Immediate release. 6.30pm, Thursday 30 May 2024
Fossil Free Books’ comment on EIBF dropping Baillie Gifford
We welcome the news that Edinburgh International Book Festival has dropped Baillie Gifford as a sponsor.
Over the last eighteen months, research by multiple human rights NGOs has shown that Baillie Gifford holds investments worth billions in fossil fuel companies and companies with links to Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide.
Our primary demand has always been for Baillie Gifford to divest, and for festivals to use their relationships with Baillie Gifford to call on the firm to divest. Nevertheless, we are grateful to EIBF for showing leadership and listening to its authors and workers.
Two weeks after we launched our statement calling on Baillie Gifford to divest from these companies, it has now been signed by over 800 authors and other book workers. This is a victory for authors, academics, editors, translators, publishers, journalists and festival staff organising as workers, and for international solidarity with Palestine.
As bombs continue to fall on Palestinians in Gaza, we hope this sends a clear message: we are united in our solidarity for Palestinians. We condemn Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the recent horrifying massacre of Palestinians sheltering in Rafah by Israeli precision bombs. We call on all financial institutions with holdings in Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide to divest.
We love our literary festivals dearly, and it is a privilege to share work with readers, but this cannot come at the expense of the human rights of Palestinians and communities harmed by fossil fuel companies.
We believe literary festivals and events that do not accept funding from institutions complicit in human rights abuses is possible and necessary.
We would also like to clarify a few points in EIBF’s statement that are inaccurate:
- It is not true that we have refused EIBF’s offers to meet: we met with EIBF management last year and have a meeting scheduled for 1.30pm tomorrow (31st May) with Jenny Niven, Director of the festival where we look forward to discussing the future.
- We are not an anonymous campaign. We are a collective of workers - including many authors - who have organised proudly and publicly as FFB. Many authors supportive of our campaign have appeared at festivals as FFB organisers, and shown their solidarity by reading statements and taking creative action. There is ample evidence of this from the videos on our Instagram page, the many quotes we have given from named spokespeople, and from our correspondence with authors and EIBF, to our successful Society of Authors campaign to back fossil fuel divestment in the literary industry.
- Our engagement with authors has always been friendly and inclusive, never coercive. Our role has been to contact authors with publicly available information and ask them whether they would like to either withdraw or use their appearances to call for divestment. In our communication we have always made clear that we support their individual choices, and that they can rely on our support however they choose to respond to our approach.
- We have not spread misinformation. Our statement refers to research by reputable international NGOs, we have simply made this information public.
- We sympathise with the struggles faced by organisers of literary festivals when it comes to accessing funding, however we disagree that the blame for EIBF’s funding situation lies with us. Our demand has always been that Baillie Gifford divest their stakes in companies profiting from human rights abuses so that they can continue to support literary festivals across the country.
ENDS
Notes to editors
What is Fossil Free Books?
We are a collective of workers in the books industry, this means authors, illustrators, booksellers, publishing staff, anyone whose labour contributes to the writing, production, selling or distribution of books. We are unfunded and all share the organising work involved. We’re all giving up our time - around lots of other commitments - to make this campaign as successful as possible.
We share the belief that it is entirely possible and necessary to have literary events that are not funded by institutions that profit from human rights abuses.
We started organising together around last year’s Edinburgh International Books Festival (EIBF), when 50 authors came together to call on EIBF sponsor, Scottish asset manager Baillie Gifford, to divest from the fossil fuel industry.
We made a similar call, with 200 authors, and launching as ‘Fossil Free Books’, in September 2023 around Cheltenham Books Festival, which is also sponsored by Baillie Gifford.
In October 2023, we joined calls from Art Workers for Palestine Scotland, for Baillie Gifford to divest from holdings linked to Israeli cybersecurity, technology and surveillance. In December 2023, a coalition of 24 civil society groups released a report naming Baillie Gifford one of the main European investors in companies on a UN database due to ‘human rights concerns’ over their activities in Illegal Israeli settlements.
As of the 15 May 2024, we renewed our call for Baillie Gifford to divest from all companies that profit from fossil fuels and Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide.
Why is Fossil Free Books campaigning for Baillie Gifford to divest from fossil fuels, and companies profiting from Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide?
Research has shown that Baillie Gifford currently has between £2.5 - £5bn invested in the fossil fuel industry. Research published last year by the Ferret, estimated that Baillie Gifford has investments worth £5bn in the fossil fuel industry. A separate piece of research by Urgewald, a German environmental and human rights NGO, identified that, as of January 2023, Baillie Gifford holds shares worth £2.5bn in specific fossil fuel companies.
In December 2023, a coalition of civil society groups named Baillie Gifford one of the main European investors in illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in a report. Research by Art Workers for Palestine Scotland, shows Baillie Gifford has investments worth more than £10 billion in companies with links to Israeli occupation, security apparatus and genocide of Palestinians. This includes shares worth [information correct as of May 2024]:
- $7.1bn in Amazon and $849M in Alphabet, Google’s parent company, both partners in Project Nimbus, the $1.2 bn project providing AI and cloud services to Israel, including its military
- $3bn in Meta, parent company of WhatsApp
- $9.3bn in US chip manufacturer Nvidia
- $404m in Cemex, a construction company which provides materials for the construction of illegal settlements in occupied Palestine
- $53m in US tech firm, Cisco Systems
- $14m in online travel company, Booking Holdings, which advertises accommodation in illegal settlements in occupied Palestine
Michael Kwet, a fellow of the Yale Law School, said in an article last week that we can say with certainty that US tech giants provided the core infrastructure for the AI programmes used in the bombing of Gaza, the programme that targets whole families in their homes and has resulted in such a devastating civilians death toll.
FFB’s response to Baillie Gifford’s claims our original statement is misleading
If Baillie Gifford do want to show leadership and be regarded as a responsible investor, they should sell their holdings in the fossil fuel industry and companies that profit from Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide. Baillie Gifford’s ‘investment philosophy’ is said to focus on ‘long-term sustainable growth’, and its ‘stewardship principles’ include commitments to prioritise ‘long-term value creation’ and ‘sustainable business practices’. As the tide turns on fossil fuel extraction and on Israel’s assault on Gaza, in particular following the ICC and ICJ rulings, there is a strong case that these holdings are too risky to be considered responsible investments for an asset manager committed to long-term, sustainable stewardship on behalf of its beneficiaries.
As for their claims that our ‘statement’ is misleading, so far Baillie Gifford has not denied that they hold investments in any of the companies listed in our statement. They have claimed that only a ‘tiny fraction’ of the business activities of US tech giants such as Alphabet or Amazon that they invest in can be linked to Israel. To this we say, Michael Kwet, a fellow of the Yale Law School, said in an article last week that we can say with certainty that US tech giants provided the core infrastructure for the AI programmes used in the bombing of Gaza, the programme that targets whole families in the their homes and has resulted in such a devastating civilians death toll.
Therefore, it is not misleading at all—in fact it is morally imperative—to point out the links between Baillie Gifford’s investments in US tech giants and the Israeli military.