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Despite government attempts to cut military expenditure, the amount
of research in Britain’s universities and polytechnics funded by the Ministry
of Defence continues to grow, according to a report* published this week
by the student arm of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

The report was launched by a cross-party group of MPs. The Liberal Democrat
leader, Paddy Ashdown, says: ‘The rundown of the science budget is one of
the scandals of the 1980s but equally worrying is Britain’s failure to make
best use of the resources that we do commit to research. This, in turn,
must be the result of relatively high expenditure on defence R&D’

In 1984, the report states, the Ministry of Defence spent £9 million
funding academic research. This year it plans to spend £27 million.
By comparison, money for research supplied by the five research councils
and the Universities Funding Council has risen by only 16 per cent since
1979, and has dropped as a percentage of Britain’s gross domestic product.
Student CND says these figures give an indication of the ‘creeping militarisation’
of Britain’s universities.

A series of parliamentary questions over the past few years has established
that only five MoD-funded research projects are classified as secret. Yet
the ministry has consistently refused to release a list of the more than
800 other projects it supports in all but one of Britain’s universities
and in 15 polytechnics. Student CND gathered its information from university
annual reports and other open sources.

The MoD also stated last year that even for unclassified projects, researchers
must seek the ministry’s approval before publishing results in any form.
‘It is one of the principles of a liberal society that intellectual inquiry
should be open and rigorous,’ says Ashdown. ‘It is difficult to see how
this can be so, when so much of our basic research is closed and secret.’

According to official figures, about half the projects are jointly funded
by the MoD and one of the research councils in a scheme started in 1985.
In applications for funding from the research councils, researchers must
now tick a box if they do not want to be considered for MoD funding.

The universities with the greatest number of projects funded by the
MoD include Birmingham, Southampton, Cambridge, Strathclyde, the University
of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and Imperial College,
London.

Seventy projects, worth a total of £2.2 million, are funded through
Porton Down, the MoD’s chemical and biological warfare establishment. These
cover, among other things, the study of viruses and bacteria such as anthrax,
and the way toxins and nerve gases affect the human body.

Staff at the University of Bristol’s department of animal husbandry
mounted a vociferous campaign against accepting money from the MoD in 1988
and 1989. A project on how airborne bacteria infect farm animals had been
refused funding by the Agricultural and Food Research Council. The university
then submitted the proposal to the MoD, which agreed to fund it but changed
its subject to a study of a bacterium that can cause fatal pneumonia in
people.

Sue Mayer, a researcher in the department who resigned over the issue,
said: ‘That was not something that I had ever thought I would do when I
graduated as a vet.’ The staff argued that the project ran counter to the
spirit of the 1972 Biological Weapons Treaty.

*The Campus Connection, Student CND, 162 Holloway Road, London N7 8DQ.
Price: £3.