THE Supreme Court decision that the government’s current ban on ethical pensions divestment is unlawful is not only a victory for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) but a significant setback to the ruling class assault on local democracy.
It is significant that the PSC argument hinged not only on the right to freedom of expression but on overreach by the central government.
Implicitly it mounted an assault on the notion that the capital assets of pension funds, essentially the deferred aggregate wages of workers, should be shielded from the right of workers to influence how and where this capital should be deployed.
PSC’s victory is over the government which said it would bring in laws to ban public bodies from implementing boycott, divestment and sanctions against not only foreign states but British defence industries.
This is just one expression of the overt and covert consensus in Establishment circles both ideology and profit means that criticism of Israel’s apartheid system is especially impermissible if it takes the form of effective action.
At a point when the Israeli regime plans to extend its direct control over even greater parts of Palestinian territory that it already it illegally occupies, the Supreme Court ruling shows our government blind to international law, deaf to UN resolutions and contemptuous of the human and national rights of the Palestinian people.
The reason why the parties to this ruling class consensus are so opposed to the boycott, divestment and sanctions strategy of the Palestinian solidarity movement is because it is highly effective.
All the protagonists in this conflict are aware that the heroic resistance of the South African people against apartheid — in the land where this policy was pioneered — was aided very substantially by an effective and internationally co-ordinated BDS campaign that attacked the racist system where its most hurt.
Opponents of BDS in Britain know that successful local BDS campaigns have cost firms that profit from the Israeli apartheid system lucrative local government contracts.
At a time when Israel ramps up its oppression of the Palestinian people and is annexing large swathes of the illegally occupied West Bank, our government should be acting to uphold international law and defend human rights, not attacking peaceful campaigns which seek to do precisely that.
Armaments are big business and Israel is a major arms exporter, with exports totalling $7.5 billion in 2018.
A two-way boycott would cut that but the biggest effect in this country would come from a ban on arms exports to Israel by British firms.
Last time this was evaluated by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade the UK issued £221m worth of arms licences to defence companies exporting to Israel.
Government attempts to deny local agency over investment decisions by public service workers’ pension funds fit into a pattern of assaults on local democracy that threatens to render powerless all opposition to the rule of capital.
But the principal means by which power is evacuated from the local level is in the system of public finance which has regressively reduced the power and resources available to councils and thus concentrated political power at ministerial level.
When even the Tory-dominated Local Government Association can argue that “councils are best placed to ensure that infrastructure investment meets the needs of communities. With local control over how it is spent, councils can play a key role in providing genuinely affordable homes, fixing the nation’s roads, delivering high-speed broadband and high-quality mobile connectivity, boosting local economies, and tackling environmental challenges,” it is giving voice to a real demand, felt across every part of the country and by people of every political persuasion.
