Skip to main content

Cambridge students disrupt talk by Rolls Royce boss in protest against role in arms trade

STUDENT activists at the University of Cambridge have disrupted a talk by Rolls Royce chief executive Warren East in protest against the luxury car manufacturer’s role in the global arms trade.

Demilitarise Cambridge stormed the event, held in Keynes’s Hall at Kings College on Thursday evening, and played a prerecorded message from Yemeni journalist Ahmad Algohbary describing the use of the company’s engines in “sustaining the Saudi coalition-led war in Yemen,” before being removed by porters.

The group encouraged attendees to follow them out and boycott the talk.

A second group of students, joined by passing King’s students, later intercepted attendees leaving the event by chanting and distributing leaflets describing the relationship the company has with Saudi Arabia and Israel, and detailing the long-standing partnership between the University and Rolls-Royce.

Demilitarise Cambridge also criticised the University’s Institute for Sustainable Leadership for “greenwashing the military-industrial complex” and for using the climate emergency to platform “ecocidal and murderous corporations.”

One King’s College student, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “It’s disappointing but not surprising.

“It’s an open secret that Cambridge university are in collaboration with the arms trade. I am ashamed of my university and my college.”

Rolls-Royce is the second-largest arms manufacturer in Britain, after BAE Systems.

Despite forming only part of Rolls-Royce’s interests, engines produced by the company supply 25 per cent of fighter jets worldwide which are significantly used by governments implicated in human rights abuses and targeting of civilians.

Rolls-Royce supplied the engines for the Eurofighter Typhoon jets used by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, earning £1.107 billion in revenue from its operations in the kingdom from 2015 to 2017.

More than 18,000 Yemenis have been killed by Saudi air strikes since 2015.

OWNED BY OUR READERS

We're a reader-owned co-operative, which means you can become part of the paper too by buying shares in the People’s Press Printing Society.

 

 

Become a supporter

Fighting fund

You've Raised:£ 13,288
We need:£ 4,712
3 Days remaining
Donate today