Local campaigners risk arrest to disrupt Welsh Government defence event, attacking Plaid Cymru’s support for the industry

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Welsh peace activists, anti-war groups, environmental campaigners and local residents descended on The ICC Wales this morning to show their opposition to the 2026 Defence Security Resilience Cymru summit. This morning eight protesters risk arrest by blocking roads around the building with their bodies to make it clear that they don’t want an arms fair here in Newport.

Plaid Cymru has already drawn criticism from a variety of groups for jointly organising the event with a subsidiary of General Dynamics, one of the world’s largest arms companies and a supplier of weapons to the Israeli military. This appears to be drastically different to their stances on the weapons industry in opposition. In 2025 the now First Minister Rhun ap Iowerth stated that it was “shocking and shameful” that Welsh Labour had provided £500,000 in grant funding to a company supplying weapons to Israel1. Plaid Cymru had also repeatedly stated its opposition to similar defence events in the UK2 and called for sanctions on the Israeli government, including arms embargoes3. 

Despite their stances in opposition, the Plaid Cymru government did not cancel the event in the face of growing opposition, leading to fury amongst many campaigners that previously supported Plaid’s anti-war stances, leaving it up to the public to take matters into their own hands.

One of the campaigners risking arrest today is Christina Jenkins, a 33 year old carer from Newport, who said:

“The UK and Welsh governments are complicit in genocide. The weapons we produce kill civilians around the world, whilst our oil and gas extraction destroys our future and is already killing people across the world now. We won’t stand for these genocidal industries when we’re meant to be a nation of sanctuary. 

The biggest threat to national security in the UK is the climate crisis, not our lack of weapons. The Senedd should listen to them and grow Welsh jobs in industries that don’t profit off of killing innocents. We need more careers in renewable energy, public transport, affordable housing and rebuilding public services. Any money spent on funding war means less for these desperately needed industries.“

Leigh Evans, a retired emergency nurse paramedic from Swansea who might also be arrested today for blocking a road, said:

“We are disgusted that the Senedd would use taxpayers’ money to fund a weapons fair. Over half of people killed in modern warfare are innocent civilians and arms companies at this event are actively supplying genocides and apartheid states around the world. 

The weapons makers at this market place of murder profit from killing innocent people at taxpayers expense. To be Cymry is to resist oppression and therefore war, so it us up to us, the Cymry, the true nation and true believers in Heddwch/peace, to make this non-violent stance against the industrial murder complex.” 

Another protester risking arrest at the ICC today said:

“I was born in Casnewydd and have lived most of my life here. I’ve watched not only my country, Cymru, be turned into a testing/training ground for genocidal military and weaponry, but now my hometown is being hijacked to allow warmongerers to make profit on weapons that will most definitely take countless lives of children and parents. I cant stand by and let England’s colonialism continue to have such a chokehold from Casnewydd, to Sudan, to Palestine, Yemen, Congo, Myanmar, Kashmir, Iran, Lebanon, and everywhere else. Liberation now.“

1 https://www.partyof.wales/welsh_government_weapons

2 https://nation.cymru/news/plaid-cymru-faces-questions-over-arms-fair-hypocrisy/

3 https://www.partyof.wales/israel_sanctions