While events this year were overshadowed by the horrifying events in Ukraine, the movement came together to highlight the continued failure of military solutions to tackle the existential problems we face.
Street demonstrations, Vigils & Stalls
The first event of GDAMS in the UK was a demonstration on the evening of April 11th at Menwith Hill US spy base on the Yorkshire Moors, organised by the Menwith Hill Accountability Campaign and Bradford CND. As is tradition the group stopped every vehicle leaving the base for just enough time to allow them time to read the banners.
London Women in Black held two GDAMS vigils in April, where passers-by were engaged on the issue of military spending and asked to sign a petition to Boris Johnson on the subject.
Merseyside CND held a stall on the streets of Liverpool asking people what they’d prioritise over military spending.
Keighley Peace and Environment Network held a Vigil for Peace in Ukraine, calling for an end to military spending increases and, instead, resources dedicated to peace and planet.
Presentations
Scrap Weapons held an exceptional webinar for GDAMS 2022 – “Strategies for reducing military expenditure”. It was a fantastic insight into their work, if you missed it, we really recommend catching up below. They also discussed their new Global Weapons Tracking tool using crowd sourced data – demonstrating how much easier tracking and monitoring of disarmament programmes is today. They also invited attendees to sign up to the call for a UN General Assembly special session on disarmament.
As part of the brilliant Festival of Debate 2020, GCOMS UK were asked to speak on the impact of UK militarism on the environment, alongside Leona Morgan, an indigenous community organiser and activist fighting nuclear colonialism. The event was organised by Sheffield Creative Action for Peace (SCrAP). Our presentation is included below and there is also a recording of the event.
Social media storm
On the 25th of April, to coincide with the release of the new SIPRI data on global military spending, we took to the net to alert the world that military spending had exceeded $2trillion for the first time. Hashtagify showed the #GivePeaceABudget hashtag reaching almost 4 million impressions on the day on Twitter alone.
Data visualisations
We spent a good deal of time this year trying to counter the push for a further increase in military spending in the media, in particular the need for a ‘return to cold war of military expenditure’ in the wake of the Ukraine invasion. Using SIPRI’s data on constant dollar value expenditure we were able to demonstrate how the UK was already spending more than it did during the cold war – hover of the graphic below to explore the data.
A huge thank you to all who took part in this years Global Days of Action, whether in person or online. It's vital that we continue to highlight the failure of militarism to provide security and the squandered opportunity of runaway military spending. If we've missed anyone out please do let us know and we'll add you to the global report on actions before it's finalised. The UK actions were just one small part of the international mobilisation. We'll leave you with a selection of the brilliant images that made up the media storm around the globe.
