Readers of this newsletter, knowing the way my thoughts drift, often send me interesting articles. This week it was a piece from The Times about the Hay Literary Festival in the UK dumping a major sponsor because of pressure from a small, activist outfit. The sponsor was Baillie Gifford, a financial management group known for its generous, no-strings-attached support of the Arts. The problem, apparently, was that among Baillie Gifford’s investments were oil and gas, and companies who dealt with the world’s new favourite evil empire – Israel.
The complainant was a collective called Fossil Free Books (FFB), with some 800 members, who have taken it upon themselves to launch campaigns against corporate entities that have ties with ‘inappropriate’ partners. Look up their website!
Baillie Gifford, for its part, claim to have only 2% of £225 billion in funds tied up in companies that derive more than 5% of their revenue from “fossil fuel activities”, which compares favourably with a market average of 11%. In addition, they invest more than 5% of funds in clean energy solutions. The firm denies it is a big investor in “companies complicit in Israeli apartheid, occupation, and genocide.”
No matter how one looks at this, it’s clear that Baillie Gifford was 1. A uniquely generous sponsor in an area that struggles to find corporate support. 2. One of the more responsible fund managers, with much larger interests in clean energy than in fossil fuels.
Realistically, in a globalised economy it’s almost impossible for companies to be 100% clean, as FFB requires. The Times article points out that some of the firm’s “fossil fuel” investments are in supermarkets that also sell petrol. Israel’s businesses are players in the world market, and few finance groups would be so scrupulous – or ideologically driven – to pore over every company and every investment to see if there was some Israeli connection.
The knock-on effect of Baillie Gifford being dumped as sponsor for the Hay Festival is that they have decided to cease sponsoring all literary festivals to prevent a repeat of this unpleasant episode. This means a huge hole in the budgets of major festivals. The total is put at £1 million, including £130,000 from Hay.
Could anyone imagine a more successful own goal? By heroically forcing a festival to dump a major sponsor – a demand allegedly backed up by the threat of protest action – FFB has managed to create a funding crisis for a whole raft of literary festivals. This happens at a time when governments are less and less willing to support the arts, and would prefer to turn the whole sector over to private and corporate sponsors with no concern about any potential loss of independence
I thought instantly of the 2014 Biennale of Sydney, in which that year’s director, Juliana Engberg, sided with a group of artists who were threatening to withdraw from the show because the major sponsor’s company, Transfield, had been involved with the off-shore detention centres. The result was that Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, son of the founding sponsor, and a rusted-on, committed backer, was forced out. Luca claimed he had little to do with Transfield’s involvement with the centres. On the other hand, he gave money freely to a lot of good causes. By torpedoing a major sponsor for perceived bad business connections, the Biennale created a funding problem that has persisted to the present.
Like the Hay Festival today, the 2014 Biennale effectively sabotaged itself to accommodate a small, politically motivated minority who had nothing much to lose by adopting an intransigent attitude. The moral blackmail being practiced in these cases is becoming a standard tactic in all public arts events. Applied with no sense of compromise or practicality, it only succeeds in undermining activities that might be expected to raise awareness for the causes they pursue.
It makes no difference to those companies that couldn’t care less about the arts and pursue whatever business agenda they please. Like the cowardly campaign to target works of art in museums it’s nothing more than an attack on your allies while allowing your opponents a free hand. These bullying tactics eventually become acts of self-harm, alienating friends and supporters, while fuelling the agenda of right-wingers who can point to foolish, aggressive acts on behalf of so-called ‘progressive’ causes.
As if life wasn’t hard enough for arts organisations, to be subject to standover tactics from sanctimonious moral enforcers will eventually push many of them into extinction. No matter what these puritans think, capitalism is in much better shape than the arts festivals, when it comes to withstanding their assaults.
Speaking of assaults, that annual assault on public taste and intelligence, the Archibald Prize, is the subject of this week’s art column. Yes, it’s that traditional review where I try and make the most of yet another installement of the portrait competition Australia loves too much.
The film is Paul Clarke’s Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line, which opened this year’s Sydney Film Festival. I’ve never been an Oils fan, but there are millions of ‘em out there, and they’re bound to get a kick out of this wellmade, criticism-free documentary. As supporters of every noble political cause, Midnight Oil were never in danger of being cancelled, although frontman Peter Garrett probably still has nightmares about those nine long years in which he gave up the rock and roll lifestyle for a seat in parliament.