On 5th September there was a day of action by faith groups outside the DSEI Arms Fair in London. There was a variety of prayers, readings, silent worship throughout the day.
APF Trustee, Sue Gilmurray attended the event (with her keyboard) and writes the following report:
I arrived at the Excel Centre at almost 1pm after the morning events. There were several dozen activists from various organisations, including old friends.
Before the APF official slot, there was a series of short contributions from a variety of organisations and denominations, compered by Sam Walton. During the slot for APF I used short readings by Nick Megoran, Paul Oestreicher, and Vera Brittain, Bible readings from Micah and Matthew, and prayers by George Appleton and John Stephenson, interspersed with 6 of Songs for the Road to Peace. I took about 20 words leaflets plus some of the old melody edition for those who could read music, and I think people enjoyed the variety of content. Luckily for me there was one young woman – I could not find her afterwards to ask her name – who had a good strong singing voice and could sight-read the tunes, so she helped lead all the songs and even added descants to two of them. Chris Idle also joined by reading and leading prayers towards the end of our slot.
There were a couple of showers of rain, but I managed to cover the keyboard up in time. Then accompanied the songs for the Pax Christi liturgy, led by Pay Gaffney, which finished the day.
photos from the day can be seen here
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