The Hay Festival finished last night. The previous week it was blackmailed into ditching one of its sponsors, the wealth management group Baillie Gifford. A climate divestment activist group, Fossil Free Books, asked writers attending Hay to de-platform themselves in protest at Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship, because it invests two per cent of its funds in fossil fuel-related assets. Some of the high-profile guests who refused to perform at the book festival also conflated this issue with the Gaza conflict, thus creating an almighty virtue signal that could probably be seen from space.
Charlotte Church made a particularly sanctimonious statement, saying she was boycotting “in protest of the artwashing and greenwashing that is apparent in this sponsorship. Your art festival is not more important than the lives of Palestinian children and the future of healthy ecosystems on earth”, she wrote, somewhat hysterically, on social media. “If the art world continues to take this dirty money, we all become complicit.”
The activists also suggested they would plant people inside the Hay tents in order to disrupt the events, embarrassing the speakers, the organisers and the audience.
The organisers of Hay, seeing no way out of this predicament, and faced with further disruption from protesters and the possibility of more writers pulling out, reluctantly cut ties with Baillie Gifford.
I have been involved with the Hay Festival for nearly 20 years, as a chairman, a trustee, a vice-president and now as a member of the advisory board, and I hate the way the organisation has been forced to respond in this way (I am writing in my capacity as a journalist, not on behalf of the festival, I hasten to add).
Hay is the most influential festival in the world, and yet it is a charity, and constantly needs to attract sponsorship in order to thrive.
Hay are the good guys here, while Fossil Free Books have come across like a bunch of petulant teenagers
As a global platform, the festival has also been at the forefront of the climate change discussion and has given more time and space to the topic than any of its competitors. They are the good guys here, while Fossil Free Books have come across like a bunch of petulant teenagers.
Mark Lynas, a journalist who writes on environmental matters was particularly trenchant on the issue on his blog last week. “Hay was targeted not because they are a bad actor, but because they are a good one,” he wrote.
“When Charlotte Church accused the festival of ‘rank hypocrisy’ because of the Baillie Gifford sponsorship, she was simply echoing the favourite refrain of the Right-wing media, who love to shout ‘hypocrisy’ at anyone who is making an effort, from Greta Thunberg to Coldplay.”
The festival has also done a vast amount to reduce its own carbon footprint, and to encourage its attendees to do likewise.
The activists were simply using the festival as their own platform, and by conflating the issue with the current conflict in Gaza, tried to treat Hay as media. Which, in a way, it is.
So far from achieving anything, other than the disruption of one of this island’s greatest cultural assets, and destabilising its already delicate financial footing, what these dimwits have done is inadvertently proved that Hay is a more important platform than ever.
What happens at Hay gets traction, even if it’s only a group of ill-advised activists whipping out their flags and banners. The obvious downside is that this kind of blackmail is going to scare other festivals, as well as potential sponsors, ultimately resulting in higher ticket prices for consumers.
On Thursday, the Edinburgh International Book Festival also bowed to pressure to end its 20-year partnership with Baillie Gifford, damaging another forum for free speech.
To target people who have done so much to draw attention to climate change, and to accuse them of hypocrisy seems rather childish in the grand scheme of things. If they want to pick on someone, why choose festivals which are world-renowned for spirited defence of free speech and rigorous interrogation of cultural, political and environmental injustice? There are bigger targets than Hay, more appropriate targets, and targets that are more deserving of their wrath.
Shame on Fossil Free Books, and shame on those who supported them last week.
