250-Word Summary of ‘Yes’ Campaign:
- The University of Leicester has 6 direct partners or subsidiary partnerships with weaponry companies as follows: Rolls Royce, Airbus, Thales, Leonardo, AWS (1)
- Rolls Royce is a known F-35 producer and member of the US F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Programme. These F-35s have been used by the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza and the occupied West Bank to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people in what several major human rights organisations have described as a genocide (2)
- Airbus is heavily invested in the space and defence sectors and the UK government has confirmed that missiles manufactured by AirBus and MBDA (partly owned by Airbus) were used by Saudi Arabia in their attacks on Yemen. Airbus Defence and Space have also supplied military craft to the UAE Airforce, who are funnelling arms to militias within Sudan that have killed hundreds of thousands of people
(3)
- The University of Leicester has a joint PhD research partnership through Digital Metal CDT which has received over £20 million in funding from companies that profit from the killing of innocent people, which include: Rolls-Royce, GKN Aerospace, AWE, QinetiQ and HVM Catapult (4)
- The careers and employability service routinely invites arms companies and other war profiteers onto campus to advertise to students, including the British military that participated in the widely condemned invasion of Iraq and in recent years has gathered intelligence for the IDF using RAF planes to fly over Gaza. As well as other huge arms manufacturers BAE Systems and MBDA.
Reference List
- Research and enterprise partners [Internet]. 2023 [cited 2026 Jan 14]. Available from: https://www.space-park.co.uk/partners/
- [Internet]. [cited 2026 Jan 14]. Available from: https://palestinecampaign.org/psc-company/rolls-royce/
- CAAT - Airbus Group (EADS) [Internet]. [cited 2026 Jan 14]. Available from: https://caat.org.uk/data/companies/airbus-group-eads/
- [Internet]. [cited 2026 Jan 14]. Available from: https://digitalmetal-cdt.ac.uk/
To read the detailed three page campaign summary submitted by the yes campaign click here