Red rag to a bulldozer: Sharen Green protests against JCB

‘We’re just a pinprick on the backside of JCB, but we got the story out.’

For three years various organisations and individuals – including me – have been campaigning to stop the sale of JCB bulldozers to Israel, which uses them to demolish Palestinian homes. These campaigners also want to shame the children’s charity NSPCC into refusing cash from JCB. Recently, we heard of a tournament staged by JCB at its own golf course and country club. It was the perfect opportunity to take our protests to the company’s doorstep.

The challenge was huge. The event was to be held in the middle of nowhere, on a site spread over many hundreds of acres. We toyed with the idea of getting onto the course and causing a spot of mayhem – JCB and the NSPCC deserve anything we could come up with. But on reflection it was the golfers and the public attending the event who were our real targets. It might well be the first time they would hear of how JCB makes its profits in Israel – or even the first time they had ever heard the story of Palestine.

These visitors were coming for an enjoyable day out so we abandoned the idea of stealing flags and other pranks to concentrate on getting the message across. This was a fortuitous decision.

A family-owned firm, JCB doesn’t need to hold normal AGMs. There are no shareholders, so the usual channels for challenging the company were not available. Instead we used the occasion to send a letter to Anthony and Carole Bamford, chair and director of JCB, detailing the company’s misdemeanours and calling them out for trying to ‘sportswash’ their misdeeds.

The letter was signed by Protecting Palestinian Families (PPF), the Israeli Campaign Against House Demolitions, and Jewish Voice for Labour.

The next thing to do was to ‘rally the troops’, using our numerous contacts across the country. That proved a bit of a washout, to be honest. Not many people responded, but we were determined to do something.

PPF’s Annie O’Gara designed a leaflet detailing JCB’s crimes, how they had been identified by the UN and Amnesty International, and how the NSPCC – which was to benefit from this major fundraiser – was happy to take money, some of which had been earned by making Palestinian children homeless and destitute.

One of the organisers – Steve Watters – spent valuable time and his own money finding the snail-mail addresses and Twitter handles of many of the golfing ‘legends’ taking part.

We devised a friendly letter to send to them, with a flyer in each envelope. The letter acknowledged that it would be an enjoyable occasion, but told them about the dark side of JCB and why we thought it was immoral for the NSPCC to accept its money. Simon Cardy, a social worker who worked on the NSPCC side of the campaign, came up with a picture of a bulldozer headlined ‘Don’t play golf with apartheid!’ This was tweeted to the players and hopefully made the point.

I met Annie two days beforehand to seed the area with our flyers. We thought we’d hand them out at the station but it only fielded six trains a day. So we repaired to Waitrose for a cup of coffee. While I went to the loo, carelessly leaving behind some flyers by the wash basins, Annie got chatting to her first victim. This was a woman whose husband was good friends with ‘Anthony’ (who, incidentally, was due to host the wedding celebrations of our prime minister on his Cotswold estate the next day). She was actually quite interested in what Annie had to say.

We wandered into the little town and proceeded to visit cafés and pubs, striking up conversations with people who seemed interested, some of whom worked for the company. Much to our surprise, nobody was at all hostile.

Then we moved on to Rocester itself. It felt like going into the lion’s den, as JCB seems to have a feudal hold over the place – there’s even a JCB plaque outside the village hall. But nobody was hostile – shops, cafés and pubs took our flyers without demur and were happy about us chatting to their customers.

Next it was time to do our recce. Steve had cycled round the site and taken video footage and photos to familiarise us with the scene. We identified a stretch of grass between two roundabouts where we could raise our banners and flags.

The place is massive – beautiful lakes and walkways open to the public on one side of the road, and the golf course a pleasant stroll away on the other. No wonder JCB – known as an excellent employer – is really popular around here.

The night before the tournament three of us made our way to nearby Derby, where we were royally hosted by Palestine supporter, Jean Sharp. There was to be a reception for the annual Big Ride for Palestine. Nearly 300 cyclists were to take in the golf tournament on their way to Manchester.

The next morning we got to Rocester bright and early. It became immediately apparent that we were expected. Two very pleasant constables greeted us and stopped me stepping into the road whenever a punter came by. I managed to hand out a few flyers and there was quite a bit of support, judging by the honking and thumbs-up.

But we weren’t making much impact, so I decided to go to the car park and stick flyers under windscreen wipers. There was a constant stream of people. I approached them smilingly and offered them a flyer. Almost all accepted and several engaged in friendly chat. I remembered to tell them to enjoy the golf!

We established that the big names would be teeing off at 11.30am so we decided to walk up to the pedestrian entrance at 11am. Our friendly neighbourhood police officers pointed out that we probably wouldn’t get in as there were cameras everywhere and we’d be recognised. Anyway, our bags – containing the incriminating flyers – would be searched.

They were right. Five of us with bona fide tickets set off. Sure enough we were met by Charlie, the very charming head of security. He said as we hadn’t come to watch the golf (how on earth did he know that?) we would not be allowed in. Our money was duly refunded and he pointed out an area where we could leaflet pedestrians, which we did.

Then we walked back down to our grass strip putting all our remaining flyers on every car in sight. We also distributed hundreds of flyers for the Big Ride.

I’d been a bit sceptical about the Big Ride’s stop at the entrance to the golf course, but they were allowed to rest briefly and they were a wonderful sight – their chanting rivalled our singers. In fact being among so many fervent supporters of Palestinian rights brought tears to my eyes.

Things hadn’t gone exactly according to plan but I think we had much better penetration by working on the vehicles than had we trailed round the course, trying to distract punters from what they’d come to see.

Of course we’re just a pinprick on the backside of JCB, but we got the story out and I hope not too many people were disappointed that the flyers weren’t vouchers for pizzas!

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Comments

I might be late to the party, but thank you for this article.  I had no idea that JCB and the NSPCC were involved in Palestine in this way.

By Charlotte Stripling on 1st September 2022 - 9:10

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