Following Thursday night's public meeting at the Friends Meeting House in Kendal where speakers highlighted the role of James Cropper Ltd / Technical Fibre Products in supplying materials used in the manufacture of F35 warplanes, most especially those supplied to Israel and used it their attacks on Gaza, peace campaigners asked further questions of the Burneside company at their weekly vigil on Saturday (29 June 2024).
Gathering outside Kendal Town Hall, they reiterated their call for an immediate and lasting ceasefire in Gaza and an end to arms sales to Israe. In particular, they asked "How many more children must die in Gaza"? and "Is your taxpayer money funding genocide"?
Spokesperson, Philip Gilligan said,
"We must and will keep asking firms like James Cropper Ltd how they can ever justify their involvement in supplying components for F35s when innocent children are still dying everyday as a result of their use by Israel in Gaza. It is mind-boggling that a company whose chair and major shareholder, Mark Cropper, answered the question 'What is your guiding principle?', in 2018 by by saying 'My family were originally Quakers and I still hold dear to their central tenets' seems willing to lay itself open to accusations of complicity in Israel's alleged war crimes in Gaza.
We have to ask 'How can profiting from the manufacture of components for F35 war planes possibly be consistent with holding dear to the Quaker Peace Testimony'"
(South Lakeland and Lancaster District CND)
