Oppose the anti-boycott Bill.

The United Kingdom government’s toxic ‘Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) bill,’ better known to many as the anti-boycott bill.will be debated next week in parliament on July 3rd, the latest in a growing list of measures which fundamentally undermine free speech and democratic rights in the country

While it will not prevent individuals from choosing what they purchase in the shops, or even coming together in campaigns like those to pressure companies like Barclays or Puma to change unethical practices,this bill does have the potential to impact on a wide range of campaigns for social and environmental justice.  

The legislation was first promised in the Conservative party’s 2019 manifesto and the bill effectively restricts public bodies in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland , including universities, local authorities, and government departments, from making ethical spending and investment decisions that align with their human rights responsibilities and obligations and bringing in BDS policies against controversial foreign regimes.The effect could be to hamper these groups from taking steps in business dealings to avoid causing or contributing to human rights abuses and international crimes.

For example, it could restrict public bodies from divesting from companies complicit in the Chinese government’s systematic repression of Uyghurs, Israel’s crimes of apartheid or war crimes in Israeli settlements, Saudi Arabia and UAE’s war crimes in Yemen, or the Myanmar junta’s crimes against humanity.

Many people in this country care deeply about human rights and the planet and the anti-boycott bill threatens their ability to insist that public authorities reflect their entirely justified concerns over illegal and unethical practices, but any anti-boycott laws are likely to stop  public sector bodies from doing the right thing and disentangling themselves from human rights abuses.

The right to pursue boycotts is a fundamental exercise of the freedom of expression, thought, and conscience. It is a vital nonviolent tool to enact positive social change. Boycott and divestment campaigns have been used by people around the world to pressure regimes, institutions, or companies to change abusive, discriminatory, or illegal practices. Using these tactics, ordinary women and men have helped to end the trans-Atlantic slave trade, contributed to the struggle for Indian independence, and secured civil rights by challenging entrenched racism in Britain and the USA. 

Boycotts played a key role in the struggle for African American rights in the United States and in international campaigns against apartheid in South Africa. Millions of people in Britain, including local councils, were part of the campaign to boycott and isolate apartheid in South Africa. When Nelson Mandela visited Britian in 1998, he recalled that ‘the ‘knowledge that local authorities…were banning apartheid products…and that the universities…had cut their links – was a great inspiration to us in our struggle.’ 

While almost everyone will now accept that those who opposed South African apartheid were right to do so, the Conservative government of the day under Margaret Thatcher unsuccessfully attempted to stifle these acts of solidarity. Had their anti-boycott bill been in place at the time, it could have forced local authorities and British universities to do business with that brutal and criminal regime. 

Similar attempts to silence local government – including the notorious ‘Section 28’, which banned the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ – prove that central government does not always know better than communities and their elected representatives. The public are right not to rely on ministers to uphold ethical standards.

Currently the principal target of the anti-boycott bill is campaigns in support of Palestinian rights. This week alone, Israel invaded and bombed Palestinian cities and refugee camps, killing at least 15 Palestinians and injuring hundreds more. Israeli forces also enabled gangs of armed, illegal Israeli settlers to attack 17 Palestinian villages destroying vehicles and homes, killing one Palestinian and injuring dozens.

With Israel’s system of apartheid growing ever more violent,and Israeli policy and violence growing ever more extreme, it is certainly the case that international pressure is essential to protect Palestinian life and international law. 

 As the United Nations has observed, 2022 was the deadliest year since 2006 for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem with Israel’s armed forces having killed no fewer than 170, including more than 30 children. At least one Israeli government minister has described himself as a ‘fascist’, and the mounting human rights consensus confirms what Palestinians have said for years – that Israel too is guilty of the crime of apartheid, as documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s own leading rights group B’Tselem. In 2021,

It is in this context that the global movement for BDS is growing, in direct response to calls from within Palestinian civil society, and with the aim of pressuring those who are complicit in violations of their rights.

The British government has a responsibility to stand up for human rights and international law.But the anti-boycott bill further exposes the extent of Britain's hypocrisy, given its stance against Russia and the range of sanctions it imposed on the country after a year of occupying Ukrainian territory.

Despite Israel's 56-year occupation and numerous reports exposing its apartheid policies, the UK government has not imposed a single sanction on the country. Instead, it seems determined to shield Israel from accountability, as well as companies complicit in its occupation, by legislating to silence those trying to achieve change through peaceful and democratic means.

The anti-boycott bill even singles out Israel alongside the ‘Occupied Palestinian Territories’ and ‘Occupied Golan Heights’, by name, as territories that the law explicitly protects from public sector boycotts. By doing so, the bill actively promotes impunity for violations of international law and well-documented discrimination against Palestinians. Despite assertions that its foreign policy is unchanged, for the first time, a piece of British legislation will require Israel and the territories it illegally occupies to be treated in the same way, a departure from decades of international consensus on the illegality of settlements.

British parliamentarians must choose whether they will support an anti-democratic bill that singles out one state for protection from any accountability. They must decide whether they will support the hypocrisy of a law supporting the illegal occupation of one land while opposing another, or be consistent in their policies.

If parliamentarians insisted that the rule of law must prevail then they will support policies that bring peace closer. But ones like this bill send a message to Israel that it can continue to act with impunity and similarly tells the Palestinians that they will neither be provided with protection from Israel's murderous policies nor supported in their peaceful resistance to them, including through BDS.

This dangerous  bill is the latest in a string of politically repressive legislation that impedes rights to strike and protest including the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, the Public Order Act, and the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill. It includes a draconian ‘gagging clause’ preventing public authorities, for instance, local councillors, from advocating for boycott or even talking about the prohibition – forbidding all those subject to the proposed law from even stating that they would support such a policy if it were legally permissible to do so. 

For its part, Israel is combating the right to boycott with all its strength because BDS is a form of nonviolent protest available to anyone in the world. The more Israel’s abuses of Palestinians continue, seemingly unaccountable to anyone, the more people choose to say no. When done collectively, this becomes a very powerful force.

Thousands of artists and cultural figures have joined the boycott for justice, recently visible as tens of artists pulled their acts from the Sydney festival due to its sponsorship by the Israeli government. Major pension funds in Norway and the Netherlands have divested from companies involved in Israel’s settlements and military, as have the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, and several Quaker institutions. In most of these cases, divestment is also a tactic used more broadly to, for example, pressure climate-destroying companies. Campaigns have successfully pushed corporations such as HSBC, Orange, Veolia, and G4S to disengage from Israeli settlements and military enterprises.

So long as governments remain unwilling to hold Israel to account for its violations while companies help it maintain its occupation, people will pressure them with campaigns.

The same goes for fossil fuel giants, private military companies, mining firms, financial institutions, and countless others that seek to evade human rights or environmental standards. Boycotts and divestment campaigns enable ordinary people to force change for good. But it is exactly this kind of people power that the UK government finds so threatening.

For that reason, nearly 70 civil society groups including Unite the Union, Unison, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Liberty, the Quakers, the Methodist Church, the Muslim Association of Britain and Na’amod: UK Jews Against the Occupation, along with many others, are calling on the government to scrap this dangerous Bill and on opposition parties to vote against it.The full Right to Boycott statement and list of signatories can be found here.

The anti-boycott bill is draconian, a severe threat to civil liberties in Britain seeking to restrict freedom of expression and undermine campaigns for social and climate justice. It is a moral and human right to conscientiously object to having our money used to buy or sell or invest in goods and arms whether in China, Myanmar, Israel or Russia, or any other countries that help contribute to rights abuses and international crimes. 

If passed, it will shield companies engaged in human rights abuse or environmental destruction by preventing public bodies from cutting ties with them over abusive or illegal actions committed in a foreign country unless permission to do so is explicitly granted by the government.

By inhibiting citizens’ ability to call for their own pension funds to be invested ethically, or for elected local authorities to make ethical choices about spending, this legislation threatens British democracy. 

That is why we must act together now to say: Defend the Right to Boycott. This bill is yet another attack on human rights. We must unite to defend them.Those who are deeply concerned about the bill are urged us to flood MPs' inboxes with messages in opposition to the Bill. Please do this by Monday if you possibly can, and encourage others to do the same 

Sign and share PSC’s petition against the anti-boycott bill here