Tribune – news, features and comment from Britain's left-wing magazine

by René Lavanchy

Britain’s top universities have become integrated in the arms industry, receiving nearly three-quarters of a billion pounds for military projects over the last six years, according to a report out this week.

Military companies such as BAE Systems and public bodies such as the Ministry of Defence spent at least £725 million funding over 1,900 such projects – from guided weapons systems to behavioural studies into the effects of fear – between 2001 and 2006.

The report, Study War No More, from Campaign Against Arms Trade and the pressure group Fellowship of Reconciliation, argues that commercial secrecy and government underfunding of universities makes it difficult for academics to resist such projects – or to make them publicly accountable.

FoR’s Martha Beale, who co-wrote the report, said: “It was a huge struggle to unearth this information, due to a lack of transparency at many universities and the secretive nature of the arms trade. We were staggered to discover the depth of military involvement in higher education.

“It raises crucial questions about research funding and academic independence. It is vital that students, university staff and the general public tackle the alarming influence of military money.”

The report’s authors surveyed 26 universities, including the elite group of 20 in the Russell Group, which account for most research funding.

Cambridge had the largest number of military projects, valued at £42.5 million, followed by Loughborough, Oxford, Southampton and University College, London.

Three arms companies – BAE Systems, Rolls Royce and Qinetiq – are involved in over two-thirds of the projects surveyed.

One BAE Systems programme, funded jointly with a government civilian research council, looks at “technologies for future unmanned air vehicles”. BAE is currently developing an unmanned aircraft, designed to carry missiles, under the Taranis project.

The report argues that public funding through the Research Assessment Exercise is so competitive that it undermines research ethics by driving academics into the hands of military companies and making it hard to refuse funding.

One scientist characterised public funding as a “feeding frenzy”, and said: “If you turn down research funding, then you are automatically weakening your department’s prospective RAE performance and letting down your colleagues.”

Another added: “Companies should pay full costs, but this is at the discretion of the researcher: there is a tendency to pay much less in order to secure contracts… The extent of taxpayers’ subsidy to military research is hugely underestimated.”

A spokesperson for Universities UK, which represents university heads, said the amount of competition for funding in the Britian was “healthy”, but that academics must have the chance to refuse it.

The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills insisted it was “absolutely untrue” that refusing military funding affected any universities’ research performance, and that commercial research benefited the economy.