Divest East Sussex will be demonstrating outside Bexhill Town Hall prior to Rother District Council’s vote on whether East Sussex County Council should stop investing local people’s pensions in the giant oil & gas companies that are driving the climate crisis.

Rother District Council to vote on fossil fuel divestment

In April 2016 Hastings Borough Council voted to call on the East Sussex Pension Fund to stop investing in fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas). Will Rother District Council vote to join it next week? Gabriel Carlyle reports.

Rother District Council (RDC) will vote next Monday (20 February) on a motion ‘call[ing] on the East Sussex Pension Fund to publicly commit to fully divesting from fossil fuels’ (ie. from oil, coal and gas companies).

A demonstration in support of the motion will be taking place outside Bexhill Town Hall between 5.45 and 6.15pm. The RDC meeting at which the vote will happen is scheduled to begin at 6.30pm.

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.

Campaigners celebrate Hastings Council’s fossil fuel divestment vote outside Hastings Town Hall, 13 April 2016. Photo: Divest East Sussex

If it votes in favour of the motion, RDC will belatedly join Hastings Borough Council in calling for the Fund to divest from fossil fuels. Labour and Conservative Councillors on Hastings Borough Council voted unanimously to support such a move way back in April 2016 – becoming the first institution in East Sussex to do so. HBC reaffirmed this call in a second vote held last year.

The list of institutions and individuals who have backed the call now also includes Bexhill Town Council, Brighton & Hove City Council, Hastings Borough Council, Lewes District Council, Lewes Town Council, Peacehaven Town Council, UNISON, Maria Caulfield MP (Conservative, Lewes) and Caroline Lucas MP (Green, Brighton Pavilion).

Next Monday’s RDC motion, which has been submitted by Cllr Christine Bayliss (Labour, Bexhill Central) quotes the UN Secretary-General’s recent statement that: ‘Our world is addicted to fossil fuels. It’s time for an intervention. We need to hold fossil fuel companies and their enablers to account. That includes the banks, private equity, asset managers and other financial institutions that continue to invest and underwrite carbon pollution’.

The motion also states that ESCC’s ‘current policy of “shareholder engagement” with fossil fuel companies simply isn’t working’, 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’.

And the motion notes that ‘divestment (i.e. institutions publicly committing themselves to stop investing in fossil fuels) helps to create the political space for governments to take the actions necessary to rapidly phase out fossil fuels and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Indeed, global divestment campaigns have a proven track record of leading to restrictive legislation affecting stigmatised firms’.

Climate campaigners stage a tug of war between fossil fuels and climate action, outside County Hall, 6 December 2022. Photo: Steve Lewis

A spokesperson for Divest East Sussex said:

‘Last year saw devastating floods displace more than 30 million people in Pakistan, Europe experience what may be its worst drought in 500 years, and China experience the most severe heatwave ever recorded anywhere.

‘According to the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres these events demonstrate “the sheer inadequacy of the global response to the climate crisis, and the betrayal and injustice at the heart of it”, with “fossil fuel corporations killing the planet to rake in the most”.

‘Yet despite declaring a ‘climate emergency’ well over 3 years ago, East Sussex County Council (ESCC) is still investing local people’s pensions in the giant oil companies – like Shell and BP – that are driving the climate crisis. 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.

‘We urge all Rother District Councillors to do the right thing and use their votes on 20 February to support fossil fuel divestment.’

Also in: Campaigns