MORE THAN TWO years after the Campaign Against the Arms Trade exposed College’s investment in weapons part manufacturers, UCL has finally decided to adopt an ethical investment policy. While student campaigners from Disarm UCL are already celebrating their victory, The Cheese Grater wonders whether the policy is anything more than a PR exercise.
Invested interests
UCL’s ethical investment policy is available on their website and at first glance it appears hopeful, with over a page’s worth of rules detailing how College should invest. Don’t be fooled. The very first line states that “the guiding principle of UCL’s investment policy is to generate funds”, and there is little deviation from that message. College’s default position is to keep on investing – companies are innocent until proven guilty. Crucially, there has been no immediate divestment of shares
in Cobham, the company that profits directly from weapons sales. Three criteria are listed that would allow UCL to disinvest shares in a company, but these are all based on existing laws that UCL must already comply with. Guidelines for the new Ethical Investment Review Committee reveal it as nothing more than a filter to prevent criticism getting any higher up the food chain.
The hush up
Of the disinvestments criteria, only the third can actually be used by students, staff and alumni to call for arms shares to be dropped. Such a call would be addressed to the EIRC, which it divested. If the IC rule that divesting would have a negative financial impact (as all divestments do in the short term) the EIRC will be politely told to keep quiet. If this fails to sweep the matter under the carpet, then it is referred up to Council, who can consider “UCL’s overall financial position” and then tell the EIRC to pipe down with all the power that The Moustachioed One can muster.
Losing heart
Further points included in the policy make for disheartening reading. UCL won’t divest from any sector from which it receives research money, and
not be a proxy for making moral and social statements at the expense of the charity concerned”.
Less than impressive
After all this, the policy gives only one definite example of companies that UCL will not invest in. As this very magazine stated two years ago, the only companies that are beyond the pale are those directly involved in the tobacco industry, and this is at least partly due to the research funding that College receives from Cancer Research UK. UCL have a long way to go if they are to impress anyone who actually reads their guidelines.