Historic change was brought about in my home country thanks in no small part to the anti-apartheid protests and campaigns around the world. By boycotting sports, and goods such as wine and oranges, the world put pressure on South Africa that led to the end of the brutal apartheid regime. Now, the UK government is trying to force through an authoritarian piece of legislation that would outlaw similar boycotts – actions that are a vital form of democratic protest. That is, unless my fellow peers stand with me in opposing this bill in the House of Lords.
The economic activity of public bodies (overseas matters) bill, better known as the “anti-boycott bill”, is attempting to pick up where Margaret Thatcher’s government left off: banning public bodies from boycotting goods and businesses they believe are conducting problematic activity overseas. The bill is explicit in its focus on Israel, but history shows us that it would also have far-reaching and dangerous consequences for free speech and for human rights too.
More than 60 years ago, the boycott movement launched in London; it soon became the anti-apartheid movement, which I joined and helped to lead throughout the 1970s and 80s. Its aim was to withdraw consumer economic support for goods produced under South Africa’s racist regime, and I was proud to coordinate the kind of anti-racist activities that this government sees as so dangerous now. Among our campaigns were the stickering of apartheid-produced goods in supermarkets, the organisation of student boycotts of Barclays banks, and securing the isolation of apartheid sporting teams from events and venues. Throughout our decades of campaigning, boycotts remained at the heart of the anti-apartheid movement in Britain.
This bill is an uncomfortable attempt to rewrite the history of the fall of South African apartheid. The government’s minister in the Lords claimed last month that it was the concerted efforts of the governments of the world that were to be thanked for their role in forcing a historic change – a gross untruth. The anti-apartheid movement had, throughout the 1980s, few friends in government. Margaret Thatcher had plainly stated her opposition to boycotts and sanctions of any kind and infamously labelled Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress as “terrorists”.
The allies we did have were in the public bodies that this bill targets. Student unions, local authorities and others voted with their wallets when their voices were ignored. Reflecting the democratic demands of the people they served or represented, this activity helped to undermine the credibility of the regime that the UK government had sought to protect. By 1985, more than 120 local councils were involved, many declaring themselves “apartheid-free zones”, as too did the majority of universities and colleges. By the time the British government legislated against such “political activity” by local authorities, with its Local Government Act of 1988, it was too late – the apartheid regime was already, thankfully, on its way out.
My experience taught me that the opinions of any current government are not a firm basis for legislating, permanently, against the democratic rights of its opponents. History, too, teaches us that the British people’s international solidarities often exceed those of our political leaders. While slavery remained legal across the Atlantic, British millworkers in Manchester implemented their own boycott of slave-produced cotton. A century prior, the British boycotted slave-produced West Indian sugar en masse while the slave trade continued to operate, legally, throughout the British Empire. From the coordinated efforts of anti-Nazi boycotts throughout the 1930s to the Bristol bus boycott of 1963, such boycotts have often come before the central government recognises an injustice. They are all too often proved right by history, while regularly running in opposition to British government policy of the time.
In many ways, the provisions of this government’s bill go far beyond what was attempted by the Thatcher government. It would ban public authority employees from even stating on behalf of their authorities that they would support a boycott movement were it legal for them to do so, showing a frightening disregard for free speech. It would also give government an almost unlimited ability to demand privileged data and information on decisions made by public authorities.
The bill seeks not only to unequivocally protect Israel from any criticism, but does so at a particularly dangerous time for all who live in the region. It also conflates Israel with Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories and the Golan Heights, treating these occupied territories as though they were legitimate extensions of Israel and protecting the illegal settlements within them.
If, say, a local council excluded a West Bank settlement-based software company from a project’s tendering process on ethical grounds, then that council and its officers could face huge fines under this bill. The government appears to have forgotten that we have, in this country, a number of obligations under international law in relation to occupied territories – the Geneva conventions being just one. This bill flies in the face of them; in fact, it flies in the face of the government’s own advice on dealing with illegal settlements, and could possibly force public bodies to engage in illegal activity if they are made to engage economically with illegal settlement projects. It is a shortsighted, cowardly and pernicious act when a government undermines its own standing on international affairs for the sake of silencing critics domestically.
In 2006, the current foreign secretary – at the time opposition leader – David Cameron expressed his regret that the Conservative government had allied itself with such a brutally unjust regime in South Africa. This “regret” now appears widespread in the Conservative party, not least since the passing of the great man Mandela. But with this bill, the government is robbing the British people, and indeed itself, of the ability to be proved wrong by history.
There are many in this country, and many of my colleagues in the House of Lords, who will disagree on the merits or demerits of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement itself, and on the policies of the Israeli government. I hope that all would agree with me, however, in saying that outlawing such campaigns, on the basis of current British government policy, is an absurd way to proceed. The merits of any boycott campaign should inevitably be decided by history – not by Michael Gove’s department for levelling up, housing, and communities.
Lord Hain is a former UK Middle East minister and Northern Ireland secretary of state
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