Posters from Banksy's Dismaland protesting major arms fair appear across London
The posters look legitimate, but have been designed to condemn a major defence and security expo at London's ExCel centre
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Your support makes all the difference.Commuters in London have been greeted with a number of alternative posters across the capital on their journeys to work.
Adverts on the underground purporting to be from Transport for London warned commuters of the “swarm of arms dealers...making huge amounts of money” at an arms trade event at London’s ExCel centre.
The posters were later revealed to be part of Banksy’s Dismaland show in Weston-super-Mare, and have been displayed in protest against the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) exhibition.
The posters form part of a show curated by Gavin Grindon called “Cruel Designs” at Dismaland, where around 100 artists have been invited to exhibit alongside the elusive street artist.
“The posters appeared today to commemorate the opening of DSEI, who don’t seem to have done much advertising of their own,” he said.
Over 300 have appeared on bus stops and underground tubes across the capital.
A spokesperson for TfL told London24: “This is not an authorised advert. It is fly-posting and therefore an act of vandalism which we take extremely seriously. We have instructed our contractor to remove any found on our network.”
Earlier this year, the UK was found to have supplied £5.2bn worth of arms exports licences to countries internationally recognised as guilty of major human rights violations, including Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, China, Yemen and Russia.
The Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) estimates the total value of UK weapons export licenses since 2014 to be more than £8bn.
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