1,000 Divestment Letters Target Smashed!

With your help, mashAllah, we have smashed our target of 1,000 letters to councillors! As of Sunday 8th June 2025, the community has sent 1,272 letters to their local councillors in Croydon and the Council Pension Committee urging them to divest from genocide and instead invest ethically to benefit our community. Every councillor in every ward in Croydon has now received letters from their local residents in their ward. This is an incredible achievement in such a short time, but this is just start.

Dont Stop

Please don’t stop, keep the letters coming in – especially to the pension committee who ultimately decide where the money is invested – whether it it goes to fund weapons of death like Israel’s drone manufacturer Elbit Systems, or if it goes to benefit our community like funding affordable housing for our homeless.

Click on the link below:

Write To Your Councillor – Divest From Genocide

Our Moral Duty

Whilst we may not all have the capacity or courage to follow the brave examples set by Palestine Action and the Filton 18, to physically smash weapons destined to be used to slaughter children in Gaza and shut down their factories of death, this is a campaign we can all participate in, without fear of arrest or imprisonment, that can take millions away from these weapons producers. As residents of Croydon its also our moral responsibility to ensure our council is not complicit in this genocide.

Pension Committee Hiding

The pension committee, made up of local councillors, is deliberately avoiding us. In March we wrote to the pension committee – they still haven’t replied. In April the head of the pension committee, Councillor Callton Young, when challenged on camera, in front of the full council, promised to meet us to discuss divestment from genocide. Despite repeatedly chasing him – emails, phone calls, contacting Labour whip, etc. he still has not responded, let alone set a date for the meeting. At the end of April we launched the letter writing campaign – despite over 1,000 letter being sent we still have not heard anything back. With such intransigence, we predict this will be a long drawn out campaign.

Helping Councillors

Often people become councillors because they want to help their communities, but once elected they are restricted by pressure to follow the party line. They need help from their constituents in the form of pressure from below to break free from party pressure from above in order to do the right thing. We have to help our councillors make the right decisions.

Local Elections

We will be ramping up the campaign, specifically in key wards like Thornton Heath, the ward of Councillor Callton Young – the head of the pension committee. Local divestment from genocide will be a central issue in the upcoming local elections next May where each councillor will have to justify their positions in front of their constituents. Every councillor is vulnerable – for example Callton Young was elected with just 1,539 votes at the last election. With a turnout of just 30%, it leaves a lot of possibilities.

Attend Councillor Surgery

But we can’t do it without your help. If you have already sent a letter but not received a good response ( please forward any replies to us) then please consider attending your councillors next surgery to ask for clarification why they dont support investing in the local community like some local council pension funds have done for example in affordable housing, and instead want to give the money to the merchants of death to bankroll the killing of children in Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen.

Excuse #1 - Fiduciary Duty

Dont be fobbed off with excuses about fiduciary duty to maximise returns, Croydon council already divests from the tobacco industry (before that campaign was won they were using the same excuse that tobacco investments were consistently bringing the best returns for them so they couldn’t divest). Other councils like Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire council pension fund have invested £100 million in a fund from M&G aimed at financing affordable homes whilst still raking in healthy returns to meet their fiduciary duty, why must Croydon council pension fund instead invest over £120 million in companies complicit in genocide?

Excuse #2 - Not On Pension Committee

If your councillor tries to pass the buck on by saying, they are not on the pension committee so all they can do is forward your message to them, ask if they themselves will make a public statement of support for divestment from arms companies.

Excuse #3 - Ukraine

Sometimes they use Ukraine as an excuse – “I’ll support divestment from arms companies as long as it doesn’t impact our support for Ukraine”, knowing full well that the same arms companies that supply Ukraine also supply Israel enabling it to commit genocide. 100 Labour MPs in an open letter have gone so far as to demand that investment in arms companies be classified as ‘ethical’ to encourage pension funds to invest!

In response you can juxtapose arms for Ukraine with affordable homes for people in Croydon. Surely as a local council that should take priority.

In any encounter with councillors please always stay polite and calm, we need to win them over.

Croydon Divest Coalition

The Croydon Divest coalition apart from the Resistance Kitchen includes Croydon Trade Union Council, Croydon PSC, Crystal Palace Friends of Palestine, Croydon Green Party, and Croydon4Palestine.

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