When did charities like RSPB become some sort of provisional wing of the Labour Party?
THE raucous “liar, liar” tweet from the genteel Royal Society For The Protection of Birds tells you all you need to know about today’s shroud-waving charity world.
The RSPB risked its tax-free status with a vicious attack on PM Rishi Sunak and Cabinet ministers Michael Gove and Therese Coffey for axing EU red tape to aid housebuilding.
“You lie and lie and lie again,” screeched the RSPB, sounding more like a murder of crows than the kindly guardian of our feathered friends.
This was the authentic voice of the seemingly warm-hearted charity industry in another full-throated cry of righteous indignation.
Within hours, RSPB boss Beccy Speight had issued a mealy mouthed “sorry, not sorry” statement on behalf of her 1.2million innocent members.
“The reason we issued our apology is that we do believe that the nature of public discourse does matter,” said Beccy.
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“The framing of that tweet, where we called out individual people, we felt was incorrect and inappropriate, and we apologise for that.”
Tonight the offending tweet was still online.
It was not just the accusation of lying that was “incorrect and inappropriate”.
It was the presumption by the RSPB that it is entitled to meddle in government policy and slag off elected ministers.
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Political activity must not be the reason for a charity’s existence — a rule only loosely enforced by the toothless Charity Commission watchdog.
The billions raised by kind-hearted Sun readers and others are entirely free of tax — on condition these groups have no political axe to grind.
This is a huge financial gain for good causes. But all too often it is grotesquely abused. Most charities are squeaky clean.
But some of the biggest and most powerful have been infiltrated by card-carrying party political activists.
Far from their generous-spirited image, these groups are ruthless.
And when it comes to politics, many make no pretence of impartiality.
Grotesquely abused
Some openly wage war against government policies on car drivers, Net Zero, welfare and illegal immigration.
Last month the Government cut its ties with Greenpeace after members jeopardised PM Sunak’s security by clambering on to the roof of his Yorkshire home and draping it in black cloth.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman last week condemned migrant charities as “politically motivated activists masquerading as humanitarians”.
She claimed the so-called Third Sector was part of a plot by human rights lawyers “committed to ever-increasing migration” and sabotaging attempts to stop the people smugglers.
The Charity Commission has exposed evidence of “inappropriate” payments, and mismanagement at Care4Calais, a charity campaigning against deporting illegals to Rwanda.
“The finding of serious misconduct at Care4Calais is concerning but not particularly surprising,” Braverman was reported as saying.
“As with certain immigration lawyers, it’s clear that some charities and civil society groups are actively undermining efforts to curb illegal migration.”
Charity Commission boss Orlando Fraser was so alarmed by charities “trashing” government policy that he issued urgent orders to keep their noses out of politics.
“Charities often speak on behalf of those who otherwise would have no voice,” he said.
“That has always been the case and will always remain so. But charities are not political parties.
“They are separate to the political fray — not focused on trashing the motivations of those who think differently.”
The charity boss was acting long after the horse had bolted.
The overlap between partisan politics and supposedly benign charities began with Tony Blair’s election in 1997.
Writing in 2012, respected Spectator editor Fraser Nelson detailed a sinister new underworld of partisan big-money charities created by Labour infiltrators.
“Only now do we begin to realise how clever Gordon Brown really was,” he said.
“In his last two years in office, he started preparing for a new kind of Opposition. Labour might be turfed out of government, but it could carry on the fight through charities, quangos and think-tanks.
"At one stage, Brown had a team in Downing Street devoted to appointments in public bodies, carefully building what would become a kind of government-in-exile.”
If the Tories tried anything radical — such as welfare reform — then Labour’s new fifth columnists would strike.
He cited a declaration of war against Tory welfare “cuts” by charities such as the Child Poverty Action Group, Save The Children and the NSPCC.
“These charities are not the kindly tin-rattlers they were,” wrote Nelson. “They sharpened their claws by hiring former Labour apparatchiks.”
Ex-Labour insiders were also handed top jobs on quangos dishing out tens of millions of taxpayers’ dosh.
At one point, more than three-quarters of “politically active” quango jobs were held by Labour supporters.
Former Tory Chancellor George Osborne once dreamed of a major shake-up for the charity sector and a “bonfire of the quangos”. That was stymied by five years of feeble coalition with the Lib Dems.
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Since then successive Tory PMs have sat on their hands while these partisan Third Sector activists grew like parasites and spread through the public sector . . . including Whitehall and the BBC.
Better known today as The Blob.