From a modest Oxford shop, famine relief committee built £1billion empire with tentacles across the globe
From humble origins, Oxfam became a behemoth more interested in its reputation than its mission
THE mixed bag of academics, Quakers and general do-gooders who had gathered inside the Old Library at the University Church in Oxford on Oct 5 1942 had wanted to help the people of Greece. The country, occupied by the Nazis and subjected to an Allied naval blockade, was suffering a catastrophic famine.
From humble origins – the meeting was chaired by the local vicar Dick Milford – a £1billion a year international aid empire would be born; an empire whose tentacles stretch into politics, entertainment and trade and which grew so large it covered up a sex scandal that, when it finally became public, almost brought it down.
The Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, begun almost 77 years ago and later shortened to the nifty Oxfam, is now far more than just a famine relief charity. Oxfam is a brand. And now a damaged one.
Its first shop at 17 Broad Street in Oxford, set up in 1948, doubled as its headquarters. Now Oxfam operates almost 750 shops in the UK – Waitrose runs half that number – that include not only regular charity stores but specialist bookshops and furniture stores and even boutiques selling bridal wear. Oxfam puts on its own music festival – called Oxjam – and provides stewarding for Glastonbury.
In the 1960s, Oxfam rolled out its first international franchise to Canada and there are now 19 Oxfam “confederations” working in 90 countries worldwide. The charity, under the 24-year stewardship of Leslie Kirkley, grew in the Fifties from a “local charity to a world-renowned aid agency”.
In the late Seventies, Oxfam effectively got political, launching its first campaigns’ department, followed by reports on topics that included “Bitter Pills”, which examined the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and poverty.
Controversies would follow. For example, Scarlett Johansson, the Hollywood actress, quit as an Oxfam ambassador in a row over her endorsement of an Israeli company operating in the West Bank. She had, said the actress, a “fundamental difference of opinion” with the charity.
It was also accused of being “far too cosy” with New Labour. Justin Forsyth, Oxfam’s then director of policy and campaigns, went off to join Tony Blair’s Downing Street Policy Unit, offering advice on international aid. (Forsyth incidentally was forced to resign from Unicef in 2018 after it emerged that he had been accused of inappropriate behaviour towards three female workers during his time as head of Save the Children.) Other non-governmental organisations, reported the Left-wing magazine New Statesman, had complained of Oxfam’s “incredible access”; a source saying: “Oxfam are the ones who are always asked to speak for the whole development movement. And they differ on policy from other groups. They have decided that, in the longer term, their lot is best served by being in with Labour and they go out on a limb to endorse the government.”
With successive British governments committed to spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on international aid – a target first achieved in 2013 – Oxfam, along with the other big beasts of the global charity market, was in prime position to benefit.
So when in 2011, Oxfam GB discovered it had a problem with its aid workers in Haiti – there were complaints of sexual misconduct and fears that some victims could have been children – the charity’s reaction was to protect its brand first rather than fully investigate allegations of predatory abuse of the vulnerable people the charity was actually supposed to be helping in the wake of a devastating earthquake.
Yesterday, the Charity Commission, in a damning report, concluded “that Oxfam GB’S approach to disclosure and reporting was marked, at times, by a desire to protect the charity’s reputation and donor relationships”.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston, the commission’s chairman, was scathing. “No charity is so large, nor is its mission so important that it can afford to put its own reputation ahead of the dignity and wellbeing of those it exists to protect,” she said.
Aiden Hartley, an Africa-based author who has written extensively on international aid, likens Oxfam to Mcdonald’s – a global corporation, trading in aid rather than burgers and milkshakes. A one-time Oxfam volunteer, whose father also worked for Oxfam during a famine in Uganda in the early Eighties, wrote in a damning article in The Spectator of how the charity had grown “into a slick operation with huge international offices across Africa and other hotspots, populated by young graduates in suits living on good pay. They look like bankers”.
Critics complain the charity lost its focus, becoming distracted away from its original core work on emergency relief and fixating on “Leftist agitprop” that included social justice campaigns and “advocacy” work. In 2006, for instance, Oxfam took Starbucks, the Seattle-based global coffee chain, to task in a row over Ethiopian coffee. The Economist weighed in accusing Oxfam of being “simplistic”.
Oxfam GB’S accounts for 2017-18 show it spent £25million on fundraising out of £337million spent on charitable activities. More than £12million was spent on campaigning and advocacy.
The charity has come a long way from its Oxford origins.
Its first shop in Broad Street, Oxford, was set up with the brilliant idea of selling items donated to the charity.
In the Eighties, Oxfam GB and Oxfam international – the parent organisation if you like – decamped to Oxfam House, a huge, gleaming concrete and glass office block just off the ring road in Cowley in Oxford.
In the middle of the Haiti scandal, Oxfam International made its move out of Oxford, decamping to a new headquarters in Nairobi.
Oxfam International, separate from Oxfam GB, is run by Winnie Byanyima, who has been described as perhaps “the most powerful female political figure in Africa”.
Oxfam International, now based in Kenya, is not answerable to Britain’s charity watchdog.
Oxfam GB, meanwhile, remains under the spotlight.
As it tries to shake off the Haiti scandal, it will do well to remember its origins in the church library presided over by Quakers and others – as a committee for famine relief.