Recent times have seen an intense debate flaring up amongst UK authors and professionals from the publishing sector on the sponsorship of literature festivals. Fossil Free Books, a body established to convince the publishing world to cease ties with the fossil fuel sector, has expanded its activities to protest against Israel’s continuing violence and displacement in Gaza. They began outreach to authors who were scheduled to participate at the Hay and Edinburgh literature festivals, urging them to collectively push investment management firm Baillie Gifford – a significant benefactor of these festivals – to withdraw its investments from the fossil fuel sector and businesses that, as they describe, exploit from “Israeli apartheid, occupation and genocide”. Numerous authors withdrew or considered withdrawing from their engagements, leading Hay to sever ties with Baillie Gifford. Soon after, Edinburgh also ended its relationship with the firm under pressure from activists, an action followed by other smaller events like Cheltenham and Borders. However, Baillie Gifford remains the lone supporter for the Baillie Gifford Prize, the most distinguished award for non-fiction writing in the UK.
As an author currently marketing my latest publication and given my acquaintances in publishing and literature festivals, I cannot avoid being implicated in the matter. Prior to Baillie Gifford terminating its sponsorship with Edinburgh, I considered cancelling my performance at this year’s event after discussing the matter with my publisher. While I experienced no direct pressure from Fossil Free Books, I felt the moral obligation to endorse to some extent the attempts by my colleagues to actively tackle their own industry’s involvement, however minor, with the extraordinary suffering experienced by the populace of Gaza.
It’s fair to say I had mixed feelings about it at first. A long legacy of Conservative cost-cutting has left art events in Britain in a rather uncertain financial state, and since the global health crisis, book festivals have particularly struggled. Whether viewed as manna from heaven or making a pact with the devil, the unfortunate reality is that corporate backing is a significant part of the UK arts scene. The mainstream UK press have often made arguments defending Baillie Gifford, claiming it’s far from the worst offender when it comes to investing in fossil fuels or having links to the Israeli state’s militant actions. When my debut novel was nominated for the Baillie Gifford Prize in 2017, I had the opportunity to meet their team in Edinburgh and found them to be highly intelligent, thoughtful and intriguing. It’s important to recognise, however, that this doesn’t absolve them of responsibility for any morally questionable investments they oversee. They are, after all, just humans like the rest of us, integral to the growing catastrophe that is capitalism.
My viewpoint shifted dramatically after seeing the reaction of British press to the news from Hay and Edinburgh. The Telegraph predictably labelled activists involved as “climate zealots,” which felt more like an automatic ideological response than legitimate criticism. Similarly, a Spectator cartoon depicted two unkempt picketers under a ‘Fossil Free Books’ sign, concerned about a pile of books, accompanied by the joke, “Oh no! We can’t burn them as they’ll produce harmful CO2.”
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In a column for the pro-Israel publication The Jewish Chronicle, Hadley Freeman of The Sunday Times vehemently condemned protesters with accusations of “raging narcissism” and “conspiracy theorist” behaviours. Despite her fury, Freeman fell short of providing substantive reasons explaining why she held these views. Freeman’s accusations of conspiracies seemed to be more in line with her own behaviour, as reflected in a post she made on platform X a week prior. She ambiguously hinted at a link between the Fossil Free Books’ launch on October 7th, 2023, and a brutal attack by Hamas in Israel on the same day. Notably, the group’s launch didn’t actually coincide with this tragic event. To many, this attempt to draw parallels only served as testament to her seeming paranoia and evidence of the negative intellectual impacts from prolonged exposure to the superficial battles of cultural wars.
Nobody initially suggested that politics and art were identical. Yet, the concept that art can exist devoid of political influence is a perspective more commonly held amongst journalists than artists themselves.
In a recent podcast co-hosted with Richard Osman, author and comedian, The Guardian columnist Marina Hyde discussed the ongoing situation. Both Hyde and Osman expressed explicit disdain for Fossil Free Books and even seemed to express a wider detest for activist initiatives. Hyde pointed out the crucial difference between art and politics, stating that constantly politicising art and demanding political statements from artists may inadvertently reduce the breadth of human experience and potential.
Whilst nobody has ever asserted that art and politics are identical, the pervasive notion among many journalists, far more than among artists themselves, is that these two realms should remain distinct. They propose that art should be blissfully ignorant of the political climate that forms, and often fractures, the complexities of human life. This sentiment, personally, I believe is frequently put forward by individuals who do not take a thoughtful approach towards either art or politics. Our reality – marred by warfare on the innocent, an ever-rising sea level, and the creation of valuable art – doesn’t afford us the option to disregard politics as if it were an optional examination topic. Though Fossil Free Books’ activist methods may be considered brusque and less than perfect, unlike their media adversaries, they at least comprehend this reality.