The Herts Palestine Support Coalition is a county-wide initiative campaigning for Hertfordshire County Council to divest from companies complicit in war crimes, apartheid and occupation.
Specifically, we are calling for HCC’s Pensions Committee to commit to divesting the Herts Local Government Pension Scheme from companies complicit in Israel’s well-documented human rights abuses against Palestinians, and to refrain from any such investments in future through implementation and review of its Responsible Investment Policy. Our demands are aligned with a motion passed in June 2025 by UNISON Hertfordshire, which represents HCC employees and is therefore the main body representing members of the pension scheme across the county.
Our member organisations are St Albans Friends of Palestine, North Herts Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and the East Herts Palestine Support Group.
We are working in close cooperation with LGPS Divest, a nationwide campaign calling for Local Government Pension Scheme funds across the country to stop collectively investing billions in companies complicit in grave violations of Palestinians’ human rights. LGPS Divest is backed by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and trade unions including GMB, Unite, and UNISON.
Some of our members were involved in a previous campaign calling for Hertfordshire County Council to end investments tied to Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territories. Having gathered over 1,000 signatures from Hertfordshire residents demanding that the Council end such investments, they secured the right to raise the issue at a full Council meeting in February 2022.
The Council took the position that decisions in regard to the pension fund are constrained by “fiduciary duties to the fund and its beneficiaries” and that “The County Council cannot direct the fund in respect of its investment decisions”. Essentially, councillors said they couldn’t do anything about the issue even if they wanted to.
After that, further emails to the Council went unanswered.
We know that councils absolutely do have the power to take decisive action on this issue. Other councils have done so. In fact, the pension fund administered by Herts County Council has a Responsible Investment Policy that explicitly identifies human rights as a priority issue and specifically provides for ending investments in companies that persist in business practices that raise concerns in this regard. Yet despite this policy, the Council continues to invest in firms that are complicit in grave human rights violations against Palestinians, and which show no signs of changing their business practices. You can read more about this on our HCC Investments page.
We are now returning to this issue with a bigger coalition of local organisations, a growing membership base among Hertfordshire residents, the backing of a national movement for divestment, and a renewed resolve – hardened further by the horrors that we’ve all witnessed recently in Gaza and the West Bank – to ensure that Hertfordshire County Council stops investing in companies complicit in war crimes, apartheid and occupation.
Herts Palestine Support Coalition 