Climate activists turn the screw on literary festivals

A chill wind is blowing through the literary festivals of Britain as, one by one, some of the most blue-chip events on the calendar are pressured to end their relationships with one of the UK’s main arts sponsors. The investment firm Baillie Gifford has had long associations with Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Hay book festival, but in the past fortnight both have terminated their sponsorship agreements. This week two smaller Scottish festivals announced they would be following suit. It remains to be seen what happens to the Cheltenham and Cambridge literary festivals. Also in the potential firing line is the prestigious Baillie Gifford Prize, awarded to the best nonfiction book of the year. That’s a sizeable chunk of the UK’s literary circuit taking a financial hit.

On the surface it’s a stirring victory for political activism. The push against Bailie Gifford began last year when Greta Thunberg cancelled her appearance at Edinburgh, accusing the company of using its support of the arts to greenwash its reputation. Fossil Free Books, a climate-action organisation made up of authors and people working in the book industry, picked up on Thunberg’s comments and published an open letter, signed by hundreds of writers, including Sally Rooney and Naomi Klein, calling on Baillie Gifford to divest from any fossil-fuel investments or companies active in the occupied Palestinian territories. The effect has been almost instantaneous.

But not everyone is impressed. A letter opposing the action was signed by writers including Bernard MacLaverty and Neal Ascherson. “Invitations to UK book festivals are a way for writers from places of conflict, including Palestine and Ukraine, to travel and share their stories,” they wrote. “For this vital cultural work we require a cultural infrastructure. We believe that boycotts which threaten such platforms, and which pressure other writers to comply, are deeply retrograde. Protest is of course our right and duty, but protest actions that risk the collapse of book festivals are ill-thought-out.”

Edinburgh’s board and management also issued a statement, saying its ability “to deliver an event this August that is safe and successful for audiences, authors and staff has been severely compromised, following the withdrawal of several authors and threats of disruption from activists.” Fossil Fuel Books has denied it threatened to disrupt events.

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Climate activists turn the screw on literary festivals

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The ecosystem of literary festivals is a fragile latticework of commercial publishers, ticket sales, corporate sponsorships and financial support from central and local government. Lose a piece of the jigsaw and the whole thing can collapse. Jenny Niven, chief executive of Edinburgh International Book Festival, says its future is now at risk because of the lack of a principal sponsor.

Who will make up the shortfall? Fossil Free Books says that “the arts can’t continue to be so dependent on philanthropy and corporate partnerships. We need much greater public funding for the arts.” That received a frosty response from Scottish first minister John Swinney, currently fighting a rearguard election campaign, who said that “we have to recognise that the public purse cannot stretch to meet every requirement that is put in front of it”.

Some also question the targeting of Baillie Gifford, described by Nils Pratley in the Guardian this week as one of the “less oily” of investment firms, with only 2 per cent of its clients’ money invested in fossil-fuel companies. By contrast, most of the signatories to the original open letter work closely with the book chains Waterstones and Barnes & Noble – both owned by the hedge fund Elliott, which says that its commodities operation primarily trades crude oil, oil products and natural gas, among other things. “There hasn’t been a squeak from the campaigners on that front,” Pratley observes.

As for Baillie Gifford’s alleged investments in companies with links to Israeli-occupied territories, these include companies such as Meta and Amazon. “US tech is hard to escape in any diversified share portfolio,” Pratley points out, “including (almost certainly) in the pension schemes of a large proportion of speakers and attendees at Hay and Edinburgh”.

So why pick on this particular company? It has to be the firm’s long-standing involvement in arts sponsorship that makes it, and the events it supports, vulnerable. Fossil Free Books has acknowledged that “Baillie Gifford is an institution over which we have leverage, as the events of the last several days have shown”.

Clearly a compelling case can be made that climate catastrophe is more important than a literary festival. But this campaign raises ethical and strategic questions about the relationship between sponsors and cultural events. A subject worth thrashing out at a literary festival near you, if it happens.