Tower Hamlets councillors have backed a call for council workers pensions to no longer be invested in companies operating in Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
At a full council meeting on 22 July, members overwhelmingly supported a motion urging London CIV, which manages local authority pension fund assets across the capital, to divest from companies “complicit in violations of international law, including Israel’s illegal occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories”.
The motion also calls on pension fund managers to withdraw investments from companies “known to be involved in illegal occupation and grave violations of international law”, including businesses engaged in illegal settlement trade.
Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are widely regarded as illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
The motion was proposed by Green Party Cllr Jonathan Purcell, who said council workers “do not want their pensions invested in these companies”.
Speaking during the debate, Cllr Purcell referred to what he described as “59 years of illegal occupation” and “78 years of continuous Nakba” – the Arabic term meaning “catastrophe”, which refers to the displacement of around 750,000 Palestinians during the creation of Israel in 1948.
He also described witnessing conditions in the occupied West Bank, including Palestinians being barred from a central street in Hebron because of Israeli settlers and meeting a Palestinian farmer whose water tank had allegedly been destroyed.
“This is the world that companies operate in, to turn a bigger profit come what may,” he said.
The motion received support from Aspire, Labour and Liberal Democrat members.
Aspire deputy mayor Cllr Maium Talukdar described the proposal as “a reasonable request”.
“We cannot change events overseas from this chamber, but we can decide what happens with public money here in Tower Hamlets,” he said.
Labour Cllr Victoria Lupton said she had spent 12 years working with Palestinians across the Middle East and North Africa and had returned from Beirut in Lebanon on the day of the meeting. She said she had witnessed the destruction in southern Lebanon following Israeli military action but urged the council to complete work already agreed on reviewing its investments.
In January 2025, the council voted to carry out an audit of how its pension funds were invested and to seek divestment from companies involved in the arms trade.
Cllr Lupton said: “Eighteen months on that audit has still not been reported back to the pensions committee.”
Members of Unison, the council’s largest trade union, staged a protest outside the meeting in support of the motion.
The motion was passed by a large majority. Conservative Cllr Peter Golds, who did not speak during the debate, voted against it.
