The Stop L3 Harris campaign has successfully forced the Council to take legal advice about its potential complicity with genocide or other violations of international law. Let’s keep up the pressure and encourage the Council to reject L3 Harris’ planning application!
Write to your ward councillors and the Chair of the Planning Committee, Liz Loughran, urging them to reject L3 Harris’ planning application BH2023/ 03236.
You can find your ward councillors here. If one of your councillors is a member of the Planning Committee, even better! You can email the Chair of the Planning Committee on Liz.Loughran@brighton-hove.gov.uk
Please use your own words as much as possible! That will make clear the strength and breadth of opposition. And please ask your friends to do the same ! Here are a few pointers to get you started:
1) Planning Committee members CAN vote with their consciences on this issue and refuse planning permission. They CAN take human rights and humanitarian concerns into account in making a planning decision. Urge your councillors to say they want to take human rights and international humanitarian law into account as part of the discussion, and to vote to REJECT the application.
2) The officer’s report recommends that the committee grant permission: but members of the committee CAN say that they want to refuse it, on human rights and humanitarian grounds.
3) There have been approx. 650 objections on the Council portal, a petition with over 120 signatures, and regular demonstrations against the presence of L3 Harris in the city. Urge councillors to take the unprecedented local opposition into account and listen to their ward residents.
4) You might want to congratulate the Council on pausing the decision while they take legal advice – that shows they are discharging their duties responsibly. Urge them to take the human rights and humanitarian situation in Gaza, and the strength of feeling against the arms trade in the city, into account, and to vote with their conscience.
We don’t know when the Council will be making its decision. It was supposed to discuss the application at the March meeting of the Planning Committee; then it was supposed to discuss it at the April meeting. But we’ve learnt that they are still seeking legal advice. This means our pressure is working – so let’s get those emails in!
Brighton Against The Arms Trade 