AS THE MAN WHO argued for “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”, Jeremy Bentham would be spinning in his display case if he knew that UCL, the institution so keen to associate itself with his name, still holds a staggering investment in Cobham PLC, a company that manufactures parts for Hellfire missiles. Cobham makes a comfortable living of around £50 million through the sale of military equipment and services, which like the Hellfire missile are regularly deployed in conflicts around the globe and in many cases, have caused the deaths of innocents.
After protests and pressures from students, alumni and academics alike, indications were made last July that steps would be taken to rid UCL of its arms shares. Unsurprisingly, so far very little action has been taken. Worse still, it seems that Nick Barnard, last year’s Media and Communications Officer at UCLU, bastardised a motion on ethical investment ratified by the Union in order to help the Provost keep the matter under wraps.
The problem, as Malcolm ‘Slasher’ Grant sees it, is not that UCL has thrown its morals out of the window, but that the ‘Disarm UCL’ student campaign for arms divestment grossly misrepresented the truth. While it described UCL as the biggest university investor in arms, Grant claims that UCL’s investments pale in comparison to those of most Oxbridge colleges... so that’s OK then.
However, Grant’s anxiety over the matter has obviously filtered through to the Sabbs as Barnard quickly proposed an amendment to the motion. Originally, the motion mandated the Union to lobby UCL to drop its arm shares while the Sabbs inform the the student population about the Disarm UCL campaign via a specific email to all students. However Barnard’s amendment means that the email bemoaning arms investment by UCL cannot be sent without express permission from... UCL. Naturally Grant was quick to deny Sabbs the chance, thus playing the hand that Barnard had dealt him.
Despite having gone over to the Grant side, Barnard conveniently cannot be held responsible as he failed to tell anyone until after his last Union meeting. The only way that Barnard can be touched is for the Union to revoke his Honorary Life Membership, which although apt would be highly unlikely considering that HLMs are handed out like lollipops in the first place. Ironically, the sabbs’ confusion as to their responsibilities regarding the Ethical Investment Motion is documented in the same minutes as the HLMs they received for their “exceptional” contributions to the Union.
So if a sabbatical officer and a representative of the student body failed to help Disarm UCL inform students at large, what hope is there that UCL will stop making a killing from arms investments? Disarm UCL met attempt to convince him that investment in Cobham is unacceptable and unnecessary, but were quickly faced with defiance.
Grant continually insinuated that the big colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, such as Trinity College, have arms investments much worse than UCL’s. His basis was that much of Oxbridge hadn’t responded to Freedom of Information requests (referred to by Grant as a “damn nuisance”) made by the Campaign against the Arms Trade last year. For some reason, Grant is still oblivious to the fact that UCL students won’t give a flying fuck about other universities until theirs has washed the blood off its hands. After all, the investment in Cobham supports a shortfall in student funding of £40,000 each year.
Ally of convenience
Furthermore, knowledged that UCL’s only ethical investment policy, banning tobacco investment, exists because research charities would be “less than enthusiastic” to fund a university with investments in tobacco stock. Readers may recall that Grant previously fobbed off staff with the line that the Ethical Investment Research Service had said that arms investment was perfectly acceptable, when in fact it was more a matter of UCL not caring how they invested providing they didn’t lose their funding from Cancer Research UK. In particular, UCL’s research links with Cobtrue ally of convenience.
Grant is also keen to maintain that it is an investment trustee’s overriding duty to provide the best returns for the institution. This isn’t true – if an investment might conflict with UCL’s aims or alienate its supporters (e.g. wealthy alumni) or beneficiaries (e.g. students), then there is no obligation to make the investment. The only way UCL can avoid this irksome loophole is to claim a risk of “significant financial detriment”, but since the Cobham shares only make up 1% of UCL’s total and have recently shown a degree of instability, this doesn’t seem too likely.
Surprise, surprise
However, the loophole may still rear its ugly head as the result of an enquiry into divestment – if, that is, the enquiry ever takes place. Last June, after pressure from Disarm UCL, UCL Council decided to set up a working group, led by Lord Joel Joffe to “consider the specific issue of investment in arms manufacturers and […] an ethical investments policy for UCL.” Four months later, it has become clear that Lord Joffe, a human rights lawyer who represented Nelson Mandela in the Rivonia Trial and is now a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, will not be able to head the group. What a surprise. The plan to form a working group will now be started again from scratch, most likely with a UCL alumnus at the head.
Meanwhile, a communiqué sent to Disarm UCL by Barnard back in June reveals that the Provost is actually keen to avoid any action that would “inflame” the situation, a fact that is evident both from his meddling with the Union and his view that “we wouldn’t have had any of this nonsense if we’d acted like Trinity College Cambridge.” In reality, his attempts to cover up what should be a cut and dried situation only serve to make Grant look gauche and, above all, guilty.