Pro-Palestine activists occupied the St Andrew’s Street branch of Barclays bank yesterday (15/03), to protest against its alleged “profiteering from fossil fuel extraction industries and the ongoing genocide of Gaza/Palestine”.

Campaigners from Extinction Rebellion Cambridge, the Organisation of Radical Cambridge Activists (ORCA), and Cambridge Stop The War occupied the inside of Barclays’ window, displaying a poster reading “Barclays: Blood on your hands” alongside an image featuring red hands.

Protesters also rallied around the area, urging passers-by to boycott Barclays and instead switch to a different bank. The campaigners called on the corporation to “divest from genocide” and “divest from fossil fuels”.

They alleged Barclays invests over £2 billion in nine different companies “whose weapons and military technology” have been employed in Israeli attacks on Gaza and also claimed the bank has over £100 billion in aerospace and defence investments.

Campaigners also branded Barclays “the Ecocide bank” for their heavy investments in extractive fossil fuel companies, allegedly “investing £81 billion between 2016-2023”.

The action coincided with a national march coordinated by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in London, in which former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn spoke.

Last term (21/10), pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted an event hosted by Barclays. Protesters said that their aim was to make student attendees feel “extremely uncomfortable,” and were seen shouting at University security staff.

In 2023, Cambridge students joined a ‘career boycott’ of the bank due to its climate policies. In a letter addressed to ‘Barclays bosses,’ student campaigners said that they would be “taking our talent to exciting employers who are working on solutions to the problems we’re facing, rather than piling billions into making it worse.”

Last year, a similar protest occurred where students and local campaigners organised a sit-in at a Barclays branch in Cambridge, calling for the bank to end its funding of the fossil fuel industry and its “investment” in Israeli attacks on Gaza.

The sit-in also follows the unsuccessful attempt of Cambridge University to obtain a five-year injunction against protests on some of its sites. The University is set to go to the High Court on Wednesday (19/03) to reapply for an injunction.

Days later, student activists at Cambridge for Palestine (C4P) students claimed that Cambridge deploys a “punitive security culture” in response to protest, amid rising numbers of investigations by the University’s counter-terrorism and freedom of speech committee.