Anonymous sabotage group Shut The System launched a nationwide campaign against Barclays bank overnight, cutting telecommunications cables, gluing entrance locks, and spraying graffiti and red paint at several branches. They claim to have targeted three major branches in London close to the Westminster Queen Elizabeth conference centre where Barclays are holding their AGM today, as well as branches in Northampton, Cambridge, Bath, Devon, Horsham, Herefordshire, Lincoln and Watford.
They say they have also spray-painted messages, demanding fossil fuel divestment, outside the homes of senior staff in London, including CEO Vimlesh Maru, Global Head of Sustainable Finance Daniel Hanna, and president Stephen Dainton.
BACKGROUND
After three years of civil resistance resulting in nearly 200 imprisonments and thousands of arrests, Just Stop Oil announced a final march last weekend and a move towards building a new network of civil resistance in local communities over the coming months.
Since the launch of Extinction Rebellion in 2019, theirs and similar protest movements have always incorporated accountability into their peaceful direct actions. The theory was that although many actions may be technically unlawful, the legal framework in a civilised democracy would accommodate defences such as ‘preventing greater crimes’, and juries would be able to exercise judgement by hearing the context in which an action is carried out. This theory (based on the history of civil disobedience and social change) was so successful, that over the course of six years, with pressure from fossil fuel and Israeli lobbyists, our legal landscape has completely shifted.
In January we reported on a sabotage action against fossil-fuel-funded lobbyists based in Tufton Street. Shut The System (StS) claimed responsibility for cutting cables supplying tele-communications to the building. They organised a second protest later that month against several fossil-fuel insurers – a larger scale and nationwide action which appeared to disrupt business at companies including AXA, Talbot AIG, and Lloyds in several cities.
The first appearance of StS is thought to have been a campaign of broken windows, glued locks and red paint graffiti at Barclays’ branches up and down the country, apparently co-ordinated alongside Palestine Action. These protests last year were about the bank’s major investments in the Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems, and the bank did actually divest shortly afterwards in what was seen as a major victory by activists.
BARCLAYS
The group are pressuring Barclays because it is still one of Europe’s biggest investors in fossil fuels. According to a 2024 report the bank has invested almost a quarter of a billion dollars into the sector since the 2015 Paris Agreement. Shut The System point to the fact that the world has already overshot the 1.5˚ target set in 2015, and are demanding that financial institutions realign themselves and stop all financing and insurance for fossil fuel expansion immediately. While to some this may seem an extreme position, it’s important to realise that even in a financial context it bears consideration. Several leading mainstream institutions have put forward economic arguments for a radical reappraisal, pointing to the rapidly escalating costs and insurance implications of climate inaction. Among them Economics Nobel Laureate Robert Engle wrote this article on climate risk for UBS, and the Bank of England launched a consultation on the subject. The Economist have also published a report on what they call the ‘climate risk gap’, outlining how major economies have the most to lose “as the climate crisis intensifies”.
Although forced underground by fossil-fuel-funded repression, Shut The System are merely adding disruptive and financial pressure to a sector that just has to start listening to the voices of the climate scientists and the economists, even if they remain trapped in a system that puts profits before people.
