Feature: Do You Want A Career In Killing?

Last week (on Tuesday, October 19) Hannah Brock attended the Guardian Careers Fair with Compaigns Against Arms Trade, to protest against the presence of BAE - the world’s largest arms producer. Here she tells us how it went down, and her incentives for jumping on board the anti-arms, anti-conflict movement...

I’ve been involved in a lot of activism in my time; demos, vigils, boycotts, petitions, MP lobbying [1], lots of great slogan t-shirt wearing. But recently I’ve felt the need to do more to take the debate for social justice to those who wouldn’t ordinarily engage with it.

'I don’t like weapons. I don’t like violence. I don't like oppression. I don’t like poverty and marginalisation. I don’t like undemocratic countries with woeful human rights records... Campaign Against the Arms Trade [2] (CAAT) takes a pretty dim view of such things too, so works to end the international arms trade'

So, I thought I’d get involved in something a little more public…

I don’t like weapons. I don’t like violence. I don't like oppression. I don’t like poverty and marginalisation. I don’t like undemocratic countries with woeful human rights records. What I really can’t stand therefore is undemocratic governments that use weapons to violently oppress marginalised factions of their own civil society. Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) takes a pretty dim view of such things too, so works to end the international arms trade.

Last week, I attended the Guardian Careers Fair [3] with CAAT, to protest against the presence of BAE, the world’s largest arms producer. BAE are not only responsible for manufacturing aircraft, warships, tanks, missiles and much more horrid stuff, they also sell weapons indiscriminately, with no thought for the effects their products have on the world’s most marginalised people. BAE trade with what the Foreign Office's Human Rights report classes as “major countries of concern”, like Saudi Arabia, Libya and Israel.  They have also faced legal proceedings for corruption and bribery, and in March 2010 BAE was sentenced to pay a £286 million criminal fine [4].

Recently, they’ve been criticised for negotiating the sale of £700 million worth of Hawk jets to India [5], a country more in need of poverty alleviation and basic sanitation [6] than weapons.

Similarly, in 2001, BAE sold Tanzania (one of the world’s poorest countries [7]) a £28 million air traffic control system [8]. Fair enough, you might think every country has a right to buy what it likes with its own money. But, according to MP Norman Lamb, Tanzania was charged over eight times [8] what they should have been by BAE. Moreover, the technology the sub-Saharan African country purchased wasn’t even up to the job [9]. Ex-MP and all-round legend Clare Short summed up the deal, calling it ‘outrageous and disgraceful’. So this campaign isn’t just for peaceniks. It’s for anyone who cares about the impact that war can have on people around the world. Conflicts hit the poorest hardest, so anyone who cares about poverty better listen up.

'... they’ve been criticised for negotiating the sale of £700 million worth of Hawk jets to India [5], a country more in need of poverty alleviation and basic sanitation than weapons'

BAE had a stall and were giving a presentation at the careers fair. As you can imagine, the massive criminal fines they’ve paid or their clients’ position on human rights were not the focus of BAE’s talk, or of their literature. During the presentation, my friends and I took to the stage to tell the real story about BAE.

At their stand we staged a “die-in” to bring attention to the impacts of such a company (think dead lions, but with more fake blood and more security guards screaming at you), and handed out leaflets.

All of us were escorted out. Some, like myself, by fairly sympathetic security staff. Others, by aggressive and forceful guards who lifted protestors off the floor by their arms and dragged them out of the building; all for taking part in an entirely non-violent action.

After my busy afternoon, I thought about whether I’d be happy to take part in such activism again. Whilst companies such as these continue to try and attract my peers and student friends through a cocktail of slick marketing and truth evasion, the answer has to be ‘yes’.

To get involved in Ban BAE’s grassroots student campaign here [10].

Words: Hannah Brock
Photos: Flickr user Campaign Against Arms Trade [11].