dave.org.uk

BAe AGM

Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre - 28^th April 1999

Today I was at the BAe Annual General Meeting with people from the Campaign Against the Arms Trade and the British Aerospace Campaign. A few weeks ago they transfered a single BAe share into my name so I was able to actually get into the meeting.

Pre Meeting Briefing

At 8:30am we all met in a small room in the Methodist Central Hall, just over the road from the QE2 centre. The room was barely able to contain the number of demonstrators that tried to cram into it. Organisers from CAAT ran through the form that the AGM would take and how our demonstration would fit it. The basic plan was that as the meeting opened at 10am a number of our token shareholders would disrupt the meeting by chanting until they were all thrown out. The rest of us would stay in the meeting and ask all the difficult questions that BAe wouldn't want to answer. They distributed lists of questions for us to ask. CAAT also mentioned that they had a number of major questions that they would be asking for the first time.

CAAT had also produced an 'alternative review' of BAe's actions over the last year. These were meant for distribution to 'real' shareholders within the meeting. I still have a few copies of this left, and will gladly send them to anyone who emails me to ask for one.

Entering the Meeting

Even entering the conference centre was an experience. The ground in front of the building had all been fenced off and there was one path laid out for use to follow. We had to show our shares certificates to enter this path and again at the other end before being allowed into the building.

Once inside the building, we were made to walk thru metal detectors like you see at airports (presumably this was to ensure that we weren't carrying any of the company's products to use to disrupt the meeting!) All of our bags were searched and given a bright yellow sticker to say that they were clean.

We then made our way into the main registration area where we were given another sticker to say that we were share holders and a voting card. It's worth saying a little about the voting procedure at this point. Most company AGMs move through the agenda one point at a time and take a vote on each before moving on. BAe no longer do this. Instead they open all points for discussion at the same time and ask you to drop your completed voting card in a box on the way out. This ensures that if the meetings is closed due to excessive disruption, the board can still say that they have completed all of the legal requirements of the meeting. Another point on voting is that you get a vote for each share you have. As the board are acting as proxy voters for millions of shares held in pension plans and the like, this means that any vote is pointless as they are guaranteed to win it.

Also in the registration room was free tea, coffee and biscuits and a stall to pick up copies of the annual report and things like that. We stood in this room for a while and mingled with the 'real' shareholders. Some of us managed to give them copies of the alternative review.

The Chanting

The meeting started soon after ten. As soon as the board arrived on the podium an member of CAAT started a very load rant about what BAe are doing. This developed into the chant 'No more dirty deals - stop the arms race now'. The people who wanted to get thrown out all joined in. The chair let this go on for over ten minutes whilst giving his welcoming address. After that time he asked people to stop or he would have them removed. Obviously they continued and one by one about fifty of us were carried out by security guards. I didn't chant and stayed in my seat. All in all, we probably wasted about half an hour

The Questions

We then monved on the the question and answer phase. This went on for well over two hours. All but about four of the questions raised were from CAAT representatives and of the few questions from 'real' shareholders, at least a couple of them were very critical of the board of directors. Here is a flavour of the questions asked and the responses given...

Management Accountability: (this came from a 'real' shareholder)
Apparently at the last AGM questions had been raised about the management of the Civil Airforce Composite Carbon Fibre Wing Project. John Weston (Chief Executive) had promised a full investigation, but hadn't reported anything back to the shareholders. He said the the investigation had taken place, but that they hadn't felt it necessary to report back to the meeting. The questioner clearly wasn't happy with this response.
MedTV: One of the directors up for re-election was Sir Robin Biggam. Biggam is also the chairman of the ITC who recently revoiked the broadcasting license for MedTV the Kurdish satellite channel. The reason given was that station could '...incite people to violence'. Given that Biggam is also on the board of BAe, who sell arms to the Turkish government, this raises questions of a conflict of interest. The board just denied that any such conflict existed.
Directors Pay: (I'm not sure if this questioner was one of us or one of them)
The salary of all of the directors is obviously very high and last year got much higher. The board claimed that they had sought independent advice and that the raise wasn't a large as we seemed to think.
Kosovo: One of BAe's principles (according to the Annual Report) is complete customer satisfaction. A questioner asked whether they considered the satisfaction of the Kosovans who were being killed by BAE-made weapons The board stated that it was unfortunate, but that the missions had been hampered by bad weather. They were then asked why they were selling equipment that didn't work in bad weather. They replied that most of their equipment worked very well in bad weather, but that we should ask the RAF why they had chosen to use less capable equipment.
Landmines: (This was the big new point that CAAT wanted to raise)
Under the Land Mines act of 1998 it is illegal for a British company to supply or have a contract to supply parts of a land mine. BAe produce an explosive called RDX which is sold to the US government and used in land mines. CAAT therefore contend that all of the BAe board are breaking the law and run the risk of being imprisoned. The board replied (ad nauseum) that they had taken legal advice and were sure that they were complying with the letter of the law. They refused to say who had given them the advice or how much they paid for it. CAAT stated that they had sent their findings to the Police and Customs & Excise. This could be very big, keep an eye out for more news.
Kurds: There was question on the ethics of selling weapons to the Turkish government. This led into a more general discussion on whether the board took any kind of morals into account when deciding to sell arms to particular countries. The board's story was that they don't consider moral issues as they see that as the job of the government when deciding whether or not to issue export licenses.
East Timor: The board's mention of 'a few eye witness accounts of Hawks in East Timor' was laughed at derisorily. They also claimed that Hawks couldn't fly far enough to reach East Timor from their bases in Indonesia. The suggestion from the floor that the flight logs were made public to back this up was ignored.
Electro-Shock Treatment: The board have previously claimed that they have never been involved in the export of electro-shock equipment. A questioner mentioned a company (sorry, but I've forgotten the name) who exported some of this equipment whilst Royal Ordnance (a subsidiary of BAe) had a 20% stake in it. The board claimed to know nothing about this, but promised to investigate.
Diversification: (another question from a 'real' shareholder)
This shareholder bemoned the fact that BAe was becoming increasingly dependent on arms for it's profit and asked if there were any plans to move into more general engineering areas. The board were clearly confused by the concept and couldn't really give an answer.

I'm afraid that this only scratches the surface of what was discussed. If I've missed your favourite topic, please ask me and I'll fill in the details if I can.

Closing the Meeting

Almost three hours after the meeting started, the chair decided that it had gone on long enough and that no new topics were being raised. He declared the meeting closed. One of the CAAT members raised a point of order and demanded a vote on closing the meeting. The board decided to make it a card vote. We were all given a card to fill in our name and the number of shares we owned and whether we were for or against the resolution. There was some confusion for a while as it was a little unclear what the resolution actually was, but in the end we all voted against it (i.e. in favour of keeping the meeting open). We then wandered about for a while whilst they counted the votes. Remember earlier how I said that we got one vote per share, well when they announced the result there were about 5,000 against the resolution (not bad considering there were only about eighty CAAT people left in the meeting) and 700,000,000 (yes, seven hundred million!) in favour of closing the meeting. The mmeting therefore closed.

There was more coffee and biscuits on the way out and we all got a free pen! Some of us even bothered to vote againt all of the resolutions on the agenda (somewhat futilely given the numbers...). After a while the board appeared to meet the shareholders and some of the more experienced CAAT supporters had some one to one discussions with them. I left to join the protest outside.

Demonstration

All the while that the meeting had been going on, there had been a big demonstration outside the conference centre. A PA was set up and there were many colourful banners - a number of these paraphrased a BAe official who said in 1988 that 'In this game, you sometimes have to leave your conscience at the door.'

Obviously, as I was inside all of the time, I'm relying on other people's recollections. Mark Thomas was there and spoke to the crowds as did a couple of MPs (I think one was Jeremy Corbyn). There was a large contingent of Kurds there, who entertained everyone with some singing and dancing. As I came out, a Westminster council worker was clearing up some fake blood on the pavements from a mass die-in that had taken place earlier.

Soon after we all came out of the conference centre, everyone that was left moved off to sit in the sun in St James Park for a debriefing session. The consensus seemed to be that there were a couple of things that we could have done better, but that all in all it had been a huge success.

Afterword

Did we get BAe to change their minds on anything? Of course not.
Did we get any of their shareholders to think about what they are supporting? Maybe.
Did we have a hugely enjoyable and life-affirming day? Absolutely.
Should you get involved with CAAT and join us next year? Definitely.