‘Pump Ass Not Gas:’ Why the LGBT Awards must drop banks as well as big oil

Organisers Yara Rodrigues Fowler and Elle Glenny explain why hundreds of people gathered to demonstrate against the UK awards ceremony last week.

Last Fri­day evening, hun­dreds of peo­ple of all ages cheered and danced on the street out­side the entrance to this year’s British LGBT Awards. We waved huge pink and rain­bow-coloured ban­ners, drag kings and queens per­formed on a make-shift stage and DJs from Queer House Par­ty blast­ed banger after banger. 

But we weren’t there to attend the British LGBT Awards. We were there to protest their spon­sors: BP, Shell, BNP Paribas, HSBC, San­tander, Ama­zon and Nestle.

Togeth­er, these com­pa­nies bear a huge respon­si­bil­i­ty for the dis­place­ment and exploita­tion of mil­lions of peo­ple, and for our dra­mat­i­cal­ly chang­ing cli­mate. This is why we hung up a 6ft ban­ner read­ing Pump Ass Not Gas’.

Two days ear­li­er, in a state­ment released on social media, the Awards announced they were revis­ing our sup­port­ers this year”. Despite requests for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on what this specif­i­cal­ly meant being ignored, both BP and Shell were qui­et­ly removed from the awards web­site. Fos­sil fuel financier BNP Paribas also disappeared.

The state­ment and sub­se­quent revi­sion of sup­port­ers’ hap­pened as a result of over a dozen nom­i­nees declin­ing their nom­i­na­tions because of links to fos­sil fuels. They dropped out fol­low­ing a cam­paign of out­reach organ­ised by a coali­tion of LGBTQIA+ groups, led by Fos­sil Free Pride, a grass­roots group that cam­paigns to get Pride cel­e­bra­tions around the UK to reject spon­sor­ship from fos­sil fuel cor­po­ra­tions and their funders.

The revi­sion of two tox­ic spon­sors was a huge achieve­ment. But qui­et­ly drop­ping Shell and BP is not enough. If the British LGBT Awards – or any Pride cel­e­bra­tion – want to take a mean­ing­ful stance against fos­sil fuel cor­po­ra­tions, they must also reject spon­sor­ship from the banks and hedge funds financ­ing those cor­po­ra­tions. It makes no sense for the LGBT Awards to drop BP and Shell but keep on HSBC, which has financed Shell to the tune of $5.6 bil­lion since 2016. Accord­ing to Bank­Track, LGBT Award spon­sors HSBC, San­tander and BNP Paribas pro­vid­ed $315 bil­lion of financ­ing for fos­sil fuel projects across the world between 2016 – 2021. The Awards head­line spon­sor, Aus­tralian hedge fund Mac­quar­ie Cap­i­tal, holds invest­ments of $7.7 bil­lion in fos­sil fuels. This is a queer issue: LGBTQ+ peo­ple are less like­ly to have access to the secure hous­ing, sta­ble income required to sur­vive the extreme con­se­quences of a chang­ing climate.

On Fri­day, we invit­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the com­mu­ni­ties harmed by the Awards’ spon­sors to give out their own pinkwash­ing’ awards. Activists from Stop the West Cum­bria Mine gave a pinkwash­ing award to HSBC as the biggest fun­der of harm to the West Cum­bri­an Com­mu­ni­ty’. Indige­nous activists from Colom­bia co-award­ed HSBC and BNP Paribas Biggest fun­ders of the destruc­tion of indige­nous land in Colom­bia”. HSBC and BNP Paribas have poured mil­lions into Glen­core, the firm respon­si­ble for the Cer­re­jon mine in La Gua­ji­ra, Colom­bia. At 609 kilo­me­tres squared, it is six times the size of Paris and the largest mine in South America.

Activists from Stop the Sil­ver­town Tun­nel, named head­line spon­sor, Mac­quar­ie Cap­i­tal, Sneaki­est financier of Air Pol­lu­tion in East Lon­don’. Mac­quar­ie Cap­i­tal are part of the con­sor­tium hold­ing the con­tract for the Sil­ver­town Tun­nel, which will report­ed­ly increase air pol­lu­tion in Newham, one of London’s poor­est, already most pol­lut­ed bor­oughs. We also called on the Awards to drop San­tander, Ama­zon and Nes­tle. Ama­zon spent mil­lions on union bust­ing con­sul­tants last year and have been accused of hav­ing extreme­ly poor work­ing con­di­tions.

Tar­get­ing the mon­ey works. A gen­er­a­tion ago, anti-apartheid activists in the UK spot­ted that Bar­clays, at the time the biggest high street bank in South Africa, was head­quar­tered in the UK. They launched a 16 year cam­paign against Bar­clays, which even­tu­al­ly led to the bank pulling out of South Africa, build­ing inter­na­tion­al pres­sure on the régime. The fact that a cru­cial source of financ­ing for the apartheid régime was locat­ed in the UK meant activists here had a pow­er­ful tool at their disposal.

This prin­ci­ple remains the same today. Bil­lions of pounds flow through the City of Lon­don to fos­sil fuel cor­po­ra­tions each day, right on our doorsteps. Not only through banks and hedge funds, like HSBC and Mac­quar­ie, but through Lloyds of Lon­don, an insur­ance mar­ket­place where most fos­sil fuel projects seek insur­ance. Lloyds of Lon­don was orig­i­nal­ly estab­lished to pro­vide insur­ance to the transat­lantic slave trade, now it insures 40% of the world’s fos­sil fuel projects. If we want to stop fos­sil fuel projects from going ahead, one of the most effec­tive ways for those of us in the Glob­al North to do this, is by tar­get­ing finan­cial insti­tu­tions based here. 

One way to do this is to fight their pinkwash­ing. The British LGBT Awards are not the only Pride cel­e­bra­tion tak­ing mon­ey from vio­lent cor­po­ra­tions. Last year North­ern Pride and Liv­er­pool Pride were both spon­sored by Bar­clays, who pro­vid­ed US$ 166.74 bil­lion in financ­ing to the fos­sil fuel indus­try between 2016 and 2021. Nei­ther has ruled out spon­sor­ship by Bar­clays this year. Fos­sil Free Pride activists are ask­ing their local pride cel­e­bra­tions to sign a Fos­sil Free Pride pledge’, and are suc­cess­ful­ly nego­ti­at­ing for prides across the UK to drop their cli­mate wreck­ing sponsors.

Togeth­er, we must con­tin­ue the queer community’s long and proud his­to­ry of sol­i­dar­i­ty, and stand with the com­mu­ni­ties harmed by fos­sil fuel cor­po­ra­tions and their financiers. We must reject pinkwash­ing by fos­sil fuel banks and hedge funds and demand they pay cli­mate repa­ra­tions. Queer lib­er­a­tion will not come from rain­bow logos or cor­po­ra­tions. It’ll come from migrant jus­tice, class jus­tice, racial jus­tice and cli­mate jus­tice. None of us are free until all of us are free.

Yara Rodrigues Fowler and Elle Glen­ny are both Fos­sil Finance Organ­is­ers at Tip­ping Point UK

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