Oxford City Council just voted to divest from genocidal Israel and fossil fuels

At an Oxford City Council meeting on Monday 24 March, councillors unanimously voted for an “ethical investment and procurement” process, specifically in connection to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. And the motion’s proposer, Cllr Barbara Coyne, said:

I hope this motion will be thoroughly implemented, and that its passage may pave the way for other councils to take decisive action.

Cllr Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini seconded the motion, and stressed:

We hope this motion encourages local businesses and institutions to follow suit and to boost a UK-wide movement for ending trade and investment relations with Israel at the local level while the Labour leadership and our government continues its complicity with war crimes.

Outside the meeting, dozens of Oxford residents had held a silent vigil with signs saying “Divest now” and “Not in our name”.

Oxford: a motion to oppose investment in genocide and climate breakdown

Citing international legal rulings, the motion called for a “commitment to human rights and international law” and to “actively avoid complicity in Israel’s occupation of Palestine”. It also called for action against companies complicit in climate destruction.

A number of Oxford councillors previously left the dominant Labour Party over its support for Israel’s war crimes. And it was anti-genocide independents like Coyne who put forward the successful motion – and the Oxford Community Independents Group in particular. The motion called for a review of policies:

so that Council does not knowingly invest in or trade with entities implicated in “proscribed activities” including “war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide”, “fossil fuel extraction”, and the “production of weapons”.”

Oxford City Council’s Cabinet Member for Finance is Cllr Ed Turner, partner of MP Anneliese Dodds. Dodds was Party Chair from 2021 to 2024, and holds a similar pro-Israel stance to most of the party’s top team under prime minister Keir Starmer.

At the moment, the council banks with Barclays, which:

raises tens of billions in finance for oil and gas companies, and has provided investment, loans and other financial services to companies supplying weapons, components and military technology used by Israel in its attacks on Palestinians and their land.

The motion also asked council leader Susan Brown to contact the Oxfordshire Pension Fund Committee in order to make sure it meets the principles for responsible investment of the UN.

“We need to act for the sake of regaining our own humanity”

In the meeting, Coyne said:

For the past 17 months, many residents of Oxford, like those outside the town hall this evening, have been fulfilling their civic duty to speak out against horrific, indescribable injustice. They now see their most basic democratic rights in peril as protests for Palestine and climate justice are increasingly silenced and criminalised across our country. This motion is a chance to demonstrate that locally, here in Oxford, we are listening and acting on residents’ concerns and supporting their collective efforts to work towards a world free from oppression.

Djafari-Marbini, meanwhile, said:

Some might wonder why council time is being spent on discussing ending our complicity with war crimes in Palestine and lands far away. Over the last 17 months, and indeed over the decades of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Oxford residents have written to their representatives, organised workplace, family, and education events, demonstrated in their thousands, set up student encampments, been on health worker solidarity visits and vigils. They have boycotted companies complicit in occupation, apartheid, and genocide. We have all taken these steps as a decades-long violence inflicted on an occupied people by a UK ally has been exceptional.

She added:

The exceptional impunity for the state of Israel must end. And this is a small but significant step we can take within this council. We need to act for the sake of regaining our own humanity.