The Croydon Divest coalition this week (16th April 2025) challenged Croydon councils investments in arms companies guilty of genocide in Gaza, by tabling a question at the full meeting of Croydon council.
Apart from the Resistance Kitchen, the coalition also includes Crystal Palace friends of Palestine, Croydon PSC, Croydon4Palestine, Croydon Trade Union Council, Croydon Green Party, and other local community groups.
Investments In Genocide
Croydon council has invested over £120 million in companies complicit in genocide and occupation of Palestine.
These include 27 arms companies.
Topping that list is Israel’s largest arms producer Elbit Systems, that boasts being the “backbone” of the Israeli military, and advertises its equipment as battle tested in Gaza.
Israeli NGOs have documented that Elbit provides 85% of Israel’s killer drone fleet and produces 85% of the Israeli military’s land-based equipment, all shown to be used in the commission of war crimes.
Croydon council has chosen to invest £94,000 in this company that is literally the backbone of the genocide in Gaza.
The Israeli military admitted to using an Elbit Hermes 450 drone in the deliberate attack last year on the World Central Kitchen aid convoy that killed 7 aid workers, including 3 British citizens.
Croydon council has chosen to invest £94,000 in this company that is literally the backbone of the genocide in Gaza.
It seems Croydon council wants to hide this dirty secret.
Censorship
The original question submitted to the council mentioned the guilty company Elbit by name. It read:
British professor and NHS surgeon, Nizam Mamode, worked for a month in a Gaza hospital. He shook with emotion as he spoke in Parliament, describing how Israeli drones target Palestinian children.
“A bomb would drop,” he said, “maybe on a crowded, tented area and then the drones would come down and pick off civilians – children.”
Professor Mamode operated on their devastated little bodies.
Those drones were almost certainly produced by Elbit Systems who manufacture 85% of Israel’s drones.
Why is Croydon Council’s Pension Scheme investing in Elbit Systems and will the Council undertake to divest from arms producers?
But the council refused to accept the question unless it was modified to exclude any reference to Elbit.
They claimed it was defamatory, so we provided strong evidence – all Israeli sources, but it was still rejected – they insisted we couldn’t mention Elbit.
So we rephrased that part of the question to say:
Those drones were almost certainly produced by an Israeli company whose name I am not allowed to mention.
Why is Croydon Council’s Pension Scheme investing in this company and will the Council undertake to divest from arms producers?
Even though Elbit was no longer mentioned, the question was again rejected.
We couldn’t mention that we were being censored.
It seems the question was raised to the highest echelons of the council, we were inadvertently copied in on correspondence between the Chief executive officer of Croydon Council, the Director of Legal Services, Corporate Director of Resources, Head of Democratic Services, and others, discussing the ‘problem’ question and ‘dealing’ with it.
They tried to recall the email, but we had seen it by then. It took 4 iterations before the question, watered down by this stage, was finally accepted. The censored, accepted version of the question read:
British professor and NHS surgeon, Nizam Mamode, worked for a month in a Gaza hospital. He shook with emotion as he spoke in Parliament, describing how Israeli drones target Palestinian children.
“A bomb would drop,” he said, “maybe on a crowded, tented area and then the drones would come down and pick off civilians – children.”
Professor Mamode operated on their devastated little bodies.
Why is Croydon Council’s Pension Scheme investing in companies which manufacture drones and will it undertake to divest from these companies and other weapons producers?
Silencing Palestinian Voices
A Palestinian mother, a resident of Croydon, also submitted a question. It read
I am Palestinian. My family is from Safad, we were ethically cleansed from our home in 1948. Today we cannot return, Israel is denying my right of return.
Some managed to stay, in refugee camps in Gaza. The lucky ones we thought, their children playing in the soil of our beloved land. We didn’t expect to bury them in mass graves, enduring genocide in front of an uncaring world. We have lost so many, whole families.
I cannot describe the pain, knowing my council is complicit in the genocide of my people, investing £120million in the occupation. Will you divest?
But this time the council totally banned the question with no opportunity given to rephrase it.
They said to suggest the council was complicit in genocide was “offensive”. They said it “lacks substantiating evidence”, but they were not interested in seeing the evidence which we had retrieved from the council itself, through freedom of information requests.
Instead they outright rejected the question from consideration. Apparently it was ok to silence Palestinian voices.
The difference in the way the two questions were handled – one given 4 opportunities to modify, the other outright banned, stunk of racism and Islamophobia.
Response
At the council meeting, Jason Cummings, the Cabinet member for finance passed the question, that was allowed to be asked, to Councillor Callton Young, Chair Croydon Council Pension Committee to answer.
In a prepared statement shown here, Callton Young was essentially passing the buck on by saying the pension fund does not directly hold any shares in individual companies, it invests through pooled funds managed by external investment managers so its not feasible to divest from individual companies.
What he didn’t mention was that the council chooses which pooled funds to invest in, and that ethical pooled funds that exclude investment in the arms trade, whilst meeting the council’s fiduciary duty, are available to choose from.
Right To Reply
Questioners are given a right to reply by asking a supplementary question in response to an answer.
Ita from Crystal Palace Friends of Palestine, in her supplementary question, nailed it by showing that following pressure from constituents opposed to investment in the tobacco industry the council had already set the precedent of selectively only choosing pooled funds which explicitly exclude investments in the tobacco trade, so what was stopping them doing the same for the arms trade?
The supplementary question:
We don’t agree that it’s not feasible that this can be done and its seems that the Pensions Committee has had a long history of misjudging the public mood on issues like this.
Back in 2013, the Pensions Committee opposed divesting from tobacco claiming that it was not in the best interests of the pensions beneficiaries. But the council did the right thing and divested from tobacco, thus setting a precedent from divestment from weapons.
Therefore will the Pensions Committee reconsider this decision, and agree to explore ethical investment alternatives? Will the chairman of the Pensions Committee meet with us to discuss these issues?
Facing such an irrefutable argument, Callton Young graciously agreed to meet the Croydon Divest Coalition.
If you are a resident or work in Croydon, please support the campaign by writing to your local Croydon councillor and the pension committee.
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Croydon Divest – Letter To Council
We Demand Croydon Council Divest From Genocide
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