Opinion: ‘The campaign for divestment in Hackney may yet be won’

The 7 May local elections could usher in an end to years of obstruction.

In just over a week, Hackney will go to the polls to elect a new council. As in every election, myriad issues will decide the result – but here, Palestine may well be one of them.

It’s an issue that comes up regularly on the doorstep, as Green party activist, Liam Davis, tells me.

Particularly among younger voters and members of Hackney’s sizeable Muslim community, it’s a reason many give for turning away from the Labour party – possibly for good.

Davis himself won a seat as a ward councillor in a 2024 by-election with a massive 13-point swing from Labour and 53 per cent of the vote.

Outside party politics, the issue also cuts deep. Hackney is no stranger to Palestine activism: the Hackney branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been active for over 20 years.

Currently, their focus is on orchestrating a consumer boycott of products on the official Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) list.

Liz Henton and Sally Skaife, or “the two old ladies” as they refer to themselves online, have become the face for PSC’s supermarket actions, which see activists enter shops to label listed products with ‘Don’t Buy Apartheid’ stickers.

But much of the group’s work over the last five years has focused directly on the council – specifically, its massive pension fund holdings (worth over £100 million) in companies identified as profiting from Israel’s occupation of Palestine, as well as Hackney’s twinning arrangement with the Israeli port city of Haifa, a key entry point for military shipments to Israel.

In 2020, Hackney PSC’s divestment efforts were ramped up following a landmark Supreme Court victory, in which new government guidelines on political divestment (which would have prevented local councils from divesting pension holdings linked to Israel) were ruled unlawful.

Five months later, the group launched a petition calling on the council to “divest from companies that support the occupation of Palestine”.

Months of dialogue followed between Hackney PSC and the council pensions committee, culminating in a formal invitation to speak at one of the committee’s monthly meetings in September 2021.

There, activists presented the results of the petition, which by then had amassed over 50,000 signatures.

Present in opposition, however, was a delegation led by former Conservative councillor Linda Kelly, speaking on behalf of an organisation called ‘Hackney Friends of Israel’.

No trace of the group Kelly claimed to represent can be found anywhere online.

After hearing from both delegations, the committee marked PSC’s petition as ‘noted’, but no further action was taken. Footage of the 2021 meeting is no longer public.

Campaigning efforts picked back up in earnest in May of 2024. Inspired by the student encampment movement, activists set up ‘Hackney Divest Camp’ outside Hackney Town Hall to protest the council’s continued investments in firms linked to Israel.

Over time, the project expanded to become a full-blown community enterprise.

“The camp became a space for Hackney groups to offer educational workshops to the community. Solidarity came from many sources: a Hackney-based queer football club, a herbalist, a salsa group, local mosques, grassroots activist groups […]. The camp was first and foremost about divestment, but it also became about community and working together for the protection of everyone’s human rights”, says Anna Gonzalez, one of the activists involved in the camp.

A meeting between three of the camp’s founders and Hackney’s Labour mayor, Caroline Woodley, was granted within just weeks of the camp’s formation.

When they spoke, Woodley seemed sympathetic to the activists’ demands, Gonzalez tells me. “But nothing really happened after that.”

Other initiatives continued to be pushed forward in parallel. The first was a survey conducted by representatives at Hackney Unison, the largest union for local government workers in Hackney, of members also belonging to the council pension scheme.

The results, announced in early July, found that 90 per cent of the 274 respondents did not want their pensions invested in arms or weapons manufacturers. A further 80 per cent said they were opposed to investments in companies that profited from human rights abuses.

In tandem, PSC campaigners had been lobbying again for a second chance to discuss divestment with the council pensions committee, which was eventually granted for 9 July 2024.

Campaigners from PSC and the Hackney Divest Camp came together to form a joint deputation, calling collectively on the council to divest “from companies complicit in human rights abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territories”.

In opposition, once again, was Linda Kelly, invited to the chamber by Labour councillor Michael Desmond.

This time, Kelly was joined by a personal delegation from UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), a private limited company whose mission, as per its website, is to “support Israel […] against BDS [boycotts, divestment and sanctions]”.

Speaking on behalf of Kelly’s counter-deputation was Jonathan Turner, the organisation’s chief executive.

In his speech, Turner made reference to a 2014 report published by the Law Commission.

The report states that local government pension schemes may take non-financial considerations into account only where two conditions are met: “(1) trustees should have good reason to think that scheme members would share the concern; and (2) the decision should not involve a risk of significant financial detriment to the fund”.

PSC’s proposed divestment, Turner claimed, would be in breach of both conditions.

“Israel/Palestine is clearly controversial – possibly the most controversial issue on the planet”, he argued.

“It is also very divisive, especially in Hackney, which has many Jews and many Muslims”.
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On these grounds, Turner concluded, proposed divestment did “not meet the first of the Law Commission’s conditions at all”, citing an addition to the Commission’s first provision, which states: ‘in cases where [an] issue is clearly controversial, courts may […] expect trustees to focus on financial factors rather than becoming embroiled in disagreements between the members’.

Left conspicuously unaddressed were the results of the Unison survey released just days prior, which revealed precisely no such controversy among the union’s pension scheme members.

But most notably, the report, which served as the basis for Turner’s arguments, had been subject to significant updates in 2017 – a full four years before the deputation hearing.

In the updates, the authors clarify that the law is ‘flexible enough’ to allow for social investment decisions by pension funds, and that ‘barriers to social investment [… are], in most cases, structural and behavioural rather than legal or regulatory’.

Neither fact appears to have bothered pensions committee chair Kam Adams, whose response to the deputations closely mirrored the arguments put forward by Turner and UKLFI: that PSC’s proposed divestment would risk “financial detriment to the Fund” and would therefore breach Law Commission Guidance (by then years out of date).

The council, he concluded, would therefore “not commit to divestment […] in this instance”. UKLFI celebrates the win on its website, under the headline, ‘Hackney Council Rejects BDS’.

Adams, however, insisted that the council was “keen to seek the views of all scheme members”, and that the council would be developing its own survey on ethical investment to be undertaken later that year. The results, he promised, would be “considered in the future development of the Fund’s […] responsible investment strategy”.

Several months behind schedule, the council delivered on the first part of their word.

Its survey, which received over 1,000 responses, painted a similar picture to that revealed by Unison almost a year earlier. Around one third of respondents felt that the Fund should “do no harm with its investments”, while another third wanted the Fund “to actively invest for good”.

Nearly 70 per cent felt that ‘human rights’ were either most or second-most important among five factors listed in deciding how the Committee should invest its funds.

These results were attained despite criticism from both Unison and the PSC that the survey’s questions were “confusing” and “designed to muddy the waters”, including a first question which “falsely implies that ethical concerns and the timely payment of pensions are opposing options”.

The results, though, were published alongside an important caveat: the survey “was not designed to drive divestment”, and that while the Fund recognised “concern surrounding human rights”, particularly regarding the “Middle East Conflict”, divestment was “not as simple as it may first appear” in light of the Fund’s fiduciary duties – and as such, the results would again lead nowhere.

But the issue cuts even deeper. In 2023, it was revealed that the Council had been operating a separate ‘Responsible Investment Working Group’, or RIWG, in parallel to the official pensions committee.

The group meets in private, with little trace of its activities – whether detailed agendas, minutes or lists of attendees – available online. Public record of its work is limited to broad ‘update’ reports, only one of which was published in 2025. Unions say there is no basis in the council’s constitution for the existence of such a group.

The RIWG is made up exclusively of Labour councillors, recruited on an informal and ‘voluntary’ basis from the pensions committee.

The only committee member from an opposition party, Fliss Premru of the Hackney Independent Socialist Collective (HISC), received no invitation to join. Although the group’s role is principally advisory, in practice, as Matt Paul, a representative for Hackney Unison claims, important decisions often appear to have been made by the group in the periods between official pensions committee meetings.

“It was the RIWG that drafted the [council’s] scheme member survey in isolation”, Paul says, “ignoring constructive feedback from UNISON, PSC and other committee members before launching it. Similarly, key policy documents around investing in and engaging with companies were produced by the RIWG, were published late in less than the required timescales, underwent no consultation with scheme members, and received only a cursory discussion by the pensions committee before being rubber-stamped”.

When approached for comment, a Hackney Council spokesperson said: “Hackney’s pension fund is recognised as one of the few local government pension scheme providers adhering to the highest standards of ethical investment as demonstrated by becoming a signatory of the UK Stewardship Code. […] To support this work the committee established the Responsible Investment Work Group in June 2022. The membership, purpose and terms of reference of the RIWG were agreed by the committee when it was established. The RIWG has no decision-making powers and reports to the pensions committee.”

Requests for access to RIWG documents have been repeatedly denied by the council, citing a blanket exemption from the public domain due to the presence of ‘sensitive’ information – despite what unions say is obvious public interest in the group’s remit. The council did not comment on the basis of these refusals.

Occasional chinks have emerged, though, in the council’s otherwise steadfast opposition to divestment – originating, in large part, from the mayor herself.

Aside from her meeting with Divest Camp activists in the summer of 2024, Caroline Woodley’s most notable display of apparent sympathy came in September 2025, in the form of a statement titled ‘On the formal recognition of the state of Palestine and action on divestment’.

In it, she expresses the council’s willingness to explore pathways to divestment “from companies tied to human rights breaches.” “We want to […] take every opportunity”, Woodley writes, “to divest pension fund investments from companies profiteering from activities within conflict zones and countries linked to genocide”.

For campaigners, the statement signified a possible sea change. “I saw the mayor’s statement on my phone as I was walking to the Town Hall for a demonstration”, says Heather Mendick, long-time Palestine activist, founding member of the Hackney Divest Camp, and local election candidate for HISC. “I know I was happy and relieved that our council was finally moving towards justice”.

But at a pensions committee meeting held later that same evening, committee chair Kam Adams made no such concessions.

“I’m moving on”, Adams said, in response to a question posed by HISC councillor Fliss Premru regarding the mayor’s statement. “I don’t want to spend half of the meeting talking about divestment. We are not here to do that”.

For those who had been encouraged by Woodley’s statement hours earlier, the evening’s proceedings came as a shock. “I went into the pensions committee meeting […] expecting it to open with a statement from the chair”, Mendick tells me.

“We didn’t just not get that, we got the chair blocking the debate on divestment and saying that’s not the role of the committee”.

This was not only disappointing, but confusing: “The only conclusion I can come to is that the Mayor does not control her own administration”, Mendick says.

And less than one month later, Woodley’s own tone had changed. In October, a coalition of sitting Green party and HISC councillors tabled a motion calling, once again, for the council to ‘cut all […[ ties with Israel’s Genocide in Gaza’. After first being denied a hearing, the motion’s advocates succeeded in forcing one through via an extraordinary full-council meeting.

Several Labour councillors spoke at the hearing to brand the motion “divisive”.

Michael Desmond, who welcomed the UKLFI counter-delegation in 2024, accused the motion and its supporters of “promoting hate” – and later, in an article for Jewish News, compared those who spoke in its favour to “Oswald Mosley and his blackshirts”.

Most consequential, though, were a series of amendments drafted by Woodley herself. The revisions, among other things, removed any reference from the motion to a genocide in Gaza, purportedly pending the results of an official ICJ ruling (a date for which is undetermined).

In doing so, Woodley’s amendments effectively ruled out any action being taken on divestment from Israel under her administration – a notable departure from her position only weeks prior.

Whether the council’s position can hold, though, is an open question. Continuing pressure from campaigners, unions and opposition parties, together with the rapidly-approaching May elections, may mean that Hackney Labour’s approach to divestment, and indeed, their future in office, becomes increasingly tenuous.

As Hackney goes to the polls, at issue is not only divestment, but whether the council’s fundamental decision-making structures are actually fit for purpose.

For campaigners, the past five years have revealed a system in which oversight, consultation and access – at least by workers and residents – are sorely lacking.

Whether that system is able to withstand mounting political pressure will depend, like much else, on what may be Hackney’s most consequential elections in decades.