Protest at Armed forces day

Yesterday (Saturday 27th June) 'members' of Worthing Anarchists and Worthing Against War held a protest against the Armed forces Day event in Steyne Gardens, which shamelessly glorifies war and all the suffering, death and destruction that it involves.

Protesters were dressed in blood stanied bandages representing all those who have been killed or injured by wars across the globe. The event got a mixed response from people who supported what we were doing and some who were opposed to it. Around 200 leaflets were handed out to members of the public.

Below is the text of the leaflet handed out:

We are protesting against the staging of an event in Worthing which shamelessly glorifies war and all the suffering, death and destruction that it involves.

Commemorating conflicts in the past, such as the Second World War, when Britain really was at risk from invasion, is one thing.However, today's armed services are plainly not being used to defend this country at all, but to illegally invade and occupy distant countries in the interests of American global strategy and to grab oil and gas supplies for Big Business.

We believe that the so-called "Armed Forces Day" is nothing but a propaganda exercise designed to whip up public support for a thoroughly discredited British foreign policy.Waving the Union Jack to try and get people to march in step behind the Government is no way to run a democratic country in the 21st century - this sort of approach should have died a death with the end of the British Empire or with the last of Hitler's Nuremberg rallies!

Two million citizens protested in Britain against the invasion of Iraq, which is now widely seen as having been based on lie after lie. Many of us think Tony Blair and George W Bush should be facing war crime charges, while Gordon Brown's regime is still trying to hide the truth by holding its whitewash enquiry behind closed doors!At a time when this country is sinking into huge debt, we simply cannot afford to spend £35 billion (MoD figures for 2009/10) on helping the USA to try to control the whole world - meanwhile lining the pockets of well-connected weapons manufacturers! If only we could invest that sort of money in healthcare, education or in developing green technologies to help us build a healthy and sustainable future for these small islands! While young men and women join the armed forces for various reasons, we should not be encouraging them to do so. There are so many more important, and less destructive, jobs to be done in this world.Do we really think "our boys and girls" are doing a good deed by bombing wedding parties in Afghanistan, blowing up little children with cluster bombs or causing defects in babies for generations to come by using highly toxic depleted uranium in our weapons?And if they are killed in action can we really claim that they are "heroes" who have died for something worthwhile, or are they in fact victims - victims of a system that regards them as cannon fodder for its own insatiable greed and megalomania?

No more taxpayers' money wasted on the military! No public subsidy for the arms industry! No more blood for oil!