Bridget Hart

Last night we met with a representative of Bristol Pride. We told them more about Airbus’s links with the arms trade and they recognised that they hadn’t done enough research on the company before accepting their sponsorship this year. They told us that Airbus had told them that the company didn’t make weapons! When of course Airbus has clear links with weapons and the arms trade through their supply of military aircrafts to the Turkish military. 

The Bristol Pride representative explained that it is not financially viable for them to return the sponsorship money from Airbus this year. We did secure a commitment from Bristol Pride that they would be reviewing their sponsorship policy to add more formal ethical guidelines, which would ensure that arms dealers will not be allowed to sponsor in future. Some of us will be working on helping them with this. However, we have stressed how important…