I WRITE to acquaint your readership with the alarming change of ethos at what should now be known as “the Un-co-operative Bank.”

In recent years I, and many like me, have chosen to bank with the Co-operative Bank in recognition of its hitherto ethical stance regarding such issues as the arms trade, renewable energy, human rights, etcetera.

Many of us stayed with the bank through its recent difficult period, following its ill-advised acquisition of the Britannia Building Society and indeed I, amongst no doubt many others, received a letter from the Chief Executive in February 2014, thanking me for my loyalty.

In part, as a result of those difficulties, the bank felt obliged to open its doors to wider ownership and to what might be described as “commercial” rather than “membership” control. As a consequence, and for example, Perry Capital, a US hedge fund, now has a seat on the bank’s board of directors.

In recent months, without consultation or adequate justification, the bank has closed the accounts of dozens of organisations associated with Palestine, including the internationally known and nationally active Palestine Solidarity Campaign and many groups with a more local focus. In what are unconvincing attempts to justify its actions, the bank refers to its “risk profile” without specifying the “risks” it apparently foresees. Most, if not all of the organisations penalised do not send funds to Palestine, or elsewhere in the middle east and cannot therefore be accused, or even suspected, of funding terrorism.

Indeed, so slapdash was the bank’s alleged research, that it maintains that the Friends of Al Aqsa, another of the organisations unilaterally deprived of banking facilities, is a charity. That organisation is not a charity, it has never been a charity and does not claim or even pretend to have charitable status; it is, as it rightly maintains, a political campaign group.

It is perhaps pertinent at this stage to note that Richard Perry, the man behind Perry Capital, has served as a director of the pro-Zionist “Israeli Project.”

People who still bank with the Co-operative Bank, perhaps in the mistaken belief that it retains an ethical ethos, will draw their own conclusions.

Ray Packham, Treasurer, Bradford on Avon Friends of Palestine