Most years, when Peter Singlehurst takes to the stage at the Baillie Gifford prize ceremony, the template for his remarks to the great and the good of the publishing world has been simple. “Hello. Baillie Gifford loves books. Have a great evening.”
As Singlehurst stood up at the lavish headquarters of the British Medical Association on central London’s Tavistock Square on Tuesday night, the £200 billion fund management giant’s head of private companies had to say something different. Baillie Gifford has been on the receiving end of protests mounted by a fringe group of activists accusing it of recklessly funding fossil fuel producers and, through investing in the likes of Amazon and Alphabet, being complicit in the war in Gaza. The fund manager owns small stakes in oil and gas producers, while the American tech behemoths do work for the Israeli military.
The activists mobilised by pressuring authors to threaten boycotts against the 10 British literary festivals Baillie Gifford sponsored. Faced with a rapidly-emptying schedule, Hay Festival disowned Baillie Gifford, triggering a stampede that eventually led the fund manager to end all of its festival sponsorships. The irony that Baillie Gifford is one of the biggest investors in Tesla, which is helping phase out petrol cars, and that the protestors were organising their campaign using Alphabet’s Gmail, was lost on the people behind Fossil Free Books.
While many corporate backers of the cash-strapped arts have flinched from conflict, there are tentative signs that sponsors are willing to be more robust and challenge activists. Singlehurst said that Baillie Gifford, often lauded as a paragon of corporate responsibility that manages the pensions of tens of millions of people, “cannot offer purity” and “cannot place the agenda of campaigning groups, even those whose concerns about climate change we share, above the interests of those who trust us with their life savings”. As for being even partly responsible for the Gaza war, Singlehurst said that “borders on the absurd”.
Corporate sponsorship of cultural institutions has become a minefield in the past few years, as predominantly Left-wing activists insist that benefactors must be pledging cash solely for reputation laundering purposes. For instance, the British oil giant BP has become a pariah (and accused of “greenwashing”) despite historically being a generous sponsor to the likes of the National Portrait Gallery and Royal Opera House – though the British Museum withstood brickbats when it accepted a £50 million donation last December. It is rare for leading arts figures to be as punchy as Singlehurst was, thought Science Museum boss Sir Ian Blatchford said that the sector risks being “eaten alive by its own piety” two years ago.