In a speech to charities this week, BBC’s Nick Robinson warned that “plebgate” is just the start and that politics is getting nastier. Vibeka Mair looks at what this means for sector.
“Sometimes press stories seem trivial but at their core they are much deeper.” This quote from BBC political editor Nick Robinson at a GAM charities seminar yesterday struck me, especially in the light of heightened negative focus on charities in some corners of the right-wing press.
Robinson, who spoke about the politics of the day, focused on the story of the week - “plebgate” - suggesting that plebs, and in fact the ‘p’ word, was a theme of our time.
Politicians, the press and the police are at war, he said, and each of them in recent years has been made to feel like a pleb – rather than the usual grand and important.
Robinson reeled off examples, such as the cash-for-honours scandal which saw then-Prime Minister Tony Blair being questioned by the police; the MPs’ expenses scandal which led to the imprisonment of some politicians; the phone-hacking scandal with the court cases of Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks still to take place, and the current war of words between government and the police around “plebgate” (really an argument about cuts to the police force, rather than a minister riding his bike through the gates at 10 Downing Street).
“If you look underneath the headlines, you’ll notice that the three Ps – politicians, press and the police - have been made to feel like plebs. And boy do they hate it. And if it means knocking another ‘P’, that’s what they’ll do.”
Listening to this, I realised that Robinson had perhaps left out another P - the not-for-Profit, charity sector.
Since last year, there has been an increase in negative coverage around charities’ activities. When Save the Children launched its UK poverty appeal last September, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph spoke to Conservative MPs who accused the charity of a political agenda and pointed out that Save the Children chief executive Justin Forsyth worked for the last Labour government. Popular blog Guido Fawkes recently made a similar comparison, when it noted the chairman of the British Red Cross, which has recently launched a food bank appeal, is also the executive chairman of the Labour Party.
Looking underneath the headlines – some politicians and the right-wing press don’t like charities highlighting poverty in Britain because it counters their agenda of attacking people on benefits.
The focus has not just been on perceived left-leaning organisations and their links to Labour. Earlier this year, The Daily Telegraph reported that the Enough Food for Everyone 'IF' campaign was not independent, but in fact was orchestrated from the start by the Conservative Party.
The IF campaign was launched in January, but according to the Telegraph plans were discussed back in 2011 between one of the Prime Minister’s aides and the five charities who make up the umbrella group British Overseas Aid Group (BOAG): Oxfam, Save the Children, ActionAid, Cafod and Christian Aid, who annually receive a combined £60m from the Department for International Development (DfID).
Some of these charities in this list were recently the focus of the Telegraph’s pay scandal story on chief executives earning over £100,000. The Telegraph criticised international development charities again just last week, when it suggested charity aid going to Syria was falling into the hands of terrorists.
Looking underneath the headlines – the right-wing press does not like public money going to international aid and is trying to discredit these organisations and the public trust in them.
This is only likely to get worse. As Robinson said, over the next 18 months, with an election looming, austerity biting and the ‘pleb’ word hanging in the air, there will be only one issue that matters to the public: “who is on your side”. The politicians, press and now the police aren’t doing very well in this respect.
But, charities still are, with relatively high public trust. Yet the tide of recent press stories seem to be trying to turn the public against the sector, suggesting that charities are full of fat cats eating up donations or that charities deliberately try to push a political agenda rather than serve their beneficiaries.
Recent sector engagement is welcome – NCVO planning to meet the Telegraph journalist Christopher Hope is one example.
But Robinson’s speech suggests that the fight between the ‘p’s will get nastier. “When people are angry, and their cost of living is squeezed, they will look at who is to blame and who is fighting for them.”
The sad truth is, we should expect to see more stories about charities using donations to line executive pockets or the rich using charities as tax dodges while the rest of the country tightens its belt.
The sector should brace itself.
