DSEI 2025- No Faith in War

Community member Moya writes on the London Catholic Worker's presence at the DSEI Arms Fair, resistance, and the demand for justice.

Police and Protestors at DSEI, Alisdare Hickson

Every two years, the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair transforms London’s Excel centre into one of the world’s largest marketplaces for the weapons industry. And amidst horrific conflict around the world, the sale of weapons is booming.

The DSEI arms fair welcomes thousands of exhibitors and buyers, among them the militaries of Israel, Egypt and Iraq. Some of the weapons sold here will be used in the ongoing genocide in Gaza or in the catastrophic bombing of Yemen by Saudi Arabia. Britain has already licensed more than £8 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since 2015, according to government statistics, fuelling attacks on schools and hospitals and plunging Yemen even deeper into a humanitarian crisis.

The arms fair sells weaponry from rifles and tanks to drones, warships, missiles, and surveillance technology. It also exhibits riot control gear like tear gas, advertised and sold to countries such as Egypt, known to use these weapons against protestors. In 2007, two exhibitors were expelled from the event for advertising leg irons, which attach to feet and restrict movement; they are banned for sale by EU countries to non-EU countries. Then, in 2021, Amnesty International reported the advertising of “waist chains and cuffs with leg cuffs,” a full body restraint also banned for sale. Even the few limits which are put on arms dealers seem to be easily disregarded in the name of profit.

To host the arms fair is to facilitate war crimes and enable genocide. Christ rebuked armed defence in Gethsemane: “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus told Peter, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). This is a warning not just to us as individuals, but to our society; a culture that builds security on the trade in weapons inherits the violence it sustains.

As Christians we are not called to enable the machinery of war; our faith must take flesh in resistance. On the 9th of September, the London Catholic Worker joined many other faith groups for a No Faith in War protest outside the gates of the Excel centre. We organised a memorial service for the people who had been killed with the weapons advertised and sold inside, and for those who would continue to be affected. The protests continued to the 12th, with many people camping by the centre in witness. We pray, we resist, but as long as our government continues in its complicity, there will always be more to be done.

As Dorothy Day said, “Our problems stem from this filthy rotten system.” London does not need DSEI, just as the world does not need more weapons. What we need is the hard, costly work of peace: justice, reconciliation, food for the hungry, and homes for those who have none.