Open Letter Text

Over 35,000 people have been killed in Gaza, including more than 14,500 children. UN human rights officials and genocide scholars have said that Israel’s military assault on Gaza is a “textbook case of genocide”. The ICC prosecutor is seeking arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant. Extreme heatwaves and floods, driven by climate change, are devastating communities, with the world’s poorest people already facing hardship from climate-related effects on food supply and water.

Barclays, your friendly high street bank, plays a massive role in these tragedies. As well as holding your savings and cash, the bank also gives out huge loans to the companies, causing this senseless violation of human rights and life. Between 2019 and 2023, Barclays provided $7.6 billion to seven companies whose weapons, components, and military technology have been used in Israel’s unlawful violence against Palestinians. And last year alone, Barclays funnelled over $24 billion into fossil fuel companies polluting our air, water, and land, even increasing its funding of the sector on the year before, according to its own reporting.

We are a movement of people and organisations that want to stop this. So, we were appalled when Barclays’ chief executive, CS Venkatakrishnan (Venkat), recently defended the bank’s continued support for the arms companies supplying weapons to Israel and spin the bank’s dismal record as Europe's biggest funder of fossil fuels, in response to being forced to end its sponsorship of major UK festivals because of its funding of companies killing innocent Palestinians.

The article is a cynical attack piece which aims to undermine and drive a wedge between the rapidly growing movement of people across society standing together to pressure Barclays to stop ploughing billions into fossil fuel companies like Shell and Exxon and weapons companies complicit in genocide and war crimes.

At the same time as writing of his 'sorrow [at] the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in the Middle East' Venkat sets out to protect Barclays’ clients who are complicit in this tragedy, portraying people’s legitimate concerns as ‘false allegations and unreasonable exhortations’.

Venkat attempts to rebrand weapons manufacturers as defence companies, even though the weapons being used on Palestinians are being used for attack, not defence. Barclays ending its financial relationship with companies such as Israel’s largest arms producer, Elbit Systems, will not undermine our national security. Elbit’s CEO Bezhalel Machlis admits the company has “ramped up production” to arm the ongoing bombardments of Gaza. Funding war crimes undermines national security.

Venkat claims that rejecting funding of the arts only hurts our broader culture. Does Barclays believe that commercial funding of cultural institutions is more important than standing up against genocide and climate breakdown? Barclays doesn’t care about music, books or sport. They care about patronage. They fancy themselves as modern day kings and queens, putting their name on cultural institutions. Barclays only cares about profit and the financial and greenwashing opportunities granted by sponsorships. Barclays is the new Shell and has to clean up its reputation somehow.

Many reputable institutions have dumped Barclays as their banking provider, including churches and major charities such as Christian Aid and Oxfam, with universities like Cambridge and Oxford putting them on notice. Barclays own shareholders have been calling on the bank to improve its climate commitments, with 24 investors including large UK pension funds writing to the bank in May voicing concerns over the banks financing of fracking.

Barclays and other financial institutions are now under threat from a united and growing movement of organisations cutting ties with unethical banks and investors. Since the start of 2024 we’ve seen a wave of cultural boycotts connected to the UK’s financial sector's support for fossil fuel and arms companies. Due to pressure from hundreds of boycotting musicians, Bands Boycott Barclays successfully removed Barclays sponsorship from all Live Nation festivals for 2024. Edinburgh and Hay dropped Baillie Gifford as sponsors after writers boycotted the festivals, and 28 Pride events have refused to accept sponsorship from fossil fuel funders. The Association of Clinical Psychologists is also switching banks and calling on other health organisations to do the same

We’ve going to see a wave of action this summer with protests at Wimbledon over its controversial sponsorship deal with Barclays, faith leaders coming together to challenge their banks, health professionals kicking fossil fuel funding banks out of our health service, and more cultural boycotts on the way.

The tide is turning and Barclays is clearly running scared, haunted by the memory of the Barclays boycotts in the 70s and 80s over its stance on Apartheid. We appeal to the younger Venkat who protested against institutions that supported that same Apartheid: Barclays has the power and duty to end its financing of fossil fuel and weapons companies that are causing division, death, and destruction. Do so, or this will get a lot worse.