Jeremy Corbyn, the Peace and Justice Project, and Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) are backing a call by over 200 musicians and artists for music festival the Great Escape to drop Barclays as a sponsor. It’s due to the bank’s complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Barclays: propping up genocide
The Great Escape is a music festival in Brighton. Every year, it showcases new artists – up to 500 of them sometimes – across several days. However, this year not quite so many artists might be playing. This is because Barclays is one of the Great Escape’s corporate partners.
The Canary has documented Barclays many crimes against people and planet. From its support for fracking, to oil pipelines, via investing in union-busting companies, and the not-small matter of its former boss’s ties to child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein – Barclays is one of the most notorious corporations on the planet.
According to a recent report by War on Want, the bank holds £1,300,688,880 in shares of companies whose weapons, components, and military technology have been used in unlawful violence against Palestinians. This includes investments in BAE Systems, Boeing and Elbit Systems,
Moreover, it provides over £3bn in loans and underwriting to nine companies whose weapons, components, and military technology have been used in Israel’s armed violence against Palestinians.
The Great Escape is enabling this
So, musicians are preparing to withdraw from the Great Escape due to this.
On Instagram, artistic collective How To Catch A Pig made the announcement:
They issued a statement saying in part:
A bank that is involved in Israel’s genocide has no place at the Great Escape. We refuse to let music be used to whitewash human rights violations. We cannot let our creative outputs become smokescreens behind which money is pumped into murdering Palestinians.
We will not be complicit in the Great Escape being a branding opportunity for Barclays. We insist that the Great Escape drops Barclays as a partner.
There is no festival without the musicians – and as musicians, we are taking a stand against genocide. We call on the Great Escape to do the same.
How To Catch A Pig issued a list of signatories on Instagram:
Plus it issued a list of those who had signed a solidarity statement:
Plus, Corbyn’s Peace and Justice Project is supporting the artists against Great Escape’s Barclays partnership:
🚨 More than 200 artists call on @thegreatescape festival to cut ties with Barclays.
We cannot allow the war machine to whitewash its reputation using our music festivals and cultural institutions.
📄 Read the full statement and list of signatories: https://t.co/ww3G9MpGxJ pic.twitter.com/53uabWn58v
— Peace & Justice Project (@corbyn_project) April 10, 2024
Predictably, there’s been silence from the Great Escape so far. But as pressure continues to mount, it surely can’t hold out much longer allowing genocide-enabling Barclays to plough its blood-soaked money into what’s supposed to be a radical an innovative music festival.
Featured image via the Great Escape – screengrab, Wikimedia, and screenrgab
