Harris arms factory, which is making parts for the F-35 fighter jets used by Israel. With regular demos and roadblocks outside the factory, the camp acts as a focus for Palestine solidarity in the city.

On the weekend of March 16-17, Brighton residents occupied a patch of land at the junction of Home Farm Road and Lewes Road. The weapons factory is a couple of hundred metres away up Home Farm Road. The colourful site, festooned with flags and visible from the main railway line, aims to raise awareness of the factory’s existence and — literally at times — drum up support for resistance to the weapons plant.

Winnie, a local student taking part in the Brighton peace camp, said: “We are peacefully holding this community space to raise awareness about L3 Harris’s role in Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. L3 Harris is the 12th-largest arms manufacturer in the world and makes bomb-release mechanisms for Israeli fighter jets. Over 31,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Oct 7 2023.

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“We have received a lot of positive support from people in the city because the people of Brighton and Hove do not want to be complicit in genocide and Britain’s deadly arms trade. Through Brighton peace camp we are building community and standing in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, in Brighton, and around the world.”

The presence of the arms manufacturing site in left-leaning Brighton, a one-time “international peace messenger city,” has long been a sore point. The site’s current owners are L3 Harris, the sixth-largest defence contractor in the US.

Previously the company traded as EDO MBM Technology Ltd, part of the EDO corporation, before being bought out by the notorious ITT corporation. One thing has remained consistent, though, the factory has manufactured parts for the heavily integrated airforces of the US, Britain and Israel — specialising in bomb-release mechanisms.

During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, EDO MBM were responsible for the manufacture of the VAR-2 release mechanism for the Raytheon-Lockheed-manufactured laser-guided Paveway bomb, the most-used guided munition in the aerial bombardment of Iraq.

Andrew Beckett, one-time press spokesman for the Smash EDO campaign, said: “Once you start delving into the arms procurement and supply chain that this company is part of then the nation-state disappears, there’s little distinction between, Saudi, US, British or Israeli airforces — this is one war with multiple fronts.”

EDO-Harris’s products have been used in every conflict involving the Western allies in the Middle East. They were crucial in the West’s arming of Saudi Arabia during the war in Yemen, components labelled EDO MBM Technology Ltd were discovered by a UN investigations team at both the Yemeni capital Sanaa and a bombed water treatment plant in 2016.

The report, made public in 2018, showed a clear link between the factory in the Brighton suburb of Moulsecoomb and violations of international humanitarian law.

Local resident, member of the successor to the Smash EDO campaign the Stop L3 Harris and arms trade researcher Anna Stavrianakis said: “Britain provides 15 per cent of every F-35 fighter jet made, and the Brighton L3 Harris factory makes the bomb-release mechanisms that the planes use to drop their bombs.

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“That means there’s a direct link between our city and the genocidal Israeli assault on Gaza. Local residents are taking action to try and stop our city’s contribution to genocide.”

Stop L3 Harris has been campaigning against the factory’s presence since the Yemen revelations, arguing that planning permission granted for an extension to the factory was incompatible with Brighton and Hove Council’s wider obligations to human rights.

In 2019 the factory was granted five-year temporary planning permission for an extension in anticipation of increased orders for F-35 components. Now the company is seeking permanent permission, allowing the campaign to use the arcane planning process to publicise human rights abuses. The council has received over 650 objections to the planning application and has sought legal advice regarding its human rights obligations.

With the peace camp fully established and growing in numbers, the campaign has seen a return to some of the tactics employed by the previous generation of activists who fought under the banner of Smash EDO, which itself grew out of opposition to the US-British invasion of Iraq in 2003.

That campaign employed an extraordinary diversity of tactics, from legal argument to mass mobilisation on the streets. On one occasion six activists, during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in 2009, broke into the factory and caused over a million pounds worth of damage.

They were subsequently acquitted by a jury. However, the backbone of the campaign was the regular “noise demos” outside the factory gates which continued for four years. That tradition has been reinvented as peace campers take their anger to the factory gates blocking access and making their presence felt.

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The camp has also taken on the task of collective outreach, running dozens of workshops including know your rights, Palestine and the climate crisis, fire making, dabke dancing, how to stop an immigration raid, badge making, samba drumming, a vigil by health workers reading the names of health workers killed by the IDF in Gaza, and Shabbat and Iftar collective meals.

After five weeks of community meals, grief spaces, discussions, workshops, demos at the factory and outreach, the peace camp has decided to pack down the tents — for now. But the fight to break their city’s link in the kill chain continues with the Stop L3 Harris campaign: no bombs from Brighton!

To get involved and keep up to date with the campaign follow @StopL3Harris on Instagram and check www.linktr.ee/stopl3harris.