On Sunday 18 May, British bulldozer manufacturer JCB was due to celebrate its 80th anniversary at its headquarters in Rocester in the British midlands with a so-called ‘sportive’, a cycle ride which aimed to raise money for the children’s charity NSPCC. However, the sportive did not go according to plan thanks to people highlighting JBC complicity with Israel.
Activists from the Stop JCB Demolitions Campaign disrupted the event. They turned it into an expose of JCB’s complicity in ethnic cleansing and genocide. On top of this, they shamed NSPCC for accepting funds from a company which has destroyed children’s lives in Palestine, India, and Kashmir, plunging them into homelessness, poverty, and lasting trauma.
The company is notorious for profiting from the destruction of homes in all three locations.
JCB’s bulldozer genocide exposed at 80th anniversary event
Despite strict security, the activists managed to enter the sportive. When the JCB event began with the cyclists being flagged off, several cyclists revealed striking black and yellow T-shirts with the message: “Stop Bulldozer genocide In Palestine, India and Kashmir”:
Simultaneously, supporters of the campaign shouted slogans and held banners accusing JCB of complicity in genocide. They also accused the NSPCC of a callous and racist lack of care for children in Palestine, India, and Kashmir:
#StopJCB
On JCB’s 80th anniversary event, their crimes in #Palestine, #India and #Kashmir were exposed!
JCB you can’t hide! Bulldozing homes is genocide! pic.twitter.com/82AtZP0cBm— SouthAsia Solidarity (@SAsiaSolidarity) May 18, 2025
Despite the JCB security guards best efforts, activists enacted this scene over and over again across the 50km route of the sportive.
JCB’s chairman, billionaire Anthony Bamford, or Baron Bamford of Daylesford and Wooton is a ‘super donor’ to the British Conservative party and a close friend of Boris Johnson. The Bamford family trusts control the JCB empire. It has been involved in offshore tax scandals.
More recently, Bamford has been aligning himself closer to the far-right Reform party. In March this year, party leader Nigel Farage entered a major Reform rally on a JCB machine that Bamford lent to him. Earlier, Bamford had treated him to a £8,000 helicopter flight to tour a JCB site.
So why is the NSPCC, the children’s charity whose aim is the “prevention of cruelty to children” accepting funds from a company which is complicit in ethnic cleansing in Palestine, India, and Kashmir?
NSPCC: taking funds from a company wrapped up in children’s rights abuses
Over the years, the NSPCC has been frequently asked to stop taking funds from JCB. Groups have provided it with evidence of the callous home demolitions JCB has carried out. As the UK Palestine Mental Health network has put it previously:
It would appear that children’s services provided by the NSPCC in the UK are financed in part by profits from state crime and the abuse and traumatisation of children overseas.
In India, state governments controlled by Narendra Modi’s Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have consistently used JCB bulldozers to demolish Muslim homes, shops, and places of worship. It’s part of an ongoing project disturbingly named ‘bulldozer justice’. In fact, JCB is so closely intertwined with this project that it has come to symbolise attacks on Muslims. All the while, the harm to children is incalculable.
For example, on the 2 February 2024, the demolition of a madrasa and 600 year-old Mosque in Mehrauli, South Delhi, left more than 20 orphaned children who lived in it displaced and traumatised. Authorities gave no notice before moving in the JCB bulldozers.
In Kashmir, in the name of development drives, authorities have demolished houses using JCB bulldozers across large areas. This has affected whole communities, and of course numerous children, permanently damaging their physical and mental health
JCB complicity with Israel: ‘hypocritically posing as family friendly’
The Stop JCB Demolitions Campaign is a coalition of organisations based in the UK. Two of its members – South Asia Solidarity Group and Nijjormanush – previously produced a report titled Stop JCB’s Bulldozer Genocide: A report on human rights violations in Palestine, India & Kashmir. This references a large number of cases where JCB has been involved in serious human rights violations.
The campaign has also filed a complaint with the UK National Contact Point. This is a government body promoting OECD guidelines on responsible business conduct. The complaint alleges that the manufacturer had failed to address the adverse human rights impacts from the use of its products in India.
The Stop JCB’s Demolitions Campaign has two main demands. Firstly, it demands that JCB must end its relationship with the Israeli Ministry of Defence. It states that it must cease all activities in occupied Palestine.
Secondly, it calls on it to commit to ensuring that its products are not used for human rights violations in India and Kashmir. Specifically, it suggests it should do this through robust monitoring and prevention systems. This includes making compulsory the use of its existing LiveLink technology to trace and locate JCB machines. It argues that JCB’s failure to use this technology is a deliberate violation of its human rights responsibilities.
Stop JCB Demolitions campaign member Mukti Shah said:
The fact that JCB continues to operate on behalf of the Israeli state in ethnically cleansing Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and that they have also failed to make use of the technology they already have to prevent horrific human rights violations in India and Kashmir, despite an Indian Supreme Court ruling is utterly shameful
Josh – a cyclist who took part in the sportive – added:
I am glad to be here exposing the crimes of JCB, a British company which hypocritically poses as family friendly when in fact it is destroying communities in Palestine, India and Kashmir. As for the NSPCC, the fact that they are accepting JCB’s blood-stained money shows that they think only some children matter. This is blatant colonial racism.
Featured image and additional images supplied
