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
