National Gathering 2007
Last November’s CAAT National Gathering kicked off with a whistlestop review of 2007. It had been a year full of campaign successes. CAAT staff and others presented the highlights of the year, in particular Reed Elsevier’s announcement that it was dumping the arms fairs part of its business; the imminent closure of DESO (the government’s arms sales unit); and the legal ruling allowing CAAT to take the government to court over its decision to drop the corruption inquiry into BAE-Saudi arms deals.
This was followed by an introduction to the Control BAE campaign by Beccie D’Cunha and Ann Feltham and a presentation by key-note speaker Paul Ingram, Senior Analyst at the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), on how the government’s position on the arms trade has changed over the years. Paul asserted that the era of arms companies getting disproportionate support and subsidies from government may be coming to an end. He spoke of the significance of DESO’s closure to the future of the UK arms trade, the massive impact that CAAT’s DESO campaigning had had, and how important, in particular, the flood of postcards to the Chief Secretary of the Treasury had been in bringing about Gordon Brown’s decision to shut the department.
We then had questions and discussion followed by knowledge workshops on topics such as ‘What’s driving the arms trade? Exploding the myths’, ‘Campaigning post-DESO’ and ‘Corporate Mercenaries’, as well as skills workshops such as ‘Local Media: Getting the arms trade covered’, ‘New-media campaigning - using the web as a force for change‘ and ‘Effective local campaigning: how to sustain a healthy local CAAT group’.
It was one of the most exciting CAAT gatherings to date - around 100 people attended throughout the course of the day, many of whom were new to our work. The atmosphere was buzzing with the successes of 2007 and the anticipation of more excitement in 2008! Thanks to all who came along and contributed to the day.