ANTI-ARMS campaigners condemned heavy-handed police tactics on Thursday after tooled-up officers attacked a demonstration outside a Brighton weapons factory.
Hundreds of protesters from around the country took part in Wednesday's Carnival Against the Arms Trade at the seaside resort.
Toward the end of the afternoon, some 600 activists marched on the EDO MBM factory on the Home Farm Road industrial estate.
At this point, police attempted to force the crowd into a small pen made of crowd barriers.
Protesters resisted the attempt to corral them and this soon escalated as police used batons, pepper spray and dogs to force them away from the factory.
The barriers were eventually overturned, but, in the melee, panicking police hit and pepper-sprayed several people.
By Wednesday night, the Smash EDO campaign, which organised the protest, had learned of seven arrests, including a legal observer, while several people were injured by police batons.
Smash EDO spokesman Andrew Beckett said: "We will not submit to crude tactics of police intimidation.
"Whatever the accusations of violence thrown in our direction, they pale in comparison to the violence inflicted in Iraq, Palestine and Somalia by the products of EDO MBM."
The incident is not the first time that Smash EDO campaigners have faced police intimidation and intervention on behalf of the arms dealers.
Activists have been the subject of an injunction and have repeatedly been forced into court to defend the right to protest.
EDO, the sole British subsidiary of giant US weapons company EDO Corp, makes missile components which have been used to bomb civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon.
