Teledyne e2V in Chelmsford Essex, a part of the Teledyne Technologies Group — the largest supplier of weapons from Britain to the Israeli regime, opened its doors to students on 28th September 2023 as a recruitment drive to coincide with National Manufacturing Day. Palestine Action joined the ‘open day’ event disguised to make prospective students thinking of working there fully aware of the company’s murderous operations.

Spraying red paint from fire extinguishers over the entrance, students applying to join Teledyne’s workforce or considering the “opportunity” being advertised inside would have been quickly made aware that a job in this industry leaves you with ‘blood on your hands’. 

The action was an embarrassment for the firm, who, despite their efforts, had no students turn up to their open day and failed to hide their business of war using glossy presentations, attractive pension plans and life insurance schemes in an attempt to attract new young employees without explaining the whole story. Their ‘e2v’ factory specialises in detonators used in various weapons, including missiles, bombs and sea mines.

Last December, four Welsh activists took direct action at the Teledyne Labtech factory in the small rural border town of Presteigne, rendering the factory inoperable and causing substantial damage — the action to close the factory, which was a success, incurred lengthy custodial sentences. The police alleged hundreds of thousands of pounds of damage was caused despite that cost being incomparable to the Palestinian lives destroyed by Teledyne’s weaponry.

Today’s action reminds war mongers hiding behind state of the art premises that wherever you are and no matter how hard you try to shield the truth from the public, Palestine Action won’t allow your ‘business of bloodshed’ to operate without consequences. There are no benefits to working in the war industry — there are only lives torn apart.