Support is growing for a boycott of this year’s census over the involvement of a US-based multinational arms company. The contract for co-ordinating the census has been awarded to Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s largest arms firms.

Lockheed are frequently criticised for arming oppressive regimes and for their central role in supplying the US armed forces. Their bid for the census contract arose from their work on intelligence and data collection.

The census, which is conducted in the UK every ten years, will be carried out on 27 March.

The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) have criticised Lockheed’s involvement. The geographer Geoff Meaden, who recently retired from the University of Kent, has urged support for people who refuse to participate in the census.

He said: ‘There will be a range of ethical reasons why people may not wish to comply, from concerns about the security of their personal data to not wishing to boost the profits of a weapons manufacturer’.

Lili Kathleen Bright, who attends Westminster Meeting, told the Friend that she had only recently heard about Lockheed’s involvement. She is now encouraging a boycott. ‘I can’t in good conscience participate, knowing what I know,’ she explained.

Not all who oppose the arms trade are backing the boycott. CAAT say they recognise their supporters will make individual decisions about whether to comply. Simon Beard of West Sussex Area Meeting told the Friend he is struggling with the question, because ‘the census is a very important way to help decision-makers obtain the information they need’. But he does not want to ‘assist an arms dealer to make money’.

He explained, ‘I think I will fill in the form and make sure that I submit it eventually, but I will not do so at the first time of asking. Instead I shall be deliberately and obviously obstructive.’

The Green Party of England and Wales campaigned heavily in 2008 against the award of the contract to Lockheed. But a spokesperson for the party has now told the Friend that they oppose a boycott because ‘the census is extremely important and needs to be accurate’. This view may be controversial even within the Greens, for whom Geoff Meaden has twice been a parliamentary candidate.

Glen Watson of the Office for National Statistics insisted there were ‘stringent operational and contractual processes and safeguards in place to maintain data security and confidentiality’. But Geoff Meaden is not convinced. He said: ‘We have no legal precedents as to whether, under the pretext of national security, this census information can be acquired by the US government’.

Comments

• Posted by DavidHitchin on February 11, 2011

  Very often there are two or more ethical principles in conflict when making a decision. Friends may be persuaded by the arguments in the article, “Boycotting the Census”, but they also need to take into account that the amount of government funding allocated to each area is partly determined by demographic information; undercounting may result in an area receiving lower funding than it would otherwise have done, with consequences mainly falling on poorer members of society.

• Posted by geriatrikid on February 16, 2011

  There seem to be different standpoints. One is about the appointment of an arms organisation to government work of this kind. Another questions the national security of data given to this US conpany. A third departs from the issue of peace and gives priority to the importance for UK intelligence and policies of having an effective census. I prefer the last of these. If I wish to protest at the choice of company my remedies are to write to my MP, my newspaper, online methods, or Hyde Park Corner - whichever I think is most effective and most publicly visible, along with all others. Refusing at first to comply, only to do so later, just makes life hard for the collectors, has no public impact (lack of any wider awareness) and is ultimately an empty gesture. Go the whole hog and take the consequences if you must.

• Posted by miriam on March 13, 2011

  Who else is planning to boycott the census?
  Next week, Nailsworth Quaker Meeting will hold a meeting for clearness to explore what we can do to support each other around the issue of the 2011 census and the arms manufacturer who is profiting from this. Many of us want to boycott the census as we do not see how we can, in all conscience, participate in the census and help an arms dealer profit from it. In this anniversary year of the peace testimony, don’t we Quakers have something to say on this matter? A response to the complicity we are being legally required to participate in?
  Lockheed Martin is one of the world’s largest arms producers, with over £33 billion worth of arms sales in 2009. Its products include cluster bombs which can indiscriminately kill and maim innocent civilians, and nuclear weapons, the use of which are illegal under virtually all conceivable circumstances. Lockheed Martin also manufactures Trident missiles for both the US and the UK nuclear weapons systems and is one of three contractors which run the nuclear weapons factory at Aldermaston.
  It is wholly inappropriate that Lockheed Martin should be involved in any aspect of the UK census. Lockheed Martin cannot be trusted to handle, store or retain sensitive personal data. It has been on the frontline in the ‘war on terror’, provided private contract interrogators to Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and has carried out surveillance and data processing work for the CIA and FBI.
  I will not be helping them. I hope other Quakers will join me.