Peace activists sang hymns amid a police kettle in London yesterday as they blockaded the gates of a state-sponsored arms fair.

Hundreds of demonstrators thronged the gates of London’s Excel Centre as arms dealers preparing for this week’s DSEI arms expo shuttled in display models by the lorry-load.

Police had arrested more than half a dozen people when the Morning Star went to press, including a Christian priest and three protesters who had locked themselves together in the middle of the road with padlocks and plastic tubing.