This article was originally published in Medicine, Conflict and Survival in 2022. We’re publishing an abridged version to offer important historical context for the growing movement of divestment campaigning for nuclear disarmament in the UK – a useful read for anyone interested in Don’t Bank on the Bomb UK, a new campaign launched by Medact’s Nuclear Weapons Group in 2024. Interested in joining us? Come along to the next Nuclear Weapons Group meeting on Wednesday 25th June!
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‘We need to ‘follow the money’ to learn the reality of nuclear weapons production. ‘It is only by knowing those who seek to maintain the status quo that we can engage and shift their behaviour’ (ICAN and PAX 2021).
Divestment
In the introduction to the first ‘Don’t Bank on the Bomb’ report issued by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Desmond Tutu of South Africa wrote:
Divestment was vital in the campaign to end apartheid in South Africa. Today, the same tactic can – and must – be employed to challenge man’s most evil creation: the nuclear bomb. No one should be profiting from this terrible industry of death, which threatens us all. (DBOTB 2012, 4).
Divestment has been defined as follows by the British Medical Journal (BMJ): ‘Divestment is the opposite of investment. It is the reduction or … the complete removal of stocks, bonds, or investment funds that are unethical because of the harm to health’ (Abbasi and Godlee 2020).
According to the Oxford Research Encyclopaedia (cited in scientistswarning.org 2020), ‘divestment is a socially responsible investing tactic to remove assets from a sector or industry based on moral objections to its business practices’. The early-21st-century fossil fuel divestment movement began with climate activist and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben calling for divestment (McKibben 2018). In 2018, the same year as the fossil fuel divestment movement began, Drs Macintyre, Orgel and other Medact Scotland members in a letter to the BMJ contended that arms and nuclear arms need to be included as appropriate targets for divestment (Macintyre et al. 2020).
Advocates for divestment from apartheid in South Africa, divestment from fossil fuels, and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Movement (BDS) have never accepted the argument that investment is apolitical, contending investing implies support. Advocates for divestment assert that ‘not divesting is not a politically neutral act – it is, in fact, choosing the side of fossil fuel corporations. Therefore, they argue that not politicizing this issue would be unethical’. Every day how we spend money impacts the planet and the political sphere (Oxford Research Encyclopaedia, cited in scientistswarning.org 2020).
Don’t Bank on the Bomb
It is widely accepted that financing is a form of assistance contributing to the production of nuclear weapons and following the adoption of the TPNW in 2017 it is now in violation of international humanitarian law for those countries that have signed the treaty to do so (Docherty and Mei 2019; Future of Life Institute 2017).
Don’t Bank on the Bomb (DBOTB) is a joint project of ICAN and PAX: a nuclear weapons divestment campaign which was launched before the TPNW negotiations commenced and supported activity to achieve the treaty. Since the treaty was adopted at the UN in 2017 and its subsequent entry into force in 2021, DBOTB has ‘focused on stigmatizing the provision of financial assistance to private entities involved in development, testing, manufacture, or production of nuclear weapons’ (Docherty and Mei 2019).
Two recent reports (Perilous Profiteering and Rejecting Risk) published by ICAN and PAX in the weeks running up to the TPNW entry into force first anniversary highlighted the latest gains of the nuclear weapons divestment movement (ICAN and PAX 2021, 2022). The first report Perilous Profiteering found that fewer financial institutions were investing than in the previous year’s analysis (ICAN and PAX 2021, 4). In the 25 companies known to be involved in nuclear weapons production, manufacture or development, there were ‘significant drops’ in the values of shareholder investments.
The reports showed a decrease of 63 billion USD, from the 748 billion USD invested in nuclear weapons in the 2 years ending January 2018 (PAX 2019) to 685 billion USD in the two and a half years ending July 2021 (ICAN and PAX 2021). A notable drop in the number of financial lending institutions and a quick perusal of stock holdings showed a decreasing willingness and increasing risk aversion to investing in producing nuclear weapons (ICAN and PAX 2021).
Following nuclear weapons prohibition, the industry is changing
One recent case history shows that divestment (or intention to divest) can be an effective tool. Serco Group plc is a British company which had been part of the consortium managing AWE Management Ltd., a facility responsible for designing, managing and maintaining the UK’s nuclear warheads. It was forced to drop its plans to bid for contracts at the UK’s Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) subsequent to investors threatening to sell their shares. Fund managers warned Serco that working with nuclear weapons might result in them being forced to drop Serco shares due to non-compliance with Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards. This suggests that ‘investors are adhering to the international norm against nuclear weapons that was established by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, despite that the fact that the UK is not party to the treaty’ (DBOTB 2021), and that investing in nuclear weapons is a risky choice for investors, a risk increased by the regulatory stipulations included in the TPNW.
Prior to the Ukraine–Russia war, the weapons industry had been shrinking, with companies either merging (United Technologies and Raytheon) or being acquired by others (Northrop Grumman has acquired Orbital ATK).
Some financial institutions have made new investments in nuclear weapons; however, these are mostly in countries that have not yet joined the TPNW. Significantly, more than 100 financial institutions have divested; several of these are from states that have joined the treaty including Allied Irish Bank and Bank of Ireland (the Republic of Ireland) and Investec (South Africa) (ICAN and PAX 2021).
Increasing numbers of financial institutions are citing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) as one reason for excluding these weapons of mass destruction from investment policies. Before the TPNW was negotiated, 54 known policies that had done this were included in the 2016 DBOTB report, this increased to 77 after the Treaty was adopted and has gone up to over 100 since the Treaty has gone into effect (ICAN and PAX 2022).
Case study: #changenatwestcampaign
The #ChangeNatWest campaign is a current and ongoing nuclear weapons divestment campaign developed by a partnership between Don’t Bank on the Bomb Scotland and ICAN (ICAN 2022). The goal of the campaign is to encourage NatWest Group to exclude all companies involved in weapons that ‘cause mass, indiscriminate and long-lasting damage’. The bank’s defence sector investment policy excludes any investment in companies connected to landmines and cluster bombs, and the #ChangeNatWest campaign (Figure 1) urges the group to include nuclear weapons in the same prohibited category.
In 2021 over 40 different organizations (including ICAN, IPPNW, CND, Medact and Medact Scotland, Unison Scotland) signed a letter to the NatWest Group CEO to update the group’s defence sector policy to reflect that nuclear weapons are now prohibited under international law (ICAN 2022, 2022a).
Figure 1. Day of action #changenatwest Twitter campaign example.
A #ChangeNatWest day of action including both online and physical demonstrations around Scotland was successfully organized. A high turnout involving many groups showed an increased level of concern following Russia’s nuclear sabre rattling. Letters to bank managers were submitted at multiple branches around Scotland. The Glasgow newspaper The Herald had published an Agenda article about the NatWest Group policy the previous year (Fihn and Orgel 2021). Following the day of action, The Herald published a letter which again highlighted the need for NatWest to change its defence sector weapons investment policy, especially in the light of the fact that
the UK still clings to an outdated, unproved and dangerous theory of nuclear deterrence. This extremely expensive theory has allowed Putin to invade Ukraine and commit war crimes with impunity. Now the risk of nuclear war is the highest its been since the cold war and our very existence is under threat (Orgel 2022, 25).
Unfortunately, the situation has worsened since 2020 (ICAN 2021). In 2021, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 9 nuclear armed states spent 82.4 billion USD on nuclear weapons, an increase of 6.5 billion USD from 2020. These immoral levels of spending on weapons of mass destruction by nuclear-armed states were made despite the fact that the majority of countries in the world support banning these weapons.
This spending failed to deter a war in Europe and squandered valuable resources that could be better used to address current security challenges, or cope with the outcome of a still raging global pandemic. This corrupt cycle of wasteful spending must be put to an end. (ICAN 2022a, 4).
There is hope that there will be a renewed impetus to finally abolish nuclear weapons (Slaughter and Snyder 2022). Most of the world’s countries want these weapons gone. Investing in sustainable life-enhancing activities instead would make a clear statement opposing weapons of mass destruction and the realistic possibility of extinction-level events these weapons present.
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The complete journal article and reference list for this article is available to access online.
