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

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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