A LEADING Scottish festival has cut ties with one of its key sponsors after the threat of boycotts due to alleged links to Israel and fossil fuel firms.
The Edinburgh International Book Festival, which takes place in August, announced that its 20-year partnership with investment firm Baillie Gifford had ended on Thursday.
The festival said it had taken the decision after concluding that its ability to run successful events had been “severely compromised following the withdrawal of several authors and threats of disruption from activists”.
However, although the festival has now cut ties with Baillie Gifford, it said that “funding for this year’s book festival has already been provided and deployed”.
The news comes after the Hay Festival ended its sponsorship deal with Baillie Gifford amid pressure from campaigners with Fossil Free Books and boycotts from celebrities including Charlotte Church.
Fossil Free Books alleged that Baillie Gifford had some £10 billion invested in Israel’s defence and cybersecurity industries, and more than 600 authors and industry professionals signed a statement calling on the firm to “divest from the fossil fuel industry and from companies that profit from Israeli apartheid, occupation, and genocide”.
In August 2023, during the previous Edinburgh International Book Festival, leading writers including Ali Smith, Zadie Smith, and Gary Younge signed an open letter accusing Baillie Gifford of “making huge profits from global disaster”.
Authors threatened a boycott of the 2024 event if there was no action taken to divest the “up to £5bn” the key sponsor had “invested in fossil fuel corporations”.
Baillie Gifford said the claims were “offensively misleading”.
Nick Thomas, a partner at Baillie Gifford, said: “The activists’ anonymous campaign of coercion and misinformation has put intolerable pressure on authors and the festival community.
“We step back with the hope that the festival will thrive this year and into the future. We hold the activists squarely responsible for the inhibiting effect their action will have on funding for the arts in this country.
“Baillie Gifford is a long-term investor with high ethical standards and a complete focus on doing what is right by our clients. The assertion that we have significant amounts of money in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is offensively misleading.
“Baillie Gifford is a large investor in several multinational technology companies, including Amazon, NVIDIA, and Meta. Demanding divestment from these global companies, used by millions of people around the world, is unreasonable and serves no purpose. Much as it would be unreasonable to demand authors boycott Instagram or stop selling books on Amazon.
“Nor is Baillie Gifford a significant fossil fuel investor. Only 2% of our clients’ money is invested in companies with some business related to fossil fuels. We invest far more in companies helping drive the transition to clean energy.
“We remain committed to contributing positively to our community through philanthropic support.”
Edinburgh International Book Festival chief executive Jenny Niven said: “It is with great regret that our board of trustees and Baillie Gifford have collectively agreed to end our partnership.
“We are hugely grateful to the firm for its considerable support over two decades, including through some challenging times for the festival, and we are proud of what we’ve achieved together during that time.
“The pressure on our team has simply become intolerable. We have a major global festival starting in 10 weeks’ time and we need to focus all of our efforts and energy on delivering a safe and successful event for our audiences.
“Undermining the long-term future of charitable organisations such as book festivals is not the right way to bring about change.
“It diminishes the voices of those who feel strongly about these complex issues, and it will be infinitely harder to build and sustain well-funded cultural institutions in the future than it is to put them out of business today.
“We speak to all our supporters about these complex issues and continue to believe that Baillie Gifford is part of the solution in transitioning towards a more sustainable world and that the firm operates in line with our ethical fundraising policy.”
The festival said that it “carefully” considers each potential funder and only accepts donations which did not “directly originate from one of the following categories: fossil fuel operators; proceeds of crime; arms manufacturers; tobacco companies; human rights violators; modern slavery”.
