Richard Purssell

Detailed account of campaign against the EDO Corporation in Brighton that started in 2004 and included numerous acts of symbolic protest and direct action such  as lock-ons and roof occupations, and resulted in a dramatic trial in March 2010 after protesters broke into the factory and destroyed equipment to 'decommission' the plant (which they believed supplied equipment to the Israeli Air Force) during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in 2009. The court allowed eyewitness evidence of the scale of destruction in Gaza in support of the defendants' case that they were lawfully trying  to prevent a war crime, and the jury acquitted them. The campaign was also boosted earlier by the banning of an activist film, which many people then wanted to see, publicity about police infiltration of the activists, and the launching of a judicial review in the High Court by an 86 year old protester of his inclusion on the 'National domestic extremist' database.