Eco activists urge customers to 'break up' with Barclays in Shrewsbury protest
Climate activists held a broken-hearted protest at a bank in Shrewsbury town centre.
Fifteen members of Extinction Rebellion Shrewsbury wanted to highlight the funding of fossil fuels and give reasons why they should ‘break up with Barclays’ before Valentine's Day.
Protesters chatted to customers and shoppers inside and outside the branch in Castle Street and handed out leaflets encouraging people to switch banks. A small group staged a sit in inside the bank.
Group spokesperson Sharuff Morsa said: ‘This Valentine’s Day we’re asking customers to realise that Barclays isn’t their friend.
"The bank promises they’re going green, but behind our backs they’re cheating on us and getting dirty with fossil fuel companies.
"As the world tries to stop the climate crisis and what Boris Johnson called 'the collapse of civilisation', Barclays is making huge profits from investing in coal, oil, gas, fracking, Arctic drilling and Amazon deforestation."
The Shrewsbury protest is one of dozens of protests happening across the Midlands this month.
Last week Oswestry campaigners ‘cleaned’ the town’s branch of Barclays, while similar protests have sprung up in Leicester, Chesterfield, Nottingham and Coventry.
The spokesperson added: "Instead of being a force for good, they’re killing us with their investments. We’ve had enough and this Valentine’s Day we’re breaking up with them."
A Barclays spokesperson said the bank was aligning its portfolio to support the goals of the Paris climate agreement by "significantly scaling up green financing, directly investing in new green technologies and helping clients in key sectors change their business models to reduce their climate change impact".
They added: "By 2025, we will reduce the emissions intensity of our power portfolio by 30 per cent and reduce absolute emissions of our energy portfolio by 15 per cent.
"Increasing at pace, our capital markets business has already facilitated £46 billion of green finance.
"We are one of the only banks globally investing our own capital – £175 million – into innovative, green start-ups.
"By deploying finance in this way, we are accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy and will become a net zero bank by 2050.”
