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Oppose the anti-boycott Bill 

The British government is expected to table a new Bill banning boycotts of Israeli goods – this erosion of local democracy and restriction of freedom of expression must be resisted, argues PETER LEARY

IN THE autumn of 1880, self-styled “Captain” Charles Cunningham Boycott, the manager of the Earl of Erne’s landed estates in Co Mayo in the impoverished west of Ireland, issued notices for eviction to his tenants who had fallen into arrears.

Lacking in social and economic capital but incensed by this perceived injustice, Boycott’s labourers, many of whom had already been on strike earlier that summer in a dispute over wages, refused to continue working for him.

Soon, shopkeepers and publicans in several nearby towns were turning down his business too.

Unable to bring his goods to market and with all local assistance withheld in protest at his actions, Boycott struggled to save his crops.

As the tactic spread throughout Ireland in the wake of poor harvests, to other estates and other tenants also facing threats to evict, the English language acquired a new word.  

Although the term was a novel one, the practice itself was older. Boycott campaigns have long provided a peaceful way for ordinary people to push for fairness and equality.

They have been used by social movements across the world to pressure regimes, institutions, or companies to change abusive, discriminatory, or illegal practices.

Alongside strikes, demonstrations and petitions, they are building blocks of a hard-won and popular tradition of active citizenship that is currently under attack.

In this moment, all progressive movements and activists must rally to defend the right to boycott. 

This coming week, the government finally tabled its toxic Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill, better known as the anti-boycott Bill.

While it will not prevent individuals from choosing what to buy, or coming together in campaigns like those to pressure companies like Barclays or Puma to change unethical practices, it does seek to chip away at our capacity to take certain kinds of collective action.

If passed, it will limit the ability of public bodies to make ethical choices about spending and investment by banning local councils, universities, cultural institutions, public-sector pension funds and others from making financial decisions that are influenced by “disapproval” of the actions of a foreign state.

The basic democratic rights of people in this country, to express their widespread support for human rights, climate goals and international law, will be harmfully eroded. 

Two clauses in the Bill especially highlight the repressive nature of this legislation. Alarmingly, section 4(1) will take away our democratic right to hold our elected local representatives to account for their decisions, by preventing them from even explaining their position to the electorate.

This “gagging clause” forbids all those subject to the proposed new law from simply stating, for instance, at a hustings event during an election, that they would support making ethical investment decisions if it were permissible to do so.

As demonstrated by the notorious Section 28, which banned the “promotion of homosexuality,” previous attempts to gag local government prove that ministers do not always know better than communities and their elected representatives. 

Even more dangerously, the Bill 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, leaving no room for future exceptions.

Despite assertions that its foreign policy position is unchanged, for the first time, a piece of British law will require Israel and the territories it illegally occupies to be treated in the same way, departing from decades of international consensus on the illegality of settlements.

With Israel’s system of apartheid growing ever more violent, the British government should be taking concrete steps to uphold human rights and international law.

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.  

Campaigns in support of Palestinian rights are clearly the government’s main target, but other progressive movements who use boycott or divestment tactics will also be affected.

This law could curtail campaigns against deforestation, pollution and the exploitation of children and workers, in countries where these practices are tolerated by authorities or where they are unethical but not explicitly illegal.

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 best-known boycott was the campaign to end apartheid in South Africa. Millions of people in Britain, including universities and many local councils, were part of that movement and the magnificent part they played was subsequently celebrated by anti-apartheid leaders including Nelson Mandela.

Similar restrictions were introduced in an unsuccessful attempt to stifle these acts of solidarity. Had the anti-boycott Bill been in place, it would have forced public bodies to do business with that brutal, racist and criminal regime.  

When he visited Britain in 1998, Mandela told his audience how 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.” 

So too, he continued, “was the contribution of organised … workers which ‘could only flow from strong support by ordinary … people on the ground … a people who cared for our freedom as their own.” 

It is this kind of people power that the Tory government wishes to extinguish with the anti-boycott Bill. 

Through boycott and divestment campaigns, ordinary working women and men have made history time and again — they helped to end the transatlantic slave trade, contributed to the struggle for Indian independence, secured civil rights by challenging racism in Britain and the US, and advanced the cause of land reform in Ireland.

The anti-boycott Bill now threatens to erode local democracy, restrict freedom of expression, and undermine campaigns for social and climate justice. That is why so many voices are standing together to say: defend the right to boycott. 

Peter Leary is a campaigns officer at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). 

The full Right to Boycott statement and list of signatories can be found here: righttoboycott.org.uk.

Sign and share PSC’s petition against the anti-boycott Bill: palestinecampaign.eaction.online/noantiBDS.

 

 

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