65daysofstatic are sorry to announce we are not playing the Van Der Waals Festival next week in Barrow-In-Furness, and would like to apologise to those people who had bought tickets or made travel arrangements to attend. If anyone does wish to change their plans, there will hopefully be some contact information from the promoters over at their website: myspace.com/tinymastersunite.

We are not playing because the festival has recently decided to accept sponsorship from the world’s third largest arms manufacturer, BAE Systems. This was not the case when we confirmed the show, and the festival promoters have regretfully decided they cannot change the situation at this late stage. BAE Systems are an arms company. They make things to kill people with and we cannot have dealings with them:
 http://www.baesystems.com/ProductsServices/index.htm

Obviously this is extremely short notice, and was not a decision taken lightly, but one we feel is necessary.  We’d like to make it clear that our problem here is with BAE systems, not with the organisers or contributors to the festival. We have been preparing for, and anticipating the new 65shows for some months now, and are sorry that we don’t feel we can appear in this instance.

We know how hard it is to put on small, independent festivals. It costs a lot of money. If the government put less money into the pockets of companies like BAE and into arts funding instead, the promoters could rightly laugh in the face of whatever PR branch an arms dealer has that thinks it will be useful to have the support of noisy, experimental music fans. But they don’t. It is a shame the promoters were put in this position in the first place.

BAE Systems make things to kill people with. Thousands of people, hundreds of them children, died in Gaza over the past few months because of the Israeli F16s flying over them, with BAE parts ticking away inside.

Their profits last year rose 94% to £1.75billion pounds because of the increased spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is possible a million or more people have now been killed in Iraq (Lancet Study from 2006). A million people. This doubled their profit.

If you would like our arguments to be articulated in ways much more eloquent than ours, then we would point you in the direction of this report by the Campaign Against Arms Trade or the excellent Mark Thomas book ‘As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela‘.

We are not trying to make you agree with us, we just want to explain why these feelings we have are too strong to ignore and our consciences won’t allow us to let this go, even at this most distant, seemingly inconsequential level. As a band, like anyone else, we have to make compromises and face possible charges of hypocrisy at every turn. But you have to draw the line somewhere. And if we’re not willing or able to draw it with BAE Systems the other side then, basically, we shouldn’t be trusted.

We will look at the possibilities of setting up another show in Barrow in the future.

Thanks,
65daysofstatic