Naomi Klein: Thin-skinned Baillie Gifford has put arts festivals in jeopardy
Bestselling writer Naomi Klein has called Baillie Gifford “thin-skinned” for putting literary festivals in jeopardy, as she defended her decision to support Fossil Free Books’ campaign against the investment manager.
Speaking to Morning Wire in an interview after winning the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction for her latest book Doppelganger, Klein said she believed people should pull their money from Baillie Gifford and that the investment manager couldn’t expect to gain the clout from association with the arts, without also engaging with the ideas of artists and writers.
Klein was one of the 800+ signatories of the recent contentious letter spearheaded by Fossil Free Books which called on Baillie Gifford, a prominent sponsor of arts festivals including Hay and the Edinburgh Fringe, to pull its investments from the fossil fuel industry as well as from companies “that profit from Israeli apartheid, occupation and genocide”.
The resulting pressure saw Hay Festival sever its ties to Baillie Gifford, and the investment manager has since cancelled all its remaining sponsorships of literary festivals. Other than Hay, it is unclear whether the decision was taken by the festivals or Baillie Gifford itself. The company will continue to sponsor the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Critics have called the campaign self-defeating and hypocritical, given writers’ own involvement in the companies targeted by Fossil Free Books, most notably Amazon.
Fossil Free Books campaigners themselves have conceded they wouldn’t call the outcome a “victory”, saying their aim was not for festivals to sever their ties to Baillie Gifford, but rather for them to leverage their good relationship with the firm to put pressure on it to divest. Focusing on Baillie Gifford was about “strategy” not “moral purity”, Fossil Free Books organiser Emma Reynolds told the Guardian earlier this month.
Klein also holds firm that the campaign was not misguided, saying it comes from a “tried and tested strategy to put pressure on governments” and that the aim was not for festivals to lose their funding.
“It’s obviously uncomfortable, and it’s unfortunate, I don’t know anybody who’s involved in this campaign who was happy that literary festivals are suffering for funding,” she said. “The goal was to get Baillie Gifford to divest; it was not to get the festivals to lose their sponsors.”
“We wouldn’t be doing corporate campaigns like this if our governments were acting in the face of the climate crisis, or listening to their constituents who want a ceasefire [and] want an arms embargo. These aren’t marginal positions.”
For Baillie Gifford itself, she continued, the saga should be a lesson for big businesses associating with the arts in search of PR gains.
“Well, guess what, writers have opinions, writers do research. And, you know, I think it’s quite scandalous that they [Baillie Gifford] are so thin-skinned that they are putting these festivals in jeopardy, if indeed that’s what’s happening,” she said. “And I think people should pull their money from Baillie Gifford because it’s a terrible thing to do to the arts. I don’t think they should be angry at activists who are trying to save lives and use whatever levers they can find, understanding that they’re imperfect.”
Baillie Gifford has repeatedly defended its position, citing how only two per cent of its managed assets are invested in fossil fuels, far below the industry average.
Commenting on the end of the investment manager’s 20-year partnership with Edinburgh International Book Festival, Baillie Gifford partner Nick Thomas said he held activists “squarely responsible for the inhibiting effect their action will have on funding for the arts in this country”.
“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.
“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.”