Edinburgh's reputation as a city of enlightenment at risk from activist boycotts by Greta Thunberg and co – John McLellan

Companies like Baillie Gifford do not need to support Edinburgh’s book festival – or any other arts event or institution

There was a time, not that long ago, when Edinburgh’s Festival season was about the arts and only the arts. Politics obviously played an important part but not overtly, until someone had the bright idea of launching a Festival of Politics to make use of the great Catalonian carbuncle at the bottom of the Royal Mile. Audience numbers were on a par with a Fringe debutante, but with no chance of a teary social media post boosting the door.

It didn’t need High Street flyers to say “politics this way”, but now it seems there are as many politicians on the Fringe as Footlights wannabes. We’ve had shows from wannabe stand-up Alex Salmond and this year Iain Dale’s LBC show All Talk at the EICC rarely failed to make front page news, with Penny Mordaunt telling the SNP to shove it where the sun don’t shine, Mr Salmond offering an olive branch to Nicola Sturgeon, and Ms Sturgeon telling him to stick the olive branch up the same place as Ms Mordaunt.

Comedian and impersonator Matt Forde got in on the act, with his guest Humza Yousaf saying “eff you” to bigots, only to be told to eff off himself at Mr Dale’s show the next day. Then there was football pundit Graham Spiers in conversation with Joanna Cherry on preposterous banqueting thrones at The Stand at the Assembly Rooms, the choice of interviewer perhaps a tacit admission that the comedy club’s attempt to ban Ms Cherry, for her apparently controversial view that a man is not a woman because he says he is, was a spectacular own goal.

Not to be outdone, Greta Thunberg effectively told the Book Festival to eff off because its sponsor, the 115-year-old Edinburgh fund management firm Baillie Gifford, threatens the planet by only managing to ensure that 98 per cent of its clients’ money is invested in businesses not involved in the production of fossil fuels. Check your privilege, they say these days, and for most of us, there would be few greater privileges than to have the equivalent of a sniffer dog scouring every contact of every invitation for the merest whiff of kerosene or diesel to get out of yet another depressing encounter with a sea of earnest young people in thrall to what has become a global death cult.

But this is where Festival politics has entered new territory. Having successfully turned the Book Festival into a target, authors and interviews are now falling over themselves to demand Baillie Gifford’s expulsion, with 50 of them writing to its outgoing director Nick Barley to threaten a boycott next year if they are still involved, and Edinburgh-based Extinction Rebellion activist Mikaela Loach leading a walk-out from a discussion she was chairing on Saturday night.

Corporate sponsorship oils Festival wheels and companies back such events for a variety of reasons, but at its heart usually it’s about connecting with customers, a convivial way to entertain clients, and a strong belief in what the supported organisation wants to achieve, not an attempt to pass themselves off as something they’re not. Accusations of greenwashing, culture camouflage or whatever are hogwash, but if there is a hint of negativity and unpleasantness, there will be those within a targeted organisation who will be only too happy to walk away. And who would blame Baillie Gifford if they did?

The bottom line, as it were, is companies like Baillie Gifford do not need to support the Book Festival, or any other arts event or institution for that matter, to achieve corporate goals and targeting them will do nothing to cool the planet or whatever else their new enemies seek. They just need to make sure they produce a return for their clients and ostracising them is likely to result in less openness about where investments go, and a withdrawal from public engagement which might result in unwelcome political scrutiny of legitimate activities.

A glance at this year’s International Festival programme shows just how hard it is to attract private corporate support, and extreme demands of angry activists make it harder. Gratuitously selling petrol and diesel cars? Goodbye Arnold Clark. And as for its learning and engagement partner? That would be Baillie Gifford. It was therefore brave for Royal Lyceum Theatre director David Greig to put his head above the parapet in the Book Festival’s defence, and his view that the threat was “counterproductive and short-sighted” was on the money if, as is highly possible, it results in reduced revenue for the events, companies operating further away from prying eyes, and the general public becoming increasingly irked by disruptive hectoring.

Mr Barley is trying the conciliatory approach by offering a meeting to discuss why the sponsorship was accepted, but faced with views like that of author Yara Rodrigues Fowler, who said “allowing them to sponsor cultural events gives them a social licence to continue funding the destruction of our only home”, his chances of success are limited.

The Book Festival prides itself on being a forum for debate, but that only works if there is no suggestion that views are not compromised from the start. The reputation of Edinburgh as a city of enlightenment has already been dented by Edinburgh University’s vulnerability to activism, be it the dissociation from philosopher David Hume or the inability to facilitate the screening of the documentary Adult Human Female, and it would be further undermined if the Baillie Gifford boycott was successful.

The impact of targeting private companies means more reliance on public funds which pushes the Festivals further into political territory, but maybe we should be resigned to the Geroge Orwell view that “the opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude”, or Thomas Mann’s blunt opinion that “everything is politics”. And the Book Festival could always seek a new venue where association with fossil fuel is beyond doubt. Like Murrayfield. Scottish Gas Murrayfield.