You’d have to be pretty much deaf and blind, or hopelessly lost in the impenetrable UL tower to have failed to get caught in the frenzy surrounding the occupation of the Law Faculty. While its ostensible purpose was to get the University to make commitments to support the Palestinians, there was an extra clause slotted into their demands. You might not even have noticed it, hiding between their plea not to be punished for protesting and the request for scholarships for Palestinian students, but it was there nonetheless.

We demand that Cambridge University and its colleges disinvest from the arms trade in cooperation with the existing Cambridge (and colleges) Against the Arms Trade movement.

It might be argued that exploiting the crisis in Gaza to plug a completely separate campaign is a bit on the sneaky side, but the issue of disinvestment from the arms trade is certainly a serious one, at Cambridge University more than anywhere. Cambridge is one of the largest university investors in the arms trade, providing both financial support and research projects.

But why is there a problem? Weapons producers do have a bad ethical record, but so do many other multinational companies. Coca-Cola and Nestlé, for example. However, the very nature of the arms trade, lurking as it does in the shadows of national security, makes it highly susceptible to dodgy dealings. And we all know that once a trade is driven underground, it becomes a practical Petri dish of unregulated activity. Weapons producers have been linked to such internationally condemned activities as child labour, bribery, corruption and landmine production.

They are also notorious for their lucrative deals with questionable states. The relationship between the British arms company BAE Systems and the House of Saud is particularly well known. Many of the Saudi princes, including Prince Bandar (who incidentally is a Churchill donor – thank you TCS!) have reputations of less than halal conduct. BAE also supplied Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe with Hawk jets.

To a certain extent, these kinds of deals are unavoidable. Arms companies produce weapons. To make money, arms companies need to sell those weapons. Who buys weapons? Defence departments of governments. The arms companies can’t really afford to be choosy about the nature of those governments. It’s not like they have a lot of opportunity to target new consumers. However, the dark side of this cold analysis is that arms are far from harmless. Indeed, their purpose is to kill, maim, or otherwise wreak destruction. The horrific results of their use can be seen today in Gaza. Over 1300 Palestinians have been killed, with many more suffering physical and psychological injuries. Perhaps the disinvestment demand of the Cambridge protesters wasn’t quite so irrelevant after all.

Do we really want our university and our colleges to be indirectly responsible for such a disproportionate and hideous use of violence? More than half of Cambridge colleges have no socially responsible investment policy at all, and only a handful actually condemns the arms trade. Indeed, Magdalene has somehow managed to create an SRI policy, and yet retain their investments in BAE Systems. However, removing certain companies from our portfolios need not be detrimental to college finances. Typical avoidance could exclude only 1.9% of the FTSE all-share. So at a minimal cost to colleges, the University could remove its support for an industry which, let’s face it, has an awful lot to answer for.

If this wasn’t enough to provoke you to support University-wide disinvestment from the arms trade, here’s a final incentive. Oxford University agreed to disinvest last March. It’s catch-up time.

by Soniya Ganvir