Activists claim victory after major UK festivals drop Barclays as a sponsor

After months of cam­paign­ing, groups includ­ing Bands Boy­cott Bar­clays, Pales­tine Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign and the Peace & Jus­tice Project are today claim­ing vic­to­ry in their fight to get Bar­clays dropped as a spon­sor of major UK festivals.

The bank had been list­ed as a head­line or major spon­sor of sev­er­al promi­nent UK fes­ti­vals owned by Live Nation includ­ing Lat­i­tude, Isle of Wight and Down­load, which is tak­ing place this week­end. It was announced today the bank had been asked to ​‘sus­pend its sponsorship’.

The news comes after years of resis­tance to and action around the bank’s inclu­sion as a spon­sor at major cul­tur­al events because of Bar­clays’ alleged ties to the arms trade. Action has only increased in the months after Israel began its mil­i­tary action in Gaza.

Accord­ing to new research by Cam­paign Against the Arms Trade, Pales­tine Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign and War on Want, Bar­clays has over $2.5 bil­lion in share­hold­ings in and has pro­vid­ed over $5 bil­lion in loans to com­pa­nies asso­ci­at­ed with the IDF’s ongo­ing mil­i­tary activ­i­ty in Gaza. Israeli mil­i­tary forces have so far killed over 35,000 peo­ple accord­ing to Pales­tin­ian author­i­ties, 70 per cent of whom are women and chil­dren. In Jan­u­ary, the ICJ ruled that there was a ​“real and immi­nent risk” of geno­cide car­ried out by IDF against Palestinians.

A quar­ter of the line­up for The Great Escape fes­ti­val, also owned by Live Nation, with­drew from per­form­ing last month in protest at the inclu­sion of the bank as a spon­sor. When approached in May, Bar­clays did not offer spe­cif­ic com­ment on its alleged ties to the arms trade, instead point­ing to a recent­ly released Q+A they pub­lished on the sub­ject. In it, they state, ​“Bar­clays has been the sub­ject of crit­i­cism in rela­tion to Gaza based on two argu­ments: that Bar­clays is an investor in these busi­ness­es, and that we pro­vide a range of finan­cial ser­vices to clients which pro­duce equip­ment used by the Israeli Defence Force.

“We have been asked why we invest in nine defence com­pa­nies sup­ply­ing Israel, but this mis­takes what we do. We trade in shares of list­ed com­pa­nies in response to client instruc­tion or demand and that may result in us hold­ing shares. We are not mak­ing invest­ments for Bar­clays and Bar­clays is not a ​“share­hold­er” or ​“investor” in that sense in rela­tion to these companies.”

Despite The Great Escape going ahead, albeit with a dimin­ished line­up, activists con­tin­ued to work with artists to put pres­sure on Live Nation to remove Bar­clays as a spon­sor for future events. Today a spokesper­son from Bar­clays con­firmed to Huck that ​“Bar­clays was asked and has agreed to sus­pend par­tic­i­pa­tion in the remain­ing Live Nation fes­ti­vals in 2024.”

In a state­ment giv­en over email, the spokesper­son said, ​“Bar­clays cus­tomers who hold tick­ets to these fes­ti­vals are not affect­ed and their tick­ets remain valid. The pro­tes­tors’ agen­da is to have Bar­clays debank defence com­pa­nies which is a sec­tor we remain com­mit­ted to as an essen­tial part of keep­ing this coun­try and our allies safe. They have resort­ed to intim­i­dat­ing our staff, repeat­ed van­dal­ism of our branch­es and online harass­ment. The only thing that this small group of activists will achieve is to weak­en essen­tial sup­port for cul­tur­al events enjoyed by mil­lions. It is time that lead­ers across pol­i­tics, busi­ness, acad­e­mia and the arts stand unit­ed against this.”

A spokesper­son from Bands Boy­cott Bar­clays told Huck ​“This is a vic­to­ry for the Pales­tin­ian-led glob­al BDS move­ment. As musi­cians, we were hor­ri­fied that our music fes­ti­vals were part­nered with Bar­clays, who are com­plic­it in the geno­cide in Gaza through invest­ment, loans and under­writ­ing of arms com­pa­nies sup­ply­ing the Israeli mil­i­tary. Our demand to Bar­clays is sim­ple: divest from the geno­cide, or face fur­ther boy­cotts. Boy­cotting Bar­clays, also Europe’s pri­ma­ry fun­der of fos­sil fuels, is the min­i­mum we can do.”

British rock band Enter Shikari, who are sched­uled to appear at this weekend’s Down­load fes­ti­val post­ed on their socials that they had been ​‘in dis­cus­sions with the fes­ti­val’ over the spon­sor­ship by Bar­clays and were pleased to announce the bank was being dropped.

The band had pre­vi­ous­ly signed the Music for a Cease­fire let­ter demand­ing an imme­di­ate cease­fire in Gaza. The let­ter was coor­di­nat­ed by the Peace & Jus­tice Project’s Music for the Many cam­paign. On the news that Bar­clays had been dropped as a spon­sor, cam­paign con­ven­er Samuel Sweek told Huck, ​“This is an absolute­ly mas­sive vic­to­ry for our move­ment and shows the incred­i­ble pow­er we have if we stand togeth­er against the prof­i­teers of war. This sends a strong mes­sage to oth­er fes­ti­val organ­is­ers around the world: if they don’t stand on the side of human­i­ty and cut ties with the war machine, we will con­tin­ue to organ­ise in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple — and we will win.”

Live Nation were approached mul­ti­ple times for com­ment but had not respond­ed at the time of publishing.

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