Cllr Christine Bayliss (centre, in orange coat), who tabled the motion on fossil fuel divestment, joins campaigners outside Bexhill Town Hall prior to the vote, 20 February 2023. Photo: Sam Coleman
Rother District Council backs call for fossil fuel divestment
On Monday (20 February) Rother District Council followed Hastings Borough Council in voting to send ‘strong message’ to East Sussex County Council over local pension investments. Gabriel Carlyle reports.
Rother District Council (RDC) voted to ‘call on the East Sussex Pension Fund to publicly commit to fully divesting from fossil fuels’, at its Full Council meeting on Monday (20 Feb).
In doing so it has joined a wide range of local institutions and individuals who back divestment, including: Bexhill Town Council, Brighton & Hove City Council, Hastings Borough Council, Lewes District Council, Lewes Town Council, Peacehaven Town Council, UNISON, Maria Caulfield MP (Cons, Lewes) and Caroline Lucas MP (Green, Brighton Pavilion).
All of these have called on ESCC to make a public commitment to fully divest from fossil fuels.
Campaigners outside Bexhill Town Hall prior to the vote on fossil fuel divestment, 20 February 2023. PHOTO: Leon Panitzke
A lively demonstration of over twenty people took place outside Bexhill Town Hall prior to the meeting, in support of a ‘YES’ vote.
The East Sussex Pension Fund, which is administered by East Sussex County Council (ESCC), currently has tens of millions of pounds of local people’s pension monies invested in the giant oil and gas companies, like Shell and BP, that are driving the climate crisis. Rother District Council is an institutional member of the Fund.
Councillor Christine Bayliss (Labour, Bexhill Central), who tabled the motion, told the meeting: ‘Now is the time to show some leadership and nail your colours to the mast … It’s time for us to take a stand and send a clear message to the East Sussex Pension Fund that we want the investments to reflect our values as a Council. We cannot continue to support industries that are destroying our planet and endangering the future of generations to come’.
Councillor Kathryn Field (Liberal Democrat, North Battle, Netherfield & Whatlington), who supported the motion with a friendly amendment, told the meeting: ‘We must not be supporting a dying industry’.
Councillor Polly Gray (Green, Bexhill Old Town & Worsham Green) quoted David Attenborough: ‘It’s crazy that our banks and our pensions are investing in fossil fuel, when these are the very things that are jeopardising the future that we are saving for.’
Councillors unconvinced
The Fund had circulated a document to all RDC Councillors making the case against divestment and for its current policy of shareholder engagement. However, its arguments appear not to have carried weight with the majority of Councillors (see box below).
Indeed, Councillor Richard Thomas (Liberal Democrat, Bexhill St Stephens) made a point of noting that: ‘The policy of engagement has been shown to be absolutely impotent. It was not engagement that put an end to apartheid …’
An attempt by Councillor John Barnes (Conservative, Burwash & the Weald) to delete the text of the original motion and replace it with one congratulaing the East Sussex Pension Fund was defeated in a separate vote.
There was palpable frustration in the chamber over this manoeuvre, which took up much of the 30 minutes that had been set aside to consider the original motion.
Councillor Sam Coleman and Polly Gray join campaigners outside Bexhill Town Hall, prior to the vote, 20 February 2023. Photo: Sam Coleman
Describing Cllr Barnes’ amendment as a ‘fudge’ Councillor Sam Coleman (Labour, Bexhill Sidley) noted that: ‘[T]he climate emergency is now. We need to act now and we need to send a strong message – a frank message – to our partners, who we respect, that we need them to divest from fossil fuels now.’
A spokesperson for Divest East Sussex said: ‘It’s great that Rother District Council has rejected the Fund’s arguments for its current approach and joined the long list of local institutions and people supporting fossil fuel divestment. By clinging on to its remaining investments in fossil fuel companies ESCC is effectively providing a fig-leaf for these companies’ ongoing attempts to block effective climate action and missing a huge opportunity to show real leadership on the climate crisis. By contrast, a public commitment to ditch these investments (‘divestment’) would send a powerful signal to policymakers to get serious about tackling the climate emergency, which requires the rapid phasing out of fossil fuels. It’s time for ESCC to finally take heed of the evidence and make a public commitment to fully divest from the fossil fuel companies that are driving the climate crisis.’
Divestment versus engagement
A document from the East Sussex Pension Fund, circulated to all Rother District Councillors prior to the debate, claimed that divestment merely ‘moves the problem elsewhere’, that it ‘can remove an investor’s voice’, and that it fails to ‘change real world carbon emissions’.
However, Divest East Sussex describes these assertions as ‘disingenuous’, noting that divestment campaigns aim to change government legislation and policy regarding a set of companies through a process of social stigmatisation.
In particular, ‘divestment’ is not the same as simply ditching investments in a set of companies on the quiet.
They point to a 2013 study by academics at the Univerity of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment which concluded that: ‘In almost every divestment campaign we reviewed from adult services to Darfur, from tobacco to South Africa, divestment campaigns were successful in lobbying for restrictive legislation affecting stigmatised firms.’
They also claim that the global fossil fuel divestment movement has already had a major impact, drawing attention to the statement by Christina Figueres, the UN’s lead negotiator between 2010 – 2016, that it was ‘a primary driver of success at the Paris Climate Talks in 2015’.
Divest East Sussex also claims that the Fund’s existing policy of ‘engaging’ with companies like Shell and BP has ‘a record of near-total failure’, noting that ‘despite many years of such “engagement” not a single major oil company can credibly be argued to be aligned with a 1.5°C pathway’.
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