Environmental protesters are due to lead a protest through the town centre tomorrow against a council’s ties with an oil conglomerate.

Divest East Sussex, a campaign group that stands against fossil fuels, is staging a "march of the giant scissors" from Lewes Railway Station to County Hall from 8.15am.

The protest, led by bagpipes, will see activists wielding a six-foot pair of scissors alongside a giant "Big Oil" monster.

The group is calling for an end to East Sussex County Council’s ties to Big Oil, a collection of the world’s largest publicly traded oil and natural gas producers such as BP, Shell and Chevron, which Divest has been campaigning against for for ten years.

According to Divest, the council has investments through the East Sussex Pension Fund with “tens of millions of pounds of local people’s pension monies” reportedly invested in oil and gas companies.

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The protest will begin at the station and will proceed through the centre to County Hall, where a “symbolic mass cutting of the ties” will take place at 9.20am.

Pension Fund member Sarah Hazlehurst said: “From cyclones in Mozambique to fires in California we’re already seeing the deadly impact of over 1C of global warming, particularly in the Global South.

“Preventing even greater and deadlier climate chaos means an immediate end to the expansion of the fossil fuel system.

“In other words: no new oil, no new coal and no new gas.

“Yet more than four and a half years after declaring a ‘climate emergency’, East Sussex County Council is still refusing to divest the East Sussex Pension Fund from the giant oil and gas companies – like Shell and BP – that are expanding the fossil fuel system and driving the climate crisis.

“This is a catastrophic failure of leadership. It’s time for ESCC to start treating the climate emergency as an emergency, and to cut its ties to Big Oil by making a public commitment to fully divest the Fund from fossil fuels.”

A spokeswoman for the East Sussex Pension Fund said: “East Sussex County Council is designated under legislation for the local administration of pensions and other benefits payable for people entitled to the Local Government Pension Scheme in the county.


“The Fund’s primary responsibility is to pay pensions to its 85,000 pension scheme members, and must make investment decisions to generate a return in order to achieve this.


“The Fund invests in line with regulation and only invests indirectly through investment managers and not in any company directly.

"It has a strong focus on responsible investment in its stewardship of assets and takes climate risk and environmental, social and governance factors into account when investing.


“The Fund has removed fossil fuel companies from its equity allocation within the investment portfolio and has also reduced the exposure in other parts of the portfolio.

"Instead the Fund has a focus on investing in climate solutions, greener revenues, and resource efficiency.”