The Right to Boycott – Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill
By Lord Hain, speech to the House of Lords February 20 2024
This is a another pernicious piece of legislation of an authoritarian government attacking the freedom to protest against injustice and oppression – except when the government approves.
It is a Bill of which Valdimir Putin could have been proud, by preventing public authorities, like local councils, local government pension funds or universities, from making ethical choices about spending or investment.
This Conservative party is on the wrong side of history as it was over the fight against the most institutionalised system of racism the world has ever seen, namely apartheid.
It is also abolishing the right of British citizens to make their own choices. So Tory Ministers support boycotts against Putin’s Russia over his barbaric attacks on Ukraine but want to ban even those advocating boycotts of Israeli products from their settlers in the West Bank who have stolen Palestinian land in flagrant breach of international law.
Ministers have said Russia and Belarus would be exempt. But what about public bodies wishing to take boycott action over China’s oppressive treatment of Uyghur Muslims? Or the Myanmar Junta’s genocidal banishment of Rohingya Muslims?
The Bill violates UN Security Council Resolution 2334, and which the UK voted for, which declares Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, as legally invalid and a clear violation of international law.
The Bill explicitly designates Israel for special protection and seems to encompass the illegally occupied territories within its definition of Israel.
Surely local authorities should have the discretion to make ethical decisions in line with the preferences of their constituents and the freedom to align with international law and exercise due diligence in procurement?
The Conservatives have previous form on authoritarian repression of such ethical boycotts.
In 1988 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, having denounced him as ‘a terrorist’, imposed restrictions on ‘political action’ by local councils in support Nelson Mandela, by then into his 25th year in prison.
This Bill echoes a part of her 1988 Local Government Act to prevent local authorities from boycotting goods from apartheid South Africa, as she attempted to shore up its economy.
Local authorities like Glasgow, Sheffield, Camden, Islwyn and a host of others not to buy apartheid goods. In 1981 Sheffield became the first to pledge to end all links to apartheid South Africa, by withdrawing pension fund investments from companies with South African subsidiaries and barring its whites-only sports teams from its playing on its fields. Others followed, including Cambridge, Newcastle and Glasgow and most inner London Boroughs.
By 1985 more than 120 local councils had taken some form of anti-apartheid initiative, ranging from banning South African produce in their schools to granting the freedom of their city to Nelson Mandela, Glasgow City Council the first. In London, Camden Council renamed the street where the AAM had its office Mandela Street. Other cities, like Leeds with its Mandela Gardens, bestowed honours on Nelson Mandela.
The 1988 legislation did not work. By the time the Act came into effect, the apartheid regime was collapsing, and the release of Nelson Mandela was looming.
The right to boycott is a principle that has had a massive impact for good in the recent past. International pressure to cut links with the apartheid regime included disinvesting, not buying goods produced by it, and not providing sporting or cultural ‘cover’ for a regime that the UN had deemed was a crime against humanity. Democratically elected local authorities should be able to use their resources in ways which do not sustain oppressive regimes where human rights are violated.
For 35 years a consumer boycott was at the heart of anti-apartheid campaigns. Hundreds of thousands of British people who never attended a meeting or demonstration showed their opposition to apartheid by refusing to buy goods from South Africa.
I took part in action to plaster ‘Danger Product of Apartheid’ stickers on South African products in supermarkets.
The objective of local councils joined by students unions was to create “Apartheid free Zones”.
From the early 1970s almost every university and college in Britain organised some form of anti-apartheid boycott action. At more than half, students called on the university authorities to sell shareholdings in British companies with South African interests and pressed for total disinvestment from South Africa.
Many student unions also banned SA goods from their bars and canteens and their protests drove Barclays Bank off campuses, forcing it to close down its South African operations. In 1964 the University of London Union made Nelson Mandela its Honorary President. Later, in the 1980s, many student unions named buildings in honour of Mandela and initiated moves to grant him an honorary degree.
The British Anti-Apartheid Movement’s boycott campaign was hugely successful, only lifted in September 1993 after South Africa was irrevocably set on the path to democratic elections.
Yet, as Richard Hermer KC of Matrix Chambers states very clearly in paragraph 13 of his legal opinion on this Bill: ‘Had legislation of this nature been in effect in the 1980s it would have rendered it unlawful to refuse to source goods from apartheid South Africa.’
Shame on this government for introducing this shameful Bill. I trust that Your Lordships House will dismember it through amendments and stand up for human rights worldwide.
ACTSA’s previous statement on 03/07/23: https://actsa.org/right-to-boycott-a-statement-by-action-for-southern-africa-actsa/