Success in Barclays tax haven campaign

From ActionAid, some excellent news:

“53,000 people taking action, hundreds of us writing to our MPs, thousands of passionate messages and one Father Christmas later, I’m really pleased to be able to tell you that Barclays have committed to stop promoting tax dodging through tax havens to companies investing in Africa!”

And, by way of context:

“Tax havens cost developing countries three times more than they get in aid every year. But companies wouldn’t be able to move their money into tax havens without the help of banks, which is why we decided to tackle Barclay’s role in this head on. We launched the campaign late last year. And it culminated in thousands of us taking action at the bank’s shareholder AGM in London, where campaigner Will Davis delivered our collective call for action, and won a promise from the bank’s Chief Executive to look into the issue. Mountains of media coverage also helped pile on the pressure.”

Now read on.

N.B. The Tax Justice Network apologises for the use of an image of a palm tree in this article to represent tax havenry. The palm tree trope is widely used across media to associate international tax abuse largely or exclusively with small tropical islands whose populations are predominantly non-white and/or Black-majority. Evidence shows that the vast majority of international tax abuse is driven by rich OECD countries like the UK, US, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands – yet it is small island nations that are often targeted by international policymakers while rich OECD countries are afforded exemptions. This colonial and structurally racist situation is bolstered by the use of the palm tree/island trope in media coverage of tax abuse. While the Tax Justice Network took the internal decision years ago to ban the use of the palm tree trope in our publications, we have kept our past uses of the trope up in order to be transparent about our past actions, rather than erase them, and to reaffirm our commitment to reject the trope going forward.