Activists are menacing the Edinburgh festivals’ future

Edinburgh’s two main festivals, report The Times, face ‘financial turmoil’ following the departure of many of their most generous and solvent sponsors. According to Tony Lankester, chief executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, corporate backers are ditching their support for ‘high-risk’ arts events, describing the arena as a ‘minefield’.

The sponsors – the most high-profile among them being fund-management company Baillie Gifford – do not really regard the festivals themselves as a ‘minefield’, of course. There is a limit to what damage several egregious remarks heard within a marquee hosting a few left-wing authors might do – however hostile they might be to ‘late-stage capitalism’ and the global financial system. No one needs reassuring that Irvine Welsh’s views on capital-gains tax are not endorsed by the event’s sponsor.

What corporate sponsors are afraid of, with good cause, is the bad publicity cooked up by protesters. The likes of activist-group Fossil Free Books target these events, hoping to deny companies less green in tooth and claw the chance to ‘arts-wash’ their venal, slavering pursuit of profit over the dusty dead bodies of Palestinian children and an over-heating planet. Or at least, that’s how they see it.

This threat first swam into the public consciousness just over a year ago at the Hay Festival, when Fossil Free Books persuaded a handful of celebrity authors, such as Nish Kumar and Charlotte Church to withdraw over claims that Baillie Gifford invests in companies ‘linked to the Israeli military’ as well as several major oil companies.

And the upshot? It certainly hasn’t derailed Israel’s military efforts, or undermined the viability of Shell, BP et al. And it’s not stopped Baillie Gifford’s clients from profiting from the activities of those the activists and authors love to loathe.

What it has probably affected are book sales. Although I certainly wouldn’t want to suggest that Kumar and Church have reached vastly more potential readers through their publicity-generating stand than they would have simply by being interviewed in front of a few hundred Guardianistas in a sweaty tent in Wales, but it might have delivered a measurable uptick.

What is clear is that Fossil Free Books and their ilk have robbed countless other authors sympathetic to their causes of the chance to reach a wider and very likely open-minded audience through book festivals and the like. Because now the corporate sponsors the activists are attacking are withdrawing their support from various arts events, preventing them from happening at all. The iron law of unintended consequences remains undefeated.

Assuming these consequences are unintended, of course. Perhaps the activist set really would prefer to see the elegant Regency squares of Edinburgh uncluttered by the bookish and their ephemera, from vegan wraps to decaffeinated Turmeric lattes. Indeed, perhaps militant ‘progressives’ really are committed to shutting down free debate even when the views aired are overwhelmingly supportive of progressive causes – anything, perhaps, to stop fund managers from using arts festivals to ‘normalise’ their dark trade.

I do feel somewhat conflicted. As a stand-up comedian, I’m well aware that we are regarded as a somewhat mongrel breed by the elegant thoroughbreds of the Proper Arts festivals. So I take some pride in my corner of the field being one of the few that can stand on its own two left feet. Comedy has very rarely depended on corporate sponsorship to remain above water.

I have on occasion shared the stage with a large inflatable bottle of branded lager, or stood in front of a banner giving thanks to a local insurance firm or hotel chain. But nobody was claiming that Stella was trying to ‘comedy-wash’ its jocular wife-beating brand associations by appearing on the same stage as me. The ad-men just want you to drink Stella.

When it comes to stand-up, the free exchange of cash for access to the event itself has usually been enough. Most comedy clubs, and touring comedy shows such as the one I have just completed, and the one I have planned for next year, remain gloriously unsullied by such dances with devil. So it’s bittersweet seeing just how fragile are the economic eco-systems of other arts events and especially the Edinburgh International Festival, which do sometimes seem to regard themselves as a bit above us oiks who perform at the Fringe.

But I must resist this philistinism. Like Freddie Mercury, I am very much on the ‘bringing ballet to the masses’ side of the table. And corporate sponsorship is certainly better than ‘government’ (that is, tax-payer) funding, of the kind to which the Royal Opera House, for example, feels entitled. (This despite the opera attracting patrons largely selected from the socio-economic elite, while the likes of my dad get very little state assistance in his purchase of model aeroplanes and trowels.)

I do think that book festivals and other events of this kind are good things, even if they do seem to overwhelmingly platform liberal-left opinionators of the very kind that seem prone to shutting down potential sponsorship sources if they disagree with what they say or do.

Hopefully, in the short term, Edinburgh’s assorted arts events can find some eager, eco-approved high rollers to lend branded approval to the festivities, while promising to only invest in naturally heated hydroponic Highland cannabis farms, and solar-powered gender-reassignment clinics. And perhaps a few of the international singing stars that grace the International Festival could meet them half way? Three, dare I say it, for a tenor? I’ll get my coat.

Oh, and one last thing while you’re here, do come and see me at the Fringe!

Simon Evans is a spiked columnist and stand-up comedian. Tickets for his tour, Have We Met?, are on sale here.