The council’s pension committee agreed last July to look into divesting its funds from companies linked to ongoing conflicts, following pressure from Waltham Forest For a Free Palestine, reports Sebastian Mann, Local Democracy Reporter

Around 100 people joined a protest outside Waltham Forest Town Hall last year to call for arms divestment, Credit: WF4FP

Slow progress on divesting from companies linked to potential human rights abuses has been “frustrating,” Waltham Forest councillors say.

The council’s pension committee agreed last July to look into divesting its funds from companies linked to ongoing conflicts, following pressure from Waltham Forest For a Free Palestine (WF4FP).

It is so far the only council to approach the London Collective Investment Vehicle (LCIV), which oversees the pension funds of all 32 borough councils in London, about divestment – but progress has been slow.

In November, the council asked the LCIV to produce a timeline for when it could look to pull funds from companies that may have been ‘exposed’ to human rights abuses.

However, a representative from LCIV told the committee last night that while it was a “very immediate priority,” they “could not say it will be concluded by ‘X’ date”.

The LCIV cannot withdraw from individual companies and would instead need to exit a combined pool of investments, which would have “financial implications”. The council was previously warned that divestment must not harm its financial standing.

Committee chair Johar Khan, the Labour councillor for Markhouse ward, called the rate of progress “frustrating”.

Councillor Keith Rayner said: “We have a role as guardian of the pension pot to make sure we maximise income. We need to know how soon we can pull out, without puting a huge dent in the pension pot itself.”

Pressure began mounting on Waltham Forest Council to change its investments as the Israel-Hamas war worsened.

Israel’s heavy retaliation against Hamas, the militant governing body of Gaza, for an attack in October 2023 killed more than 43,000 Gazans. The fighting polarised western perspectives, with Amnesty International branding it a genocide. The conflict has since cooled, following a ceasefire agreement in late January.

She added that the LCIV “really needed to understand [the situation] better” and was working on a policy that says “we are happy to invest in these companies, but not these”.

She said a dozen “wide-ranging” companies – from Microsoft to JCB – had been identified as “particular targets”.

But some could be “doing relatively vanilla things” or serving “perfectly legitimate civilian communities” in both Israel and the Palestinian territories, she added.

Councillor Justin Habibi said it “does not need to take another year” and a roadmap was the “very least we need to bring to the table”.

The committee was told that other councils, referred to as the LCIV’s ‘partner funds,’ had taken a range of stances on the issue.

While some similarly wanted to “reduce exposure” to potentially complicit companies, others felt it was “inappropriate” to make investment decisions based on “political issues,” the representative said.

Prior to the meeting, around 100 WF4FP activists protested outside the town hall. They carried placards reading, “No divestment, no vote,” in reference to the local elections next May.

A campaign spokesperson said that “people want to see concrete steps to divestment beyond just arms companies”.

She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “We had our biggest protest turnout yet as people turned up in the cold, to break their fast, and let the council know we’re not going anywhere until full divestment from complicit companies is done.

“Despite challenging the LCIV on timelines and ethical divestment during the meeting many times, the pension committee failed to instruct the LCIV to make a new fund and instead focused on the LCIV’s lack of progress.

“We wait to hear more about the 12 complicit companies the LCIV have identified for divestment.”

The council agreed its own definition of the arms trade last November, covering companies that generate revenue by selling ‘controversial weapons,’ including chemical, biological, and incendiary weapons.

It aims to have divested from these by March 2026.

Waltham Forest became the first council to fully divest from companies linked to fossil fuels in 2022. The similarly slow-moving process began in 2016 and took a total of six years to come to fruition.

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