Picture: Protestors gather in solidarity outside Raytheon a year ago, while nine women (centre of picture) sit inside chained to an internal door.

(pic: Indymedia)

Raytheon to quit Derry

By Goretti Horgan (One of the nine women currently on trial)

Raytheon, the third largest
missile manufacturer in the world has announced it’s leaving Derry. The
announcement is a huge victory for People Power and shows how a sustained and
determined campaign can win against even some of the world’s most powerful and
influential corporations.

The announcement came
exactly a year after the third occupation of Derry’s Raytheon office by
anti-war campaigners. The campaign against Raytheon’s location in Derry has been going since before it arrived, despite the welcome given it by local
politicians, who saw the jobs as part of the “peace dividend”.

Anti-war and anti-arms trade
campaigners said we didn’t want our peace to be built on the massacre of people
in other parts of the world. The Foyle Ethical Investment Campaign (FEIC)
started the move to get Raytheon out of Derry and was joined by the Derry Anti
War Coalition (DAWC) from 2003 with the start of the Iraq war.

The first occupation of
Raytheon in April 2003 saw both campaigns come together after 62 people were
killed in a Baghdad marketplace by a missile that Robert Fisk identified as a
Raytheon one.

In the aftermath of the Qana
massacre of 30 July 2006, the DAWC again occupied the plant, this time
‘decommissioning’ the mainframe computer and wrecking over £350,000 worth of
equipment. The nine men who were charged with burglary and criminal damage were
acquitted of all charges unanimously by the jury in Belfast Crown Court in June
2008.

Last January, nine women
occupied and tried to again decommission the computer systems in the Raytheon
plant, hoping to do what the Raytheon 9 did during the Israeli assault on Lebanon in Aug 2006 and prevent or delay war crimes being committed by the
Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza with the use of Raytheon weapons.

It seems that
Raytheon has finally got the message – as long as they are in Derry, the DAWC
will continue to try to disrupt their complicity in war crimes everywhere in
the world they ply their evil trade.

Since Raytheon announced it was leaving, the two main political parties in the town – the SDLP and Sinn Fein – have tried to make out that they are happy to see it go. But, for ten years now, both parties colluded with Raytheon to try to pretend that the Derry plant was not involved in military work. This nonsense was proved to be just that at the men’s trial in 2008 but it didn’t stop both parties continuing to refuse to tell Raytheon to go. Only last year, in the middle of the Gaza assault, Sinn Fein refused to be involved in a blockade of the plant. Instead, it held a lunchtime protest across the road from it and handed in a letter saying that Raytheon was only welcome in the town if it did not involve itself in military work. That was like saying a leopard is only welcome if it changes its spots!

Said Eamonn
McCann, one of those who occupied in 2006, “the day will come when people will
look at the arms trade which deals in mass murder and ask how did we allow it
to operate like this in human misery – just as we now ask how people tolerated
the slave trade. We hope our actions in Derry have brought that day a little
closer”.

Meanwhile, the
trial of the 9 women who occupied during the Gaza assault last year is set to
start on International Women’s Day (March 8^th). The women, along
with five men arrested outside while demonstrating in support of them are
charged with Burglary, Criminal Damage and Assault. Charges against the 5 men
include, obstructing police and impersonating a police officer. Two men are
also charged with assaulting a police officer after a pregnant woman was
assaulted by a policeman – the incident was broadcast by BBC News; no charges
have been brought against the policeman to date.