For the past three years, global arms villains GKN have sponsored an annual lecture in the notoriously right-wing Magdelene College, Cambridge. This year, they outdid themselves by inviting as speaker John Lehman, who has managed to promote war in three different ways: as US Secretary of the Navy, as a member of the neo-conservative think-tank the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and as a director of several arms companies. His talk was on 'Managing defence forces in the fight against terror', something GKN are no doubt particularly knowledgeable on, having armed some of the worst dictatorships in the world.

We were not prepared to let this axis of arms dealers go unchallenged, and so staged a protest outside the college before, during and after the lecture. Protesters, mostly from People and Planet, were refused entry to the college, and so stood by the door, holding up placards highlighting Magdelene's involvement with GKN, a company which sold water cannons and armoured vehicles to Indonesia, where they were used in the violent repression of student protests.

In their concern to keep protesters out, college authorities had closed all but the front entrance, and so everyone attending the lectures had to come past the protestors, allowing us to give out many leaflets exposing the nature of GKN and John Lehman. Even Lehman himself had to come in via the front gate, running the gauntlet of protestors. I managed to speak to him briefly, giving him one of our leaflets and pointing out that we knew about the way in which his policy advice and arms dealing were linked. I'd hoped to shame him into leaving once he found out we'd seen through his scam, but, predictably, he was actually quite pleased with his role in formenting war around the globe. Perhaps more worryingly, many people attending the lecture did not seem to be put off by Lehman's involvement in the arms trade; I suppose if you're prepared to go to a lecture sponsored by an arms company, you are unlikely to have any qualms when the speaker turns out to be an arms dealer.

Some People and Planet members had managed to get tickets to the lecture, and went in, hoping to have an opportunity to ask some difficult questions. Unfortunately, the organisers claimed that time constraints prevented more than a couple of questions being asked, so Lehman was not presented with a dissenting voice inside the lecture theatre. Outside, however, protests continued, giving out more leaflets to let students and passers-by know the kind of people this college was happy to be involved with. Just as we were getting a little cold and tired, who should walk down the street but Michael Moore? Apperently, he'd seen our protest while doing a booksigning, and wanted to find out what it was all about. We explained our opposition to GKN and John Lehman, and he stood around chatting for a while before his car arrived to whisk him away, apparently to another booksigning in Coventry. Before he left, he thanked us and Cambridge activists in general "for everything your doing."

Lehman himself remained in the college for dinner at 'high table' with the fellows of the college, but those leaving the lecture were surprised to see our protest still going strong. Magdelene college and its students, and all those who attended the GKN lecture, were left in no doubt that there is strong opposition to allowing arms dealers to purloin a little respectability from the Cambridge University name.

A leaflet detailing John Lehman's role as a neo-conservative hawk and arms dealer is online at  http://www.huh.34sp.com/res/lehman.pdf