Underground direct action climate group Shut The System claim to have disrupted fossil fuel insurance businesses across the UK this morning, including more than 400 brokers and managing agents at the Lloyd’s building in London.
A Shut The System activist said: “If these powerful companies don’t make public statements that they will stop driving fossil fuel expansion and destroying life on Earth, then we have no choice but to stop them ourselves. We will not give up until insurance companies take responsible action.”
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According to Lloyd’s of London CEO John Neal, “For more than three centuries, the Lloyd’s market has been sharing risk to protect people and businesses, inspiring them to create a braver world.” They describe their core business as a network of more than fifty insurance companies and hundreds of brokers, “all working to protect us from disaster”.
But for years, climate and environmental activists have been arguing that the banking and insurance financiers are complicit in the ever more urgent climate and ecological emergency, by providing the funding and cover for fossil fuel and extractivist giants to continue business as normal.
Campaigns have had some limited success. In the summer of 2023, Money Rebellion persuaded the insurance syndicate Probitas 142 to join more than a hundred finance companies refusing to work with the Indian coal giant, Adani, adding more problems, delays and costs to the corporation’s plans to expand its Carmichael coal mine on Indigenous lands in Australia.
Later that year, several groups joined together for large-scale and theatrical protests in the City of London, to highlight insurers’ role in the environmentally controversial East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). These protests were followed by office occupations the following month, with more successes as insurers pulled out of supporting EACOP.
Activists upped their campaign further in December 2023 spraying red paint on key buildings where insurers were still implicated in finance for EACOP and the (now-abandoned) West Cumbria coalmine.
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New laws clamping down on peaceful protest introduced in the UK (often through lobbying on behalf of fossil fuel interests), have seen entirely peaceful protesters imprisoned. Also the increased use of ‘conspiracy’ legislation, which was originally meant to target major organised crime and terrorist groups, has had an effect on protest organising.
The crackdown and unprecedented sentencing attracted condemnation from civil rights groups, lawyers, and even the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders, Michel Forst, who will be attending a major sentencing hearing at the High Court at the end of this month.
Over recent years, ever more urgent warnings from science, along with the perceived increase in extreme climate events and environmental disasters, has seen escalating protest actions in many countries around the world. Confident in the moral and ethical basis of their campaigns, activists have been fully accountable and prepared to defend their actions in court, where when heard by a randomly selected jury of their peers, they were often acquitted. But as legislation changed and legal rulings made legal defences unavailable, the inevitable result is that many groups are turning towards unaccountable actions in response.
Last year Shut The System worked alongside Palestine Action activists, throwing red paint and breaking windows at Barclays branches across the country. The campaign appears to have helped force the bank to divest from Israel arms company Elbit Systems.
At the start of this year the group interrupted communications at Tufton Street with similar tactics to today.
The group claims that the targets for this morning’s actions were chosen according to research published in trade media identifying the largest fossil fuel insurers, and that their aim was to disrupt business as usual, with a promise of escalating action, unless specific demands are met. AXA, WRBerkeley, and AIG were among those targeted, as well as Lloyd’s brokers.
The group’s full demands are published on their website, but can briefly be summarised as:
Banks and insurance companies must stop financing fossil fuel expansion, must set targets for reduction and demand that clients set out robust transition plans. Their clients must protect Indigenous and frontline communities and respect human rights, and financiers must scale up for a fair and just transition.
In contrast, what many insurers appear to be doing is to actually withdraw coverage from regions most at risk from extreme climate events, and raise premiums where they still do provide coverage, while still insuring the corporations causing the risks.
Incoming US president and convicted felon Donald Trump has promised increased investment and expansion of fossil fuels and he criticised the UK’s energy policies, saying we should “get rid of windmills”. Meanwhile, regular reports from scientists suggest not only that we are exceeding the dangerous 1.5C climate threshold , but also are doing so far faster than expected. Some of the worst wildfires ever seen in Los Angeles have killed dozens, and in the UK recently, extreme flooding forced thousands to evacuate homes.
Real Media has tried to confirm the extent of disruption today, as well as offer right of reply or other comment from those affected. It seems several of the UK-wide targets have indeed lost comms, which has obviously made it difficult to get a response. In London, Talbot AIG seems to be unreachable, and Lloyds’ press office phone won’t connect, so we are waiting for email responses from several companies. AXA in Leeds and AIG in Birmingham appear to be among those most severely affected.
