The Power of Silence
8th May 2025
According to a recent report in the Guardian, banks including Barclays, HSBC, NatWest and Lloyds have poured more than £75bn into companies developing huge fossil fuels projects with the potential of producing 420bn tonnes of carbon emissions. That would be equivalent to more than 10 years of current global carbon dioxide emissions. (1)
Banks and fossil fuel companies are clearly working together to wreck our green and sustainable global environment. How do we as ‘powerless’ – when compared to the financial clout of these businesses – individuals respond?
Yesterday (Wednesday 7th May 2025) Barclays held its AGM at the QEII conference centre just off Parliament Square. The building itself was barricaded off – a barrier reinforced on the inner face by a large number of private security officers (the kind of thing that big businesses can buy) and further reinforced on the outer face by large numbers of police officers. Their objective being to ensure that proceedings were not disrupted by any protest – even though the UK still (just about) upholds the right for people to undertake peaceful protest.
A sizeable crowd of protestors had squeezed into the limited space that lay between the QEII barricades and the barricades that enclosed the extensive gas repairs being carried out in front of the Methodist Central Hall. Palestinian flags flew high, placards announced “Barclays – Don’t Bank on Apartheid” and protestors accompanied by a drum as protestors chanted slogans highlighting and castigating Barclays for their involvement in financing the genocide in Gaza.
Meanwhile stage left a small group of Buddhists and Christians from Buddhists XR and Christian Climate Action, spent several minutes checking in with each other as they prepared for an extended period of silent protest. Circling round us were more police officers who then followed as in pairs we quietly walked carrying our various banners across to the QEII centre. We found a space on the street where we could face the conference centre, and enter into a period of silent meditative prayer and reflection.
Can you hold a silent protest when surrounded by fellow protestors chanting and drumming? Would it not be as easier undertaking if one moved to a quieter spot away from the protest? Yes and yes. Moving to a quieter spot would have made our focus easier, but not being in the heart of the protest would have made it harder. Rather the noise and clamour focused our minds on the scale of the outrage – the unjust and implacable way that big money rides roughshod over other people’s lives – that we were all protesting against.
Once focused, the hour and half we were there was tangibly channelling a power into space that would not otherwise have been present. And the contrast between our silence and the noise of the other protesters added to the overall impact of the action.
Did the shareholders listen? Did the CEO and the board of Barclays take note of what was going on? Will they search in their hearts and consider the morality of financing activities that make the world a worse place? Will they look beyond the profits and bonuses they make, to consider the many lives they are destroying? Will the power they wield, immunise them from feelings of guilt?
We may not know the answers but we do know that we have asked the right questions.
The Green Tau 