BDS activists sticker Jaffa oranges. Credit: socialtextjournal.org.
Mark Twain once wrote: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” He was right. In the 1980s the Conservatives attempted to neuter local authorities, and recently they tried again.
In 1988 Margaret Thatcher introduced the Local Government Act which, as well as being deeply homophobic (section 28 prohibited councils from “promoting homosexuality”—and was only repealed in 2003), also banned town halls from factoring in political criteria when deciding who to award contracts to. It was a law designed to prevent councils from flexing their economic muscles for non-economic ends. It was, in other words, an anti-boycott law.
