‘Let’s keep politics out of it.’
This seems to have become the plaintive cry of many organisations, events, festivals and all else that’s going on at the moment.
A couple of weeks back, political divisions plagued the Eurovision song contest. It says in Wikipedia that “one of the stated aims of the contest is that the event is of a non-political nature.” This, of course, is abject nonsense.
The event was itself founded after WWII as a political act. One of the many initiatives intended to unite the warring nations of Europe. Artists are selected to represent their countries – and countries are political units. Jury voting often gives the impression, rightly or wrongly, of countries voting according to their political alliances – or ‘shared cultural values’ as some would prefer to say. Italian singer Marco Mengoni was applauded and generally praised in 2023 when he made a political statement, walking on stage waving both the national flag and the rainbow flag.
OK. But, surely, we can keep the politics out of sport, some say. As football heads to the Euros this month, we will again see teams representing their countries – those political units. As the Olympics kick off this summer, athletes will be sailing down the Seine waving national flags – the most powerful political symbol there is. Viewers the world over will largely support athletes coming from their own countries. We continue to see teams taking the knee to indicate that there is no room for racism in their sport – usually to some acclaim.
It all starts to sound a little bit like it’s OK to make political statements if we (not quite sure who the ‘we’ might be) agree with them, but not if we don’t – or if they’re in the ‘too difficult’ box and we’d rather ignore them by pretending we’re above politics. OK to take the knee or wave rainbow flags. But please don’t mention Gaza.
The current drama in the UK concerns the sponsorship of cultural events, the HAY FESTIVAL OF LITERATURE AND THE ARTS LIMITED and Edinburgh International Book Festival, by the investment firm Baillie Gifford. The firm is probably one of the better ones in terms of how it evaluates its investment portfolio from an 'ethical' perspective. Of course, it’s not perfect because nobody is (and nobody can agree what constitutes ‘perfect’ in any case). But being among the better ones is not good enough for activists.
Campaigns have been mounted to try to force Baillie Gifford to divest from fossil fuel investments and any investments in Israel. The net result has been that cultural events have cut ties with the investment firm losing a reliable and supportive long-term sponsor. Instead of divesting investments, Baillie Gifford has, instead, had to divest the events it sponsors.
It is a failure of leadership for these cultural events. In the current fevered political climate, the fact that activist pressure would arise is no surprise to anybody. Yet, rather than preparing for it, doing their due diligence on their sponsors, coming out with a clear position on how and why they work with those sponsors, and then sticking to it, the festival organisers ended up being reactive to activist pressure. That is a sure way to nowhere. Lawyers are now piling in: “The decision to suspend the sponsorship by Baillie Gifford over links to Israel is, by definition, discriminatory.”
One has to wonder when organisations will stop pretending that they can keep politics out of it and start focusing on how to succeed and thrive in the current highly politicised environment.
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