TEMPLATE LETTER TO MP ABOUT LOCKHEED MARTIN AT NORTHUMBRIA
Dear [Your MP: Find your MP - MPs and Lords - UK Parliament]
I’m writing to you as one of your constituents [and as an employee of Northumbria University] to raise my concern about Northumbria University’s partnership with Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest arms manufacturer. In their Wages not Weapons campaign, the TUC implicates LM’s technologies in “grave violations of international law”, reinforced by the findings of the Palestine Space Institute.
I am writing to ask you to ask Professor Andy Long, Northumbria’s VC, to:
- Confirm and guarantee no technologies or research developed in the relationship between Northumbria and Lockheed Martin will be for military purposes or ‘dual use’, i.e. for both civilian and military purposes.
- Publish details of the agreement between Northumbria University and Lockheed Martin in a transparent way.
- Explain how the relationship with the world’s largest arms manufacturer aligns with Northumbria University’s values and behaviours.
- Commit to follow the ‘Recommendations for Universities’ in the Weaponising Universities report
Northumbria’s future must be shaped by its staff, students and communities and not by the interests of the arms industry. A university can be better, and should mean more, than this.
The North East’s communities deserve good, secure, sustainable jobs and education. But we should not have to accept militarisation as the price of regional investment.
With thanks for your time and consideration,
