In 2024 alone, 5,000 people closed their Barclays accounts in protest.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) is ramping up calls urging the public to boycott Barclays Bank.
Today – April 26 – action is taking place outside Barclays branches up and down the country, demanding Barclays “ends its complicity in Israel’s genocide,” as the activists describe.
A May 2024 report by PSC, Campaign Against Arms Trade, and War on Want details how Barclays has intensified its financial ties with arms manufacturers whose weapons and military technologies used by Israel’s attacks on Palestinians.
According to the report, Barclays now invests more than £2 billion and provides £6.1 billion in loans and underwriting to nine arms companies linked to Israeli military operations. These include investments of over £100 million in General Dynamics, whose gun systems are used in fighter jets bombing Gaza, and £2.7 million in Elbit Systems, which supplies drones, munitions, and artillery to the Israeli military. PSC notes that Barclays has more than doubled its stake in Elbit since their last investigation.
As part of its grassroots strategy, PSC has organised a series of mass account closure days. In 2024 alone, the campaign reports that 5,000 people closed their Barclays accounts in protest.
Following Barclays’ acquisition of Tesco Bank, PSC is now urging Tesco Bank customers to take similar action and join the next coordinated account closure event.
The next National Day of Account Closures will take place on May 22, 2025. The PSC is calling on individuals to close their Barclays or Tesco Bank accounts on that day, or, if they are not customers, to contact Barclays executives and pledge to boycott the bank.
A PSC statement notes: “We want as many people as possible to close their account on a single day, to send a clear message to the bank that its complicity in Israeli apartheid has a cost – it will lose a sizable number of its customers who stand with Palestine, and this will have a greater impact if it is on a single day.”
A list of the events taking place and locations during today’s ‘boycott Barclays day of action’ is available on the PSC website.
Image credit: PSC X screen grab
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