Campaigners from Palestine Solidarity Group Carlisle & District, Lancaster PSC, South Lakes and Lancashire CND and Kendal for a Ceasefire were in Burneside today to demand answers from the paper and technical fibre manufacturers.
A protest was held outside the Bryce Institute in Burneside, near Kendal and a number of campaigners went inside to raise questions with the Directors. There is concern that the Advanced Materials wing of the company is manufacturing materials for the Arms industry, specifically, carbon fibre, non woven materials which offer important attributes to F35 construction as part of the US/UK ‘Joint Strike Fighter’ project. The company and its technical fibres have been pivotal to the development of the F35 from its inception, and the jet is expected to be the main focus of US/UK air defences for the next 20 years, minimum. Controversially, the F35s are sold to allies, including Israel, which is currently using them to bomb Gaza, causing the destruction of schools, hospitals and infrastructure, as well as devastating lives and limbs.Following 6 months of the partnership’s protests and campaigning on this issue, Croppers released their first statement on their complicity in the F35 project today, and the use, by Israel, of the Strike Fighters on the civilians and infrastructure of Gaza. The board insist that they are part of a long, long, long supply chain. In reality they are 4th tier: Lockheed Martin compile the F35s from component parts, including those made by Croppers, and BAE Systems is the UK lead on the project, so the chain is not as long as the Directors’ implied.
Mark Cropper, told the AGM that this lengthy supply chain means they are many steps removed from what we are seeing happening in Gaza.But, say campaigners, long supply chains are still supplying markets.
Croppers, they say, is not a long step from Gaza. It is only 4x removed.15% of components of an F35 are made in the UK and Croppers is pivotal to that (Joint Strike Fighter) contract, and has been key to F35 development from the very beginning (according to MOD). The component pieces come together in the US courtesy of Lockheed Martin: a jigsaw made up of parts manufactured by BAE systems, Lockheed Martin, Croppers Advanced Materials, and many others.
The Croppers contract does not involve selling 'direct' from the UK to Israel, but goes via USA, so is not included in David Lammy's recently announced suspension of licences, bypassing current scrutiny by trading with 3rd or 4th parties and allowing the USA to supply Israel instead.
Lammy’s suspension applies to only 30 out of the 350 contracts which allow UK arms (and maintenance/Parts) sales to Israel. Local campaigners welcome the suspension, but claim it does not go far enough.
The Carlisle advocacy group are currently running a petition to Cumbrian MPs on this very issue, asking for the halting of the ‘Open’ Licences which allow the trade of parts, as well as the ‘Standard’ licences which facilitate whole weapons/equipment sales.
Lammy specifically excluded the F35/Joint Strike Fighter Project from his suspension plans, to campaigners’ dismay.
David Heller of the Stop F35s campaign, also in attendance at the AGM today, said last weekend at the Divestment Day in Carlisle, “if you gave someone a car, knowing that they would use it to carry out a bank robbery, you would be complicit in that crime”.
Campaigners say that the Croppers’ board knows that the components it supplies to the arms industry will be used to make machines which bomb civilians and civilian infrastructure
Gaza itself -a strip of land that stretches from Allonby to St Bees in Cumbrian terms, encasing the population equivalent of Cumbria and Lancaster combined, 90% of whom have been forcibly displaced, and who can not leave -may be distant, but the serious implications are not. Campaigners say there are clear links between Cumbrian business and Gaza’s suffering.
“Croppers claim that they do not make armaments or ballistics, but they do make parts for the war machines that drop those armaments and ballistics- war machines that have been proven without doubt to have taken part in the killing of civilians in the Al Mawasi safe zone. The F35s (and F16s) which Israel uses to bomb Gaza could not function without the 'parts' they are made up of: parts developed and produced in Burneside. The fleets could not be maintained without replacement parts: from Burneside. James Croppers Advanced Materials acknowledged the 'abhorrent' situation in Gaza, distancing themselves from the destruction, while simultaneously claiming pride in their role in the defence industry and the F35 contract. By continuing to make parts for these planes, knowing that they will be used to cause suffering and death, and knowing that new contracts for new sales are in process, Croppers is implicit, if not complicit in the carnage wreaked upon Gaza. We continue to call for Croppers to Stop Arming Israel and to Stop Facilitating Genocide.” Fiona Goldie, who attended the AGM.