Earlier this summer I sang in front of the board of Barclays Bank. Uninvited, loudly, repeatedly. And not a song they wanted to hear.

Along with forty other Climate Choir singers, I’d inveigled my way into its well-attended annual general meeting and was now interrupting proceedings by singing a revised version of the Spice Girls song Just Stop Now, harmonised in two parts. Barclays is one of the world’s worst biggest fossil fuel funders: they’ve invested more than $190 billion USD since the 2015 Paris Agreement and $16 billion  in 2022 alone. Barclays is one of the only major UK banks which has not started the process of restricting financing for new oil and gas, unlike its competitors HSBC, Lloyds and NatWest. 

This is what we sang:

Stop Right Now you dirty dirty bank!
Stop funding fossil fuels and end this madness!
Hey you! Burning up the earth better stop now baby 
We have had enough!
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
You dirty dirty bank!
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
We have had enough!
Climate change is going too fast
Fossil fuels belong in the past
Oil and gas are history
Time is up dirty bank!
Stop wrecking our climate!

There was something poignant about singing a two-part harmony at a billion-dollar global behemoth whose vast coffers move governments and the law to do what it wants, and which funds climate-wrecking projects linked to pollution and human rights abuses. Like flies buzzing around a tyrannosaurus. But perhaps it was this David and Goliath juxtaposition which made it more effective. I glimpsed bafflement, surprise and curiosity on the faces of some of the shareholders in that room. Not anger. Many people started filming on their phones. As for the board on the podium, they were frozen, seemingly unsure what to do next. 

We were inside the prestigious Queen Elizabeth 11 Conference Centre, opposite Westminster Abbey, whilst outside a huge security operation ahead of the Coronation was in full swing with pavements cordoned off and a massive raised dais set up for the crowds expected that Saturday.

Like the others, I’d arrived thirty or so minutes earlier, on my own, dressed smartly to blend in with the other shareholders. On my feet were a pair of my most expensive, elegant (and after an hour, excruciating) shoes. 

We knew there was a chance we wouldn’t all get through, as Barclays was no doubt expecting some kind of trouble. Environmental and human rights groups stationed outside the AGM thrust fliers at me. Rather than taking them as I normally would,  I clicked into character and tutted them away. As I filed in behind the other shareholders in the queue, heading for the man at the checkpoint, I could see that he had already prevented at least one person from entering, questioning their paperwork. 

Would mine be enough? I channelled the entitlement and body language of a major Barclay’s shareholder, wafting my ID and paperwork under the man’s nose. A minute later, he waved me through. Now I was in the queue, waiting to get into the building, up the steps and through airport type security, a Boycott Barclays banner thrust into the side of my bra so that if I was patted down it wouldn’t be discovered. 

Along with several security personnel positioned near the door, two women with mics were scanning the queue, watching for potential troublemakers. I concentrated on perusing the running order of the proxy vote paperwork and listened to a shareholder behind me bemoaning Barclays’ fossil fuel investments – they were a financial risk, he said; Barclays share price was not doing well.

As I got through the airport-type security, the first thing I saw was a huge image of wind turbines projected onto the far wall. Because – doh – Barclays is actually all about saving the planet these days. Just ignore the $16 billion for fossil fuel companies in 2022 – keep looking at those nice photos of wind turbines. Since 2021, when the International Energy Agency concluded there could be no new oil, gas or coal development if the world was to reach net zero by 2050, Barclays has invested more than $19.5 billion in fossil fuels. 

The greenwashing gap between the image Barclays projects, and what it actually does, has been pastiched brilliantly by the Make My Money Matter campaign

 I collected my voting card and headed up in the lift. Attendants and security everywhere, no expense spared. Smiling attendants waved us through to the main hall where the AGM would shortly start.

I took my place in the far side of the room with the other proxy voters.  Mic-wearing security personnel were everywhere, scanning the room. A huge raised empty podium in front, bathed in on-brand Barclays blue light. After a few moments the board theatrically filed in, silhouetted against the lights, taking their seats an exaggerated distance from one another. As chair Nigel Higgins introduced the meeting and the other directors, massive screens offered close-ups. 

The whole thing was a massively choreographed effort to credentialise and legitimise. To project authority, competency and respectability. 

And then we stood up, started singing and ruined it for them. 

A few minutes in, and  my nerves had disappeared. I could see the disconcerted expressions on the faces of the security. They didn’t know how to react. Chair Nigel Higgins was frozen in place. All the other directors just sat there, like wax works. ‘Hey you!’ we shouted/sang, pointing our fingers directly at the board;  ‘you dirty, dirty bank!’ waving our fingers at them like some kind of scandalised aunt. The whole thing was surreal and about to get more so, as middle-aged women pulled out Boycott Barclays banners from their underwear, holding them up to different parts of the room to emphasise the message. Me included. 

At one point Higgins suggested that ‘you’ve made your point’ and might want to leave, but we just sang louder. Then a security guy’s voice at my elbow told me that if I wanted to stay and vote I would need to stop singing, but I ignored him, instead moving away towards the group across the hall,  where we slowly filed from our seats and walked through the room towards the exit, ever so slowly, singing loudly as we went. Security were keen to hurry us on but the whole thing was being filmed, shareholders were watching and some of the singers were elderly women. It wouldn’t look good for them to manhandle us – for singing?

Time gets hazy in situations like this but I reckon we held up proceedings for at least 20-30 minutes. It felt like a long time, and we’d sabotaged the meeting before it had even begun. The surreal icing on the cake came as we slowly filed out, singing loudly the whole time. The  Barclays autocue, set up to broadcast the words of the board, had somehow started transcribing the words of the song. YOU DIRTY DIRTY BANK! The screen said. STOP WRECKING OUR CLIMATE! Just in case someone at the back had missed the point, or couldn’t hear our words. Watching the footage later, I realised that the sign language transcriber was also translating the words of our little ditty, and looked as if she was dancing and enjoying herself in the process. 

My two takeaways from the experience: One: soft power can be surprisingly effective. Two: they’re less powerful than we think. They’d spent a fortune on rationalising insanity in the form of this AGM but we burst their bubble. What happened at the AGM (and different groups after us also creatively sabotaged ) was embarrassing for them.  Yes, they can command lawyers and ‘thinktanks’ and security to protect their interests – but a lot of establishment and corporate power simply rests on our tacit agreement, and submission to business as usual. Once you hack their storyline (as the Black Lives Matter protests did in 2020) they don’t know how to respond, and their essential weakness is exposed. 

We exposed them, we created a story that went round the world and my hope is that we might have convinced a few more shareholders through our softly confrontational approach. 

It felt scary to enter that bubble and burst it – but that’s also what made it so exhilarating and liberating. You feel your own power – and the power that comes from joining with others. And you feel how nervous that makes them.

P.S. We can all play our part in turning off the fossil fuel taps – here is one simple way:

Move your money and encourage your employer, friends and family to do so too: https://makemymoneymatter.co.uk/

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