by Guest

contribution by Adam Ramsay

Billy Bragg’s refusal to pay taxes to fund RBS bonuses is the latest manifestation of the question: what is to be done with Britain’s biggest bank?

But as well as bankers yachts, we should also look at the other things RBS-NatWest are paying for with our cash.

According to this report RBS-NatWest are Europe’s biggest funders of fossil fuel extraction. This finance is so significant that this more recent report by Cass Business School fellow Nick Silver found that the government could potentially have more impact on global carbon emissions through responsible ownership of RBS-Natwest than through cutting all domestic emissions.

And it’s not just levels of emissions that we should worry about. In March last year, RBS-NatWest provided around £100 million of, essentially, our money to Irish company Tullow Oil.

Tullow are involved in an extraction project on the war struck border between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. In an area that has seen chronic violence, a resource war fueled by RBS loans is a serious prospect.





Similarly, the bank is Britain’s biggest financier of tar sands extraction in Canada.

This project – which RBS-NatWest have supported with billions of our pounds – has been described as the ‘most destructive on earth’. It involves stealing the land and poisoning the water of indigenous Canadians, emits vastly more carbon than conventional oil, and is liable to destroy an area of crucial boreal forest the size of England & Wales.

If this project goes ahead, we have no chance of avoiding runaway climate change.

This is why student network People & Planet have teamed up with Platform and The World Development Movement to take the Treasury to court (as reported on the front page of the FT).

In our ongoing legal battle, we are arguing that the Treasury has failed to follow laws on how public money can be spent.

Students at universities across the UK have been pressing the issue. RBS have been banned from advertising on campus by their local student union – the Edinburgh University’s Students’ Association. Student unions up and down the country – and NUS – have passed similar motions.

Similarly, thousands have taken action online.

The RBS bail-out provided the government with an excellent chance to set a new strategic direction for what was, by assets, the world’s biggest company, and the chief climate criminal of the European banking world. So far, they have failed to take this chance.

RBS’ slogan is ‘make it happen’. All too often, the ‘it’ has been climate change, wars and human rights abuses around the world. But it’s not really them ‘making it happen anymore’. It’s our taxes.

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Adam Ramsay works for People & Planet, the UK’s largest student campaigning network. You can help fund People & Planet’s campaigns here.

Picture from Flickr