Letter: Critique of book festival protests missed the point

The aim of putting the asset manager Baillie Gifford under pressure at two recent book festivals was not to bring about “actual social and economic change” as your editorial suggests. It was to get the company to end its exposure to the oil sector because of the climate crisis we face.

Explaining how it’s all so very difficult to shift investments and “to channel broad principles of justice through such a global and complex system” (“The limits of divestment activism”, FT View, June 22) completely misses the point.

Funding the arts, and hoping to look generous, while profiting, even in a minor way, from investments that are the very accelerant putting our whole global welfare, our economies and ecosystems — never mind the odd highly flammable book fair — under catastrophic threat is what is being urgently called out.

It is a shame the article sums up by implying that activists fail to understand basic economics, and pick not only the wrong targets, but also the wrong ideals as they protest, and that “change can rarely be achieved by righteousness alone”.

Perfect reassurance for those in banking, private equity or investment feeling the heat.

Barbara Mullarney
London W3, UK