Dear Sir,
Yesterday, after a shockingly inappropriate and offensive greeting from Coun
John Powley, the campaign group 'Cambridge Against the Arms Trade' were told
that to disinvest from the arms industry would be of financial detriment to the
tax-payer.
This point was repeated by Coun Keith
Walters in your newspaper where he suggested that ethical investment does not
make good business sense. However, the latest research shows this argument to
be flawed. In a study, by the Ethical Investment Research Service, which looked
at numerous ethical funds over an 8 1/2 year period, it was found that large
chunks of the market could be excluded from an investment portfolio without
materially changing the performance of the investment fund. Numerous ethical
investment funds have corroborated these findings including the Church of
England's £4.3bn investment fund, which was the
second-best performer of more than 1000 funds over the past decade (source:
Financial Times).
Contrary to popular belief, the arms industry compromises only 2% of the British
economy. It is difficult to imagine why this particular 2% is so vital to the
financial well-being of the county council pension fund. Rather, it seems that
the our representatives on the council have been less than honest and have
hidden behind a dubious financial argument in order to avoid having to justify
their political support for an industry that props up dictators, suppresses
political dissent and threatens global stability. Many county councils and
universities around Britain have concluded that there is no way of justifying
such political support and have adopted ethical investment policies. It is time
that our county council and our universities took a similar stance, or at least
entered into an informed and honest debate.
Yours sincerely,
Stuart Jordan
Cambridge Against the Arms Trade