‘Just do the right thing’: Nuclear Free Local Authorities join call on financiers to divest from nuclear weapons
Posted: 26th April 2022
NFLA media release, 26 April 2022, For immediate use
‘Just do the right thing’: Nuclear Free Local Authorities join call on financiers to divest from nuclear weapons
The Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) have backed the call made upon several leading banks and pension funds by campaigners in the Investing to Change network asking them to divest from nuclear weapons.
Like the network, the NFLA wants to see an end to nuclear weapons and to further investment in them. The NFLA is a partner in ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which successfully campaigned for a new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons to become law at the United Nations in January 2021, making the production, possession or use of such weapons illegal for the first time. Campaigners in ICAN won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.
Recent research by ICAN, the Nuclear Weapons Financing Research Group, a coalition of UK faith groups, and PAX, a Dutch peace group, has revealed that almost US $32 billion (or approximately UK £25 billion) is invested by UK based financial institutions in companies engaged in nuclear weapons manufacturing.
Now the NFLA has written to the Chief Executive Officers of six of them, Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, Nest, The People’s Pension and Royal London, asking them to use their next Annual General Meeting to follow the lead shown by 101 other finance houses around the world and divest from the sector[i].
This correspondence has been sent in advance of six Days of Action being called by the Investing to Change network, on which they are asking customers and shareholders to contact their banks and pension providers to protest against their current policies.
The Chair of the NFLA Steering Committee, Councillor David Blackburn, explained why:
“Recent events in Ukraine have shown that the use of nuclear weapons is still a very real threat when the superpowers square up to one another in a military conflict. Such weapons pose an existential threat to all living creatures on our planet. Just one such weapon, having multiple warheads, could kill millions of people in an instant and expose millions more to a slow-lingering death from exposure to deadly radiation.
“The only way to remove that threat is ultimately to remove the weapons, and one method to help bring about their demise is to starve manufacturers of the finance they require to develop and build these deadly devices”.
The new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons reflects the increasing truth that nation states and global public opinion on nuclear weapons is changing and that neither now accepts the unconscionable risk that such weapons pose. Recognising this an increasing number of financial organisations across the world are choosing to divest from nuclear weapons.
Councillor Blackburn added:
“Investing in weapons that are outlawed by the international community and seen as an anathema in the eyes of the peoples of the world is not only bad business, but at some future point it might render the investor liable for legal sanction or – worse still – lead to his destruction.
“Far better that our financial institutions should redirect our money to projects which serve a social good, such as investing in the renewable technologies we need to produce green power and limit global heating, innovative health care systems to combat pandemics, and the affordable housing that so many desperately need.
“That is why the NFLA has written to these ‘big six’ to ‘do the right thing’ and make a stand by ending their financing of these most devastating and fearful of weapons.”
Ends//…
Notes for Editors
The media release can be found on the NFLA website at: