On Sunday 23rd August 2026, Jim, Cina and I took part in a protest against the Elbit Systems factory in Shenstone.
When protests began in 2009, they were a gentle affair. I recall one when a ‘protest’ choir sang hymns and songs, another when a few people sat down and police merely watched. A dispersal notice could be politely declined.
Things have become tougher since then.
A jury has found eight Palestine Action protesters at the Elbit Systems factory in Bristol not guilty of helping to organise a raid on the factory, with one found guilty of criminal damage.
On Sunday, a convivial gathering of several hundred protesters listened with attention to speakers before walking in silence behind a mock-up of a drone through the village. Some carried placards of men, women and children killed during the so-called ceasefire between Israel and Hamas/Palestine. Intermittent blasts of the noise of a drone overhead heightened the atmosphere.
The organisers, a small, unaffiliated group, had done their homework, as the following shows:
A Few Observations On the Movement to Shut Down Elbit at Shenstone and Staffordshire Police’s ‘Survey’ by Lotika
(an earlier version of this was read out at the Regional Demonstration at Shenstone on 22 August)
It was about 15 years ago, around 2009 that local anti-drone vigils began in Shenstone, a village close to the cathedral city of Lichfield in South Staffordshire, in relation to the UAV Engines factory on Lynn Lane. This was after Warren Bardsley, a retired Methodist Minister in the Lichfield and Tamworth circuit learnt about UAV Engines operating out of Lynn Lane, in what had
once been the Norton factory that made engines for motorcycles until 1992 (www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jan/09/armstrade-gaza).
In the coming years, a Movement to Shut Elbit Down in Shenstone emerged and has been ongoing in various ways – including a month-long encampment in 2022 and once-monthly big protests to direct action by direct action groups, then regular twice weekly smaller protests, and a weekly vigil started by Jo Thornton, then Minister of Trinity Methodist Church on New Road and the people of Shenstone, which is held outside the factory on Monday mornings.
As Chris Cole, Director of the watchdog Drone Warfare UK (dronewars.net/) said when he spoke outside the factory at the June Monthly Tuesday protest this year, that regular presence of people is also like a watchdog – it helps to keep reminding the people inside that highly secure premises that many regular folks do not want Isreali weapons manufacturers complicit in genocide to be
operating in Shenstone through UK listed subsidiaries. Genocide is a crime under international law.
The United Nations 1948 Genocide Convention, which has 153 parties, requires party states to not only punish those responsible for genocide, but it also requires states to prevent genocide from occurring – and this includes all of us, not just our elected representatives. It also includes Staffordshire Police.
Still, in the past few weeks, Staffordshire Police has sent motorists who have sounded their horn on going past the factory when a protest is on Fixed Penalty Notices or notices of intent to prosecute. Many people have paid 30 to 50 pounds.
Around 16 August 2026, Staffordshire Police also sent a survey to residents and businesses in Shenstone, which obviously includes UAV Engines, but not the people who are protesting and for whom the factory is local too (https://www.facebook.com/groups/763708161611933/permalink/1543044157011659).
The ‘Shenstone Protest’ as the police have chosen to call our Movement in the survey title, is not a protest against Shenstone. It is a long-running Movement against the local presence of a drone engine producing factory, UAV Engines Limited, which is wholly owned by the largest Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, and which has been named in the UN report of June 2026 as
complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people and children (“The essence of childhood has been destroyed”: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023”;
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session62/a-hrc-62-crp-2.pdf
All this is missing in the information that appears to have been sent out only to the residents of and businesses in this village. They are, however, I guess, expected to answer in an informed manner. The @staffspalestine social media handle has a post that takes you through the survey and the flaws in it point by point. Do check it out the post and comment on the analysis (www.instagram.com/p/DcO8OMIjDcw/?img_index=1).
I will just point out that the phrase ‘Serious Disruption’ in Q5 is a legal term that has been dropped into the survey with no explanation.
And the last question, Question 10 states: ‘I support the police taking enforcement action against motorists who sound their horns in response to protest-related signs, banners or activities’;
However, the notice sent to the motorists says they are being issued the notice because of ‘Use a motor vehicle on a road in a manner as to cause excessive noise’. Nothing here is about protest-related signs, banners or activities or any other reason.
Our activity is not described – our activity which has been to exercise our right to protest, and I repeat, against the local presence of UAV Engines Limited, that is wholly owned by the largest Isreali arms manufacturer Elbit Systems and complicit in complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people and children.
Yet the police say that the survey will be used to provide them ‘evidence’ for their policing of our Movement in the future. I leave it to you to make sense of these police actions, but to me what’s being attempted by Staffordshire Police is an active attempt to discredit the Movement at Shenstone against the complicity of the British State in the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Among other ways, the police is now doing this by inviting residents and businesses of Shenstone to participate in a flawed exercise. It assumes the people will respond in an informed way. I’m sure they will, but that information has not been provided by the survey-or, the Police.
Let’s be in solidarity also with the motorists who sounded their horn in support of the Movement to Shut Elbit Down in Shenstone and have had to pay out to the police for it or be penalised.
The truth is here for all to see – the truth that today we are holding in our hands and our hearts as we honour the Palestinian martyrs, including the over 20,000 Palestinian children whose short lives whose short lives now ended personify that truth.
https://linktr.ee/staffspalestine