A coalition of left-wing campaign groups gathered outside Waltham Forest Town Hall on Thursday (17th July), reports Sebastian Mann, Local Democracy Reporter
Hundreds of residents have called on Waltham Forest Council to make a firmer commitment to “ethical” investment and building more social housing.
A coalition of campaign groups – including Waltham Forest for a Free Palestine (WF4FP), the London Renters Union, and Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) – gathered outside the town hall ahead of a full council meeting last week.
They pushed the council to divest its pension funds from companies linked to the arms trade and Israel’s war in Gaza, which the elected pension committee says it is actively pursuing.
The council says it is “pioneering efforts” to divest from arms companies, while “taking every action [it] can” to tackle the housing shortage.
The council has been under sustained pressure from local campaign groups to divest since early last year.
Waltham Forest does not directly handle its investments. Its pension fund is handled by the London Collective Investment Vehicle (LCIV), which oversees all 32 borough councils in the capital.
Speaking after the protest, an organiser from WF4FP said: “We are calling on the council to divest from genocide and end all contracts with complicit companies including Barclays, who they currently bank with; to provide more social housing; to enact a right to grow food on public land; to end complicity in immigration raids; to ensure no one who is homeless is forced out of the borough; and to actively fight for community spaces being evicted by rogue landlords.”
She continued: “Our movement of groups and residents knows that a fairer Waltham Forest is possible. We have people power and a clear-eyed focus on justice and liberation.
“We won’t be ignored by politicians who barely scrape 2,000 votes in local elections and refuse to speak to their own residents.”
Green Party deputy leader Zack Polanski and economist Faiza Shaheen – who challenged Conservative MP Ian Duncan-Smith as an independent last year after Labour deselected her – were also in attendance.
Demonstrators carried placards saying that Waltham Forest “deserves better” and that “no divestment” meant “no vote”.
Protestors also attacked the council for its recent service cuts, which have involved slashing council tax support and plans to withdraw extra help for those receiving home care in the future.
A spokesperson from DPAC said: “If you say you are going to ethically divest, then divest. If you say you are going to ethically invest, then invest. I need you to put your money where your mouth is.
“You must keep your promise to divest in tools and contributors to disablement. You must meet our demands to protect our spaces, ensure we have accessible social housing and not force us out the borough because you made it unlivable.”
Waltham Forest Council leader Grace Williams defended the town hall’s record to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), saying: “This Labour council has delivered on the priorities of our local community and is fighting to secure the fairer funding our borough needs.”
Cllr Williams, who also serves as London Councils’ executive member for housing, said: “Our pensions committee is pioneering efforts to divest from arms companies and proactively raising human rights abuses with the London Collective Investment Fund.
“There is a housing emergency in London. There are over 10,000 people on our council housing list and more than 1,500 in temporary accommodation. Our costs for placing people in hotels and B&Bs have risen from £35,000 to £3.9 million in two years.
“We are taking every action we can – building new homes and funding better temporary accommodation with wraparound support for families. We do everything we can to avoid offering people housing out of London, but sometimes we have no other way of meeting our statutory housing duties.”
She said the council had built the most affordable homes of any London borough over the last decade, and recent government investment would allow the council to build thousands more, which have been “opposed consistently” by the Conservatives and Greens.
Waltham Forest also has “one of the highest rates” of community food growing in London, she added, and the council is looking to expand these opportunities through the Nature Recovery Plan.
The Labour administration, which has been in power since 2010, also “works closely” with volunteers to offer sanctuary to migrants and refugees and protect residents from rogue landlords, she said.
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