A eulogy for Zoe Cohen’s Institute of Directors membership

Zoe Cohen is a prominent member of the infamous at-large “Barclays 7” group of climate activists who recklessly, unfathomably caused violent criminal damage to Barclays Global HQ in Canary Wharf in April 2021 — and was convicted in December 2022, receiving a suspended sentence in January 2023.

The Institute of Directors is a society for the preservation of colonial hegemony. For some reason Zoe Cohen was actually invested in the IoD — had been for a whole decade — and in fact was surprised at being kicked out — via email no less — of the IoD shortly after her conviction. She expressed her surprise in a LinkedIn article lamenting the IoD’s decision to terminate her membership and swiftly erase evidence of her participation in their National Sustainability Taskforce.

The IoD clearly believe the Barclays 7 are merely a hysterical group of older women who wish they were a gang of knife-wielding nine-year-olds. Honestly, it’s hard to tell what their intentions really were.

Who knows what they were on about. (Photograph: Kirsty O’Connor/PA as featured in January’s Climate activists guilty of smashing Barclays HQ windows spared jail, The Guardian)

Anyway, welcome to this commemoration ceremony in remembrance of Zoe Cohen’s prolific membership at the Institute of Directors, here at 116 Pall Mall.

Let’s begin with a word on the Institute of Directors itself.

Ever since its formation in 1903, the Institute of Directors has been at the forefront of British businesses. The Royal Charter, received just three years later, charged the IoD with promoting free enterprise, lobbying government on behalf of our members and setting standards for corporate governance in the UK.

The IoD has always spoken its mind, without fear or favour. Sometimes that has meant saying things political leaders do not want to hear; at others, it has meant criticising leading companies or businesspeople whose actions may be damaging to the reputation of UK entrepreneurialism.

The IoD has hosted prime ministers and presidents, royals and raconteurs, artists and adventurers. But, as its history, now well into its second century, demonstrates, it has always done so with the best interests of British business in mind.

— Our History, IoD

IoD quite clearly does not accept plebs into their membership.