Charities and politics
Oxfam, Save the Children, the Child Poverty Action Group - they are all at it: charities are busy lobbying the Chancellor Alistair Darling on what should be in his Budget later this month.
Today's report from Oxfam is explicit in how the charity believes [pdf link]: make the tax system more progressive, put welfare reform on hold, increase out-of-work benefits and tax credits...
Amid warnings that youngsters in Britain may suffer malnutrition, Save the Children called last weekend for the government to "".
Now, it is obvious that however much one might agree with the aims of these organisations, these are political demands. There are some who feel such activities over-step the line for a registered charity.
Jill Kirby, from the right-leaning think tank , has accused Save the Children of .
As she put it in on this morning's Today programme on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4: "The most important added value that a charity can provide, which a politician cannot provide, is to be out there actually saving lives, saving children, being there for those who need them. It is not actually being in Parliament, becoming a lobby group, and there is a real worry this is the direction charities have moved in."
She was responding to the news that £750,000 of tax-payers' money is to be given to around 30 charitable organisations specifically for "political campaigning".
The Cabinet Office minister Liam Byrne said it was about "giving a little bit of money to pioneer some innovative campaigning techniques on behalf of people who often don't have their voices heard in the public arena".
According to the Charity Commission, which has recently refreshed but not changed : "An organisation will not be charitable if its purposes are political. A charity must be established for a charitable purpose...
BUT
...as a general principle, charities may undertake campaigning and political activity as a positive way of furthering or supporting their purposes."
In other words, it is a perfectly legitimate part of a charity's work so long as it is not the continuing and sole activity of the charity. Indeed the Charity Commission goes further stressing that "campaigning and political activity can be legitimate and valuable activities for charities to undertake".
Oxfam has said it "believes passionately that campaigning to achieve policy change in favour of poor people is an essential part of its response to overcoming poverty".
In an e-mail this morning, the charity reminds me of a quote from the Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara: "When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor were hungry, they called me a communist."
The land occupied by both political and charitable lobbyists is difficult territory, as the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ discovered over the question of whether the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Gaza should be broadcast. But what strikes me is that the politicking we are seeing at the moment is more than the usual arm-twisting of a chancellor ahead of a Budget.
"The recession could be an opportunity to change thinking about poverty - in government and beyond," says Oxfam in its report.
It is a thought echoed by the Child Poverty Action Group which recently said that "". [pdf link]
What were once political and economic certainties are now being revisited and charities believe there is an opportunity to reshape the debate about the role of the state in focusing on inequality and poverty for the long-term.
As , there is "a sense that the greedy rich have cheated decent working people of their rightful share of the pie".
In this context, the argument goes, it would be "unfair" if the very poor were to suffer the consequences of the sins of the very rich.
And that idea of "fairness" has real political resonance right now. Oxfam writes of the need "to build the foundations for future recovery on a fairer, more sustainable basis".
'We privatised profit in the good times but were left to socialise debt when things went bad' is how the Child Poverty Action Group characterises the bail-out of the banks. "Such a one-sided deal has bred massive and deeply corrosive social inequality in our society. This is no longer acceptable."
I suspect the most important thing to understand about this moment in history is that no-one knows where we are heading. It is far from clear what the political, economic and social consequences of the global recession will be. In the terrifying uncertainty the charities believe it is their role to ensure the voice of the poor is heard within the clamour.
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