Shut the System says its activists and allied groups carried out coordinated actions targeting Barclays and BlackRock properties across five European financial hubs.

The underground climate justice network claimed responsibility for paint attacks, graffiti, lock-gluing and property disruption in London, Paris, Hamburg, Geneva and Vienna. Outside the capital, allied groups Carnage Total (France), act now! (Switzerland), Scientist Rebellion (Germany) and Shut Elbit Down (Austria) staged blockades and symbolic paint actions at Barclays and BlackRock offices.

In London, activists daubed graffiti and threw paint across the homes of Barclays CEO Vimlesh Maru and Global Head of Sustainable Finance Daniel Hanna, after sending spoof invitations to neighbours for a “cocktail party” highlighting the bank’s role in “genocide and climate collapse”. Several Barclays branches in London, Brighton, Norwich and Malvern were also sabotaged. In Paris, Carnage Total covered the bank’s French headquarters in paint, while Shut Elbit Down graffitied “BlackRock finances genocide” at its Vienna office. Hamburg saw slogans reading “Free Sudan, Congo, Gaza” on Barclays’ consumer division, and in Geneva activists from act now! blocked access to Barclays with bags of coal.

The action ends Shut The System’s ‘Summer of Sabotage’ declared by the group on 18th August, when activists cut electric cables at the London offices of JP Morgan Chase, Allianz and Barclays. Since the group’s launch, STS says its activists have returned more than 200 times to spray paint, glue locks, cut power and Wi-Fi at Barclays’ buildings across the UK.

Allied groups struck a similar tone. Carnage Total described Barclays as “one of the culprits” of climate catastrophe and genocide in Palestine. Act now! said the bank’s coal investments “threaten our and other living beings’ livelihoods”. Scientist Rebellion accused Barclays of financing fossil extraction and “bonds supporting apartheid and the arms trade”, while Shut Elbit Down said BlackRock “votes against climate resolutions, greenwashes funds, and invests in arms companies directly aiding the Gaza genocide”.

The groups demand immediate divestment from coal and arms firms linked to Gaza, an end to finance for fossil fuel expansion, binding emissions targets, protection of Indigenous rights, and financing for a just transition. They also call for citizens’ assemblies to hold central banks accountable and for alternatives to GDP as measures of prosperity.

Top photo: Paris