Climate campaigners gathered outside County Hall in Lewes on Tuesday 3 December, for some divestment carol singing (see [ Ссылка ]), urging County Councillors to stop investing local people's pensions in the fossil fuel companies that are driving the climate crisis.
'Away in the chamber' references Councillors Gerard Fox (Cons, Hailsham New Town) and Paul Redstone (Cons, Northern Rother), two of the five decision-makers for the East Sussex Pension Fund. Councillors Fox and Redstone have both consistently opposed divestment.
Councillor Fox has claimed that there is 'no evidence that divestment promotes the energy transition', describing the latter claim as 'almost a religious belief'. (In reality, a 2013 study by academics at the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment concluded that: ‘In almost every divestment campaign we reviewed from adult services to Darfur, from tobacco to South Africa, divestment campaigns were successful in lobbying for restrictive legislation affecting stigmatised firms.’)
Councillor Redstone opposed there even being a vote on divestment at the July 2022 meeting of the Pension Committee on the grounds that he was 'really concerned' that 'we would be tarred as a committee with having voted against divestment'. He then voted against divestment and lied about it afterwards, claiming in an email that 'we did not vote against divestment'.
'AWAY IN THE CHAMBER'
Away in the chamber, a Fox at its head
The Pension Committee put Divest to bed
The planet was burning from the fossil fuel years
But the pension committee offered nothing but tears
Divest is campaigning, to stop would be sin
For right is on our side and we know we will win
Dear Councillor Redstone, if you back fossil fuels
Then the Pension Committee will be considered fools
BP, Shell and Exxon, want to keep burning oil
If we let them continue then the planet will boil
Oh Councillor Redstone, of you we request
That you do some hard thinking, and then support divest
