BAE on campus.

I protested against BAE on campus, before hand the student paper asked me some questions.  Here is what I wrote.

You have launched a vocal campaign against the BAE recruitment at university grad fairs - how popular has student unrest against the grad recruitment been on campus?

I only recently learned that the Engineers were to be forced to attend a talk by BAE systems, as a result I have not had chance to network with the student activist groups.  I am sure I am not the only UCL student concerned that the arms industry are allowed to take up lecture time in order to try and attract undergraduates.  I must stress that unlike most graduate fairs, attendance for second year Engineering Students is mandatory which I see a gross misuse of power bordering on coercive persuasion.  My emails to the lecturers involved were ignored.

University of London students have been relatively quiet in their anti BAE protests compared to elsewhere in the UK - why do you think this might be?

I don't think this is necessarily true.  The get BAE off campus campaign launched by Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) was only launched very recently, two weeks after the launch students kicked off the campaign at the Guardians London Graduate Fair staging a 'Die-in' at the front of the BAE stall and handing out leaflets, waving banners and otherwise generally disrupting the stall.  It was a commendable and hugely successful action which greatly raised awareness of the campaign and the surrounding issues whilst simultaneously hindering BAE's efforts to attract graduates.  

How would you respond to critics of the protests who have deemed them 'counter-productive and misguided'?

Institutional analysis is discouraged by those who's needs the institution serves.  Throughout history voices of dissent are marginalised; the challenging of favoured truths does not get much of a hearing in Mass Media which makes actions such as the one at the Guardian London Graduate fair vital in propelling human civilisation forward.  BAE sell arms indiscriminately around the world.  It has military customers in over 100 countries. Its profits are made by sales to oppressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, by poverty that is fuelled when countries such as Pakistan and India waste money on arms, by civilian deaths in West Papua, as Indonesia bombs them with weapons made in the west. The campaign against the arms trade recruiting on campus is an eminently crucial one with tangible and attainable objectives.  The fact that in 2008 E.ON pulled out of their tour of universities demonstrates how powerful student protests can be.  Add this to the fact that BAE are struggling to employ recent graduates and you have a weakness in the system presenting an opportunity to increase the pressure for ending the arms trade.  

Do you feel that by welcoming BAE to talk at UCL we have take a step back from the anti-arms trade stance of the student body during the disarmUCL campaign?

The fact that students are forced to attend is not a 'step back', it is an obscenity, a disgusting use of an Educational Institution for an immoral industries profit.  The disarmUCL campaign although a great victory, only scratched the surface of UCL's involvement with the arms trade.  It should be noted that the UCL SECReT international centre for PhD training in security and crime science claims to have a "shared vision" with investing companies such as BAE Systems, Thales and Lockheed Martin.  According to BAE CEO Mike Turner that is to, “achieve sustainable and profitable growth well into the future”.  This shared vision of an expansion in arms dealing relies on an expansion of war, a greater number of dead and more schools, homes and communities wiped out, severely undermining human rights, security and economic development at global, regional, national and local levels.  It is not only individuals, but organisations who have responsibility to make ethical choices.  Giving space to arms dealers be it through forcing students to attend forums such as this or through back doors such as SECReT is the moral equivalent of allowing drug dealers or sex traffickers to go about their business on campus with the university abetting; providing a room full of impressionable students for them to indoctrinate.  It is inexcusable that society funds the skills and technology and provides the platforms required by arms dealers, rather than those urgently required to tackle climate change.