CAMPAIGNERS across Britain are stepping up pressure on councils to end ties with weapons companies that are complicit in “Israel’s apartheid” through their pensions schemes.
Lewisham residents and activists will hold a rally outside Lewisham Town Hall on Wednesday October 2, as councillors hold their regular meeting.
The rally will demand that the council disclose and divest the pension scheme it manages away from arms manufacturers.
The action follows the passing of a resolution this month by the council’s pensions investment committee to explore divesting Lewisham’s pension funds from companies involved in arms trade, facilitating human rights abuses and operating in illegally occupied Palestinian territories.
Cllr Liam Shrivastava, who seconded the resolution, warned 13.4 per cent of the council’s pension fund is managed by BlackRock, which holds significant investments in Israel and arms companies including Lockheed Martin, RTX Northrop Grumman, Boeing and General Dynamics.
Mr Shrivastava stressed the need to give residents and pension members assurances that their money was not funding illegal and unethical activities.
He said: “They would want to have a peace of mind that our investments are not implicated in weapons manufacture, transportation of munitions, infrastructural technology or other activities that assist the activities of the Israeli state in its continued occupation of Palestinian territories and its bombardment of the Gaza Strip.”
Campaigners said that community pressure and the will for divestment were explicitly referenced when the motion was proposed, and promised to keep up the pressure until the ties were cut.
In Wales, Rhondda Cynon Taf (RCT) County Borough Council passed a motion on Wednesday supporting calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the return of all hostages on both sides.
But a drafted model of the motion by RCT Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and presented by Labour councillors was heavily rewritten and delayed. A call for ending arms sales to Israel and divestment of RCT pensions from arms manufacturers was omitted.
RCT PSC says its research shows that the borough’s pension fund has an investment of more than £97 million “in the oppression of the Palestinian people.”
The group said it is considering its next steps, which will include talking to local union branches to build on their campaign.
