When it isn’t busy changing prime minister, the United Kingdom is a world leader in the arms trade. It’s home to well-known firms like BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce, as well as Europe’s largest missile producer, MBDA. The country is the world’s third-largest weapons exporter by sales, and every two years it hosts DSEI, the world’s biggest arms fair, inviting dignitaries to see the best killing machines money can buy.

Universities sit at the heart of this trade — and often students are the first to understand the impact they can make on it. In the United States in the 1960s, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement pioneered tactics like occupations of campus buildings that set the stage for mass resistance to the Vietnam War at colleges across the country. Today, students in Britain are taking up their mantle.

October saw seven protests and occupations across five different UK universities over the arms trade and the military’s presence on campuses. Students at universities in Lancaster, Warwick, Nottingham, Bristol, and Sheffield disrupted careers fairs and recruitment events where arms companies and the military sought to tempt graduates.