I have a message for Sheffield’s establishment, media, businesses and specifically Labour MPs, Councillors and the South Yorkshire Mayor. A message that is obvious to us, but apparently not to them.
Our Palestinian brothers and sisters, our Palestinian friends here today, are human beings just like you. They have a right to life. They have a right to culture. They have a right to hospitals. They have a right to schools and universities. They have a right to be journalists. They have a right to resist oppression, subjugation, dispossession and genocide. They have the right to return to their homes.
Palestinians have an inalienable right to equality, not just in Palestine, but in the UK and everywhere in the world.
The Council claims Sheffield to be an “anti-racist city”. But actions speak far louder than words, and the continued silence about the obvious genocide in Palestine is deafening.
In 1981 Sheffield became the first local authority to pledge that it would end all links with apartheid. It withdrew pension fund investments from companies with South African subsidiaries and barred South African sports teams from its playing fields. But when it comes to Israeli apartheid, and now genocide, the contrast could not be more stark…
Since the genocide started in October 2023, Sheffield council has: flown the apartheid flag from the Town Hall, refused to declare an apartheid free zone, welcomed the Israeli cycling team to Sheffield, refused to back the Sheffield Green party motion to divest pension funds from Israeli gov’t bonds and weapons manufacturers, and refused to acknowledge the undeniable genocide taking place which has been declared by Israeli ministers since day 1 and which has been live streamed to our phones by both the victims and the perpetrators.
The council has refused to challenge Barclays, its banking partner, which a PSC report has identified as being the Israeli governments’ financier, helping to sell its bonds. Perhaps the council didn’t want to dissuade Barclays from moving into its new premises.
But perhaps worst of all, the council, (alongside the Mayor, Local MPs and institutions like the university) is also supporting the manufacture of weapons in Sheffield, some of which, according to the Campaign Against the Arms trade, are bound for Israel’s genocidal war machine.
When I asked the then Chair of the Economic, Development and Skills committee if he supported the new BAE arms factory, he said he did because it would create jobs. Yesterday, the Defence Secretary John Healy MP opened the new factory and both he and Oliver Coppard hailed Sheffield and South Yorkshire as a hub of weapons manufacture.
It seems, Labour’s only plan for this country, the only thing they are prepared to invest in is war. Their only plan to create jobs is through making weapons, and our local Labour and Lib Dem politicians want Sheffield to be part of this. Of course they refuse to acknowledge the death and destruction this will cause, the explicit racism in making weapons used to kill mainly black and brown people – Palestinians, Lebanese, Iranians, Sudanese – far away from the UK.
The weapons industry is euphemistically called the defence industry. But what does it defend? It defends imperialism. It defends colonialism. It defends private control of common resources. It defends corruption. It defends monopolies. It enables genocide.
We, people of conscience, must not allow Sheffield to become the UK center for the production of death and genocide. We must oppose every arms factory in Sheffield and demand our advanced manufacturing capabilities are used productively in support of a Green New Deal, of people and planet, of genuine security and a sustainable future – not death and destruction.
Lets play our part to end the genocide in Gaza and prevent Sheffield fueling more wars and genocides – starting on Tuesday at the Forged Solution factory, which research from the Campaign Against the Arms Trade has identified as making parts for Israel’s deadly F-35 jets.
