PHM-Exch> UK charities have lost their radical soul

[Claudio Schuftan]

*John Hilary: UK charities have lost their radical soul*

War on Want's executive director explains his sharp critique of NGOs in his
new book The Poverty of Capitalism.

John Hilary is not afraid of the big questions. As the executive director
of War on Want <http://www.waronwant.org/>, widely considered one of
Britain's most radical charities<http://www.theguardian.com/society/charities>,
he often speaks out on issues – from what he calls apartheid Palestine to
the nature of global capitalism – that few other UK NGOs will touch. His
new book, The Poverty of
Capitalism<http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745333304>,
carries in its title conscious references to works by Karl Marx
<http://www.theguardian.com/books/karl-marx>(The
Poverty<http://www.theguardian.com/society/poverty>of
Philosophy <http://www.theguardian.com/world/philosophy>) and socialist
historian EP Thompson<http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/06/ep-thompson-unconventional-historian>(The
Poverty of Theory).

Published last month, the book tracks what
Hilary<http://www.theguardian.com/profile/johnhilary>condemns as the
failures of corporate
globalisation <http://www.theguardian.com/world/globalisation> and the rise
of popular resistance movements worldwide. In what could seem a deliberate
attempt to set himself even further apart from other NGO bosses, it also
presents a sharp critique of mainstream British charities, which Hilary
condemns for choosing to cosy up to corporations and governments, rather
than align with grassroots movements such as La Via
Campesina<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/jun/17/la-via-campesina-food-sovereignty>,
the international federation of peasants' groups.

"I think this is a particularly British problem," says Hilary, sitting in
the basement of the refurbished London warehouse that serves as War on
Want's head office. UK NGOs have become very strong and very powerful, but
the sector, he says, is today overly professionalised and too focused on
technical, incremental change. It has "lost its political analysis, its
transformative ambition, and any radical soul", Hilary adds.

Instead of challenging the UK government, which Hilary characterises as
increasingly regressive and reductive in its approach to global
development<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development>,
charities are giving it "such an easy ride" and appear to have been
"seduced by power".War On Want protesters outside of the flagship Adidas
store in Oxford Street, central London, during the 2012 London Olympics.
Photograph: War On Want

It was not always like this, he says, pointing to the 1980s when mainstream
UK NGOs joined global movements such as those against apartheid in South
Africa. At that time, Oxfam and Christian Aid were, along with War on Want,
challenged by the Charity Commission
<http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk>for having positioned themselves
politically in what Hilary describes as
active solidarity with groups on the ground. "Liberation struggles were
once meat and drink to the international NGO community," he adds.

Today, big NGOs are increasingly taking a seat at the table alongside
government and business. Development-speak is littered with references to
partnerships and multi-stakeholder initiatives. Hilary refuses to accept
this as evidence of progress and argues instead that even the most positive
of such initiatives eventually give sway to the demands of the most
powerful.

The Committee on World Food Security <http://www.fao.org/cfs/en/> (CFS) is
one of the boldest experiments in this area, bringing NGOs and farmers
organisations to sit alongside diplomats and company representatives to try
to hammer out consensus on how to tackle food and farming challenges. While
praised by many as the most inclusive global governance forum, there was
palpable anxiety among some civil society delegates at the CFS summit in
Rome last month<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/oct/10/world-food-security-talks-hunger>that
the very vocabulary of partnerships and stakeholders can gloss over
and even tacitly accept the stark power imbalances between those at the
table. After a week of negotiations, civil society groups refused to
endorse the committee's final recommendations on
biofuels<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/oct/14/un-biofuels-food-violations>,
saying the result defended the interests of industry rather than the needs
of small farmers in poor countries.

Hilary has complained about mainstream UK NGOs before, and particularly
around the IF campaign launched before the 2013 G8 summit, which War on
Want said had been stitched up with the UK government and therefore refused
to join. In The Poverty of Capitalism, which Hilary insists is not a
theoretical book, he puts these complaints into context and charts how
numerous attempts in recent decades to regulate and hold to account
transnational corporations have given way to voluntary initiatives and
corporate social responsibility projects instead.

The high water mark of voluntarism came with the 1992 UN Earth Summit in
Rio de Janeiro <http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html> which "affirmed
the principle of voluntary self-regulation as the dominant model in place
of corporate accountability", he writes. This "wholesale abdication of
responsibility", according to Hilary, has helped turn the issue of
corporate accountability into little more than a public relations exercise.

Hilary winces at the suggestion his book will further isolate him from
other UK NGOs. While often brought on to panels and called into debates to
give the alternative view, Hilary is not the only one unhappy with the
state of British development work. A group called the Progressive
Development Forum <http://progressivedevelopmentforum.wordpress.com/>, for
example, of which Hilary is a member, brings together those working in the
sector to debate how to reframe conversations away from aid, charity and
philanthropy and instead revive narratives of global justice and the need
to tackle structural drivers of poverty and inequality.

"The way the British public is being taught to think about international
development is still through the prism of the Live Aid generation, the idea
of the generous giver and the grateful receiver," says Hilary. "As NGOs, we
have a responsibility to look at how we are framing that story, and if we
continue to reaffirm that basic charitable framing, of aid, philanthropy,
generosity, then we will continue to reproduce supporters and donors who
expect that."

Recent campaigns on tax, for which some large UK charities have taken a
leading role, are a potential exception, says Hilary. "Tax campaigning is
an important example of the sort of structural campaigning that used to be
absolutely normal. Think about the 1980s, and all the stuff that was being
done on debt, linking up the debt crises in Latin America with the high
street banks here, all the stuff that was done on trade and investment
campaigning."

But while tax also offers an important opportunity to link struggles in
developed and developing countries, the focus has to go beyond tinkering
with the system, Hilary insists. "It's absolutely the right direction, but
it needs to be more ambitious."

If big UK charities can seem defensive, resistant to criticism and careful
to stay on message with glossy pamphlets, billboards, and armies of press
and PR officers, Hilary is quick to argue that, at least within
organisations and NGO meetings, people do speak very openly about these
issues. "Within a lot of these bigger agencies, these debates are raging.
That's what gives me hope."
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