OUTSIDE the main gate today, on the opening day of the Wimbledon Championships, more than 100 protesters from Campaign Against Arms Trade, Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and War on Want waved Palestinian flags and banners, chanted and handed out leaflets. 

A giant yellow tennis ball, the kind usually signed by players, displayed the words, “Barclays sponsors Wimbledon & genocide.”

Two women held trays of strawberries oozing red dye, a sign reading “Wimbledon strawberries tainted with Palestinian blood, courtesy of Barclays.”

The protest was part of a protracted campaign to get Barclays bank to divest from the arms trade and specifically those sending weapons to Israel, and, until that happens, for the All England Club, which hosts the Wimbledon Championships, to drop Barclays as a sponsor. 

Appealing through a megaphone to passers-by as they queued to enter the sport’s most hallowed grounds, Sybil Cock, chair of the Newham PSC chapter, reminded them that there is now a new category for children in Gaza created by the United Nations. 

“It is called Wounded Children with No Surviving Family — WCNSF — and it is growing by the thousands,” Cock said. “Just imagine that before you go in and enjoy the tennis today. Wounded children with no surviving family. 

“Barclays bank has an investment strategy invested in arms,” she continued. “They have billions in contracts with Israeli arms companies. Those bombs have created the highest number of child amputees that the world has ever seen. This must stop.”

So far, there has been silence from the All England Club, despite receiving thousands of letters of protest urging them to drop Barclays. And the well-heeled Wimbledon crowd, in their pastel linens and straw hats, were also largely indifferent or worse. 

“That was the worst leafletting experience I’ve ever had,” said one pro-Palestinian activist who was met mostly with a blunt “f*** off,” “you’re all Hamas” or a more restrained “this isn’t the place.”

But Emily Apple, media co-ordinator with Campaign Against Arms Trade, thinks Wimbledon is exactly the right place. “It’s utterly inappropriate that Wimbledon are still using them as sponsorship given their complicity in Israel’s genocide,” she said of the Barclays partnership.

Lewis Backon, campaigns officer at Palestine Solidarity Campaign, says that while Wimbledon may choose to remain silent, the response at other events has been encouraging, especially at music festivals where Barclays has had to withdraw its sponsorship after performers threatened to pull out.

“Barclays is fast becoming a toxic brand,” Backon said. “Tens of thousands of people are joining the boycott of the bank and Barclays customers are closing their accounts in their droves.”

Would tennis players likewise be asked to take a stand or even stage a boycott at Wimbledon?

“We know many tennis players stand with Palestine,” Backon said, “but we’ve not approached anyone directly. We know it would be a very big step to withdraw from what is one of the biggest tennis competitions in the world, but we hope that players will raise it with Wimbledon’s organisers and say we don’t want this sport to be used in this way.”

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland. She is currently in London covering the elections.