Four years since some of the UK’s biggest banks received a £37bn bailout we are living through tough economic times, partly due to the excesses of the banking sector.
National Ethical Investment Week is a campaign that aims to show people they have ethical and green options when it comes to their finance and investment decisions. With Students’ Unions up and down the country holding tens of millions of pounds, we believe the student movement has huge potential to lead the way towards more ethical finance.
With twelve unions having already moved their money, the campaign aims to see 20 unions move over the next year.
Danielle Grufferty, NUS Vice-President (Society and Citizenship), said:
“Students have a long history of using our power as consumers to put pressure on big companies and bring about an end to unethical practices. Young people are suffering because of an economic crisis that they did not create and moving our money is a simple way to demand better for banks in the future.
Just as students collectively worked together to boycott Barclays during the Apartheid era, it is vital that our unions are working to practice what we preach. That's why NUS is supporting this campaign.”
The guide follows an information campaign aimed at individual students launched earlier this year, and the historic student-led, NUS backed boycott of Barclays in the 80s, which saw the bank pull out of Apartheid South Africa.
Among the Unions which have already moved to a better bank is University of East Anglia Students' Union, with a budget peaking at £2 million each year, who moved from Natwest to the Coop.
Rosie Rawle, Ethical Issues Officer at the University of East Anglia says:
“This decision was made because we believed that we needed to send a message to fossil-fuel investing banks. The RBS group should immediately stop funding carbon-intensive projects and ventures that destroy irreplaceable eco-systems and violate human rights. We as a student union refuse to allow our money to support these practices.
It is an action that we believe all staff, students and the university itself should follow, and hope this sparks a continued wave of consumer pressure to ditch dirty development.”
You can read the briefing for Students’ Unions here; as well as the guide for individual students wanting to move their own money.
For more information on how to get your SU involved contact Lucy.Hawthorne@nus.org.uk