Troubling questions for charities behind ad
ACCORDING to Charity Commission rules: ‘An organisation will not be charitable if its purposes are political.’ How then does this fit with the decision of two super-wealthy, Left-of-centre charities (previously mired in controversies) — Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation — to give money to the organisation which commissioned the poster?
Significantly, a key figure in one of the charities has been embroiled in allegations of being anti-Press and has recently become involved in a new organisation campaigning to keep Britain in the EU and which is monitoring Press coverage of the referendum campaign.
The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, which has given £6.7 million to a variety of causes, has just re-emerged from another big row — its decision to give £305,000 to CAGE, a body accused of being a ‘front’ for jihadists.
Last year, its research director praised so-called ‘Jihadi John’, the Londoner who had just been revealed to be Islamic State’s chief executioner, as a “beautiful young man”.
A subsequent Charity Commission inquiry into the Trust ruled: ‘The trustees needed to conduct more robust and more regular due diligence in respect of grant recipients.’
The Trust has also been condemned for giving almost £150,000 to Teach na Failte, an outfit which claims to have been ‘created to help current and former Irish National Liberation Army prisoners and their families’.
Last night, a Rowntree Trust spokesman said of the poster controversy that the charity is ‘com- mitted to equality and funds organisations which encourage all communities to actively participate in the electoral system.’
Another donor behind the poster, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, had holdings worth £827 million by the end of 2013. It, too, has been involved in political controversies.
Since 2011, one of its trustees has been Sir David Bell — the ex-chairman of the Financial Times who has had a senior role with Common Purpose, a controversial training charity once described as ‘the Left’s equivalent of the old boys’ network’.
In 2005, Bell established what became the Media Standards Trust (MST), a charity that ‘fosters high standards in news on behalf of the public.’ He was the MST’s first chairman. That year, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation gave it £70,000 and a further £150,000 in 2009. Soon afterwards, Bell joined the Foundation’s board. It continued to give MST funding. A rather cosy arrangement.
In 2011, after the phone-hacking scandal, Bell’s MST spawned the anti-Press pressure group Hacked Off, which campaigned for, and then shaped, the Leveson Inquiry into Press ethics.
Bell was appointed one of six ‘independent assessors’ at the hearings and stood down as MST chair. Leveson duly recommended that the Press should come under Statebacked regulation.
Last night, a spokesman for the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation said: ‘We support organisations such as Operation Black Vote which work to reduce the barriers to participation and create systemic change on injustice and inequality in the UK. We do not comment on the individual work of grantees.’
Bell has since resumed the chairmanship of the MST and continues to be a trustee of the Foundation.
Recently, he’s taken up another cause — as a financial backer of a new organisation called InFacts, which says it is making ‘the factbased case for Britain to remain in the EU’, monitoring the Brexit campaign for ‘errors’.
Its website has a ‘Sin Bin’ page featuring key Brexit figures such as Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.
Last night, the Mail asked InFacts for its view on the skinhead poster. We have yet to receive a reply. Bell was unavailable for comment.