Introducing the Ecosystem of Far Left Ghastliness
Today I wanted to introduce readers to the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation (EFF), an NGO which I frequently comes up when I am researching Woke Waste – and every other thing undermining Britain.
To be clear, the EFF receives nothing from taxpayers, but that doesn’t make it any less of a problem compared to organisations that do. In fact, I wanted to use EFF as an example of how privately-funded NGOs can be just as corrosive to the West as state-funded ones. Often NGOs cross-promote and fund each other, ultimately functioning as an ecosystem of far Left ghastliness.
But back to the EFF…
Founded in 1961, the EFF is one of the UK’s largest independent funders.
According to its website, in 2024 it provided “£48.8 million in funding towards a wide range of work in support of our aims: to improve Our Natural World, secure A Fairer Future and nurture Creative, Confident Communities”.
So what does this look like in practice?
Well, some of the EFF’s “Fairer Future” funding has gone to what it calls “gender justice”, “migrant justice” and “racial justice”.
Click on “gender justice” and you get an idea of the sort of projects funded and the sums involved:
For instance, in December last year the EFF awarded £300,000 to Gendered Intelligence, an organisation that imagines “a world where diverse gender identities and expressions and visible and valued and where trans, non-binary and gender questioning people live healthy, safe and fulfilled lives”.
Click “migrant justice” on the EFF website and you’ll be shown 69 grants – which are mostly about making it easier for the world to move to the UK.
Take the fact that in September, the EFF awarded £180,000 to “Migrants Organise Ltd”, which currently runs “a series of free, online trainings to resist the Hostile Environment in public services”.
It strongly believes that “Solidarity Knows No Borders”:
The EFF also funds the “Migrant Democracy Project”, which claims to be “building power amongst migrants in the UK to shape a society rooted in justice, reflecting our needs and interests”.
It believes that “every resident, no matter where they are from, should have equal access to democratic participation in the UK”.
You can expect other “migrant justice” grants – awarded millions by the EFF – to be along the same lines, and that’s before we get to examples of “racial justice”. In 2023 the EFF awarded £1.5 million to the Baobab Foundation, which is “Resourcing racial justice through Black & Global Majority Communities”:
Here are some of the other “racial justice” grants:
Incidentally, all of the EFF’s grants (since 2008) can be found on the 360Giving website (if you want to be both horrified and depressed).
Unfortunately this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to NGOs meddling in our democracy – in ways most taxpayers would be shocked by.
They have essentially become a channel through which the far Left can quietly exert power.
Charlotte Gill regularly publishes about the use of taxpayers’ money to fund Left-wing causes and Left-wing researchers in Woke Waste, her Substack. You can subscribe here.
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We Got A Problem makes a justified dig at Farage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DpOKLtyiiE
Every blog and most comments these days seem to think that criticising Farage is a good idea. It reminds me of the way Mrs Thatcher was vilified almost for breathing and no insult or distortion was considered unacceptable.
I agree there are many more worthy targets for disapproval. I guess those of us on the “right” are desperate for a credible way to power and some perceive Farage as having messed that up having got our hopes up. I will reserve judgement until the next general election, and take stock.
Because when you’re let down by your own side, it causes even more resentment. This isn’t the time to pussy foot with one foot in the establishment, he has put enough people off already including the guy from FairFuel UK who ran for the Mayor last year.
If you know the Farage history you will not be surprised. With my stargazer hat on I would expect that when the Runcorn byelection is announced the Messiah will unveil some ‘celeb’ type candidate and kick the hardworking local group in the balls once again.
Gender-bending, race-baiting, justice-perverting and generalised truth-twisting.
In summary – The Left is right, the Right is wrong; Black is right, White is wrong; and The Devil wears Prada. All promoted by the usual epic menu of word salads. Bollox is as bollox says.
And for the record, true to mantra Esmée Fairbairn Foundation founded by fat cat wallowing in luxury beliefs mere sceptics can’t afford to hold.
Nicely said.
The founder is not to blame – it is those who have hijacked the foundation. Ian Fairbairn set up the foundation in memory of his wife who was killed in a London air raid. His money was intended to give money management skills to the poor. I expect he would be utterly disgusted at the way his money is being used to abuse our nation.
Thank you for that clarification – too much reading between the lines on my part.
*Can’t find the vomit emoji*
Speaking of which, I did like this mini stop motion effort representing Sadiq the Khant and chums;
”Oi, Sadiq, you traitorous wanker! You’ve betrayed the home people, and we will never forgive you!
Commie, globalist, WEF puppet scum!”
https://x.com/IfindWankers/status/1902067703806095585
It’s like a hostel for the mentally disfigured.
Isn’t that what the Democrats tried to do….Import thousands of potential voters to keep them in power permanently.
Millions…
These are highly contentious political campaigns. I cannot understand how these NGOs can maintain their charitable status. They ought to have to register with the Electoral Commission as a campaigning organisation.
There are quite a lot of charities seeking to influence politics despite that’s explicitly prohibited.
180,000 charities in the UK and only 30 people work in the Charity Commission. We need a robust committee which properly ensures the money is spent for expected purposes, I think.
Or we abolish “charitable status” as it is abused and in the eye of the beholder. Make them all not-for-profit.
Everything’s in the eye of the beholder and all legal frameworks will used in disputable ways, if not outright abused. The solution is to combat abuse and not to abolish the legal framework.
I have little faith in anyone else’s good judgment
I think most people will reciprocate this exact sentiments with regards to you. Which gets us to the truism that people tend to dislike and distrust strangers and nowhere else. But that’s not related to your use of something which would be called ein Gummiargument (a rubber argument) in German because it can be made to fit anything.
More than happy for people to reciprocate. I have no desire to make decisions on behalf of others beyond the requirements of my job, which I am qualified to do – my claim to being qualified is that we have made a profit every single year I have been working for the firm, which is since 1986. I’m either qualified or we are unusually lucky.
That’s still besides the point.
Not for me. I like freedom of choice. I don’t want to rely on anyone else to decide what is worthy of being a “charity”. If people feel charitable, nothing is stopping them giving. Should be nothing to do with government.
What you do professionally is entirely besides the point. Your argument was “whether or not something scharitable is in the eye of the beholder” and “charitable status is being abused”. And that’s not an argument at all because it applies to anything: Whatever it is, people will have different opinions about it (“in the eye of the beholder”) and some people will abuse it or use it to do something (“eye of the beholder” again) some other people consider abuse (for more or less good reasons). From a practical standpoint, the Grandpa Simpson method (“Shoot them all, the Lord will know his own people!”) is also simply not going to work to address real-world abuse of anything because it’s in itself abusive as many of the all will be entirely innocent victims or at least victims presumed to be innocent because their guilt of anything hasn’t been established. To abuse a Linus Torvalds quote: The perfect is the enemy of the good. Demanding unrealistic 100% solutions will just lead to nothing being done at all. The way to accomplish something is to focus on incremental improvements which are actually doable. For charities, this would mean sort them from most obnoxious… Read more »
Good luck with your approach. I believe it is destined to end up exactly where we are now, sooner or later. Anyway, we’re just rearranging the deck chairs at this point.
“Shaping society”
When you hear that, you know you are talking to a socialist. It’s code for “You need to do what I say because I know what’s best.”
Exactly. Trouble is those of us who want to “keep society unshaped” are usually too busy doing fun or useful stuff to set up foundations that act as a counterweight to the myriad do-gooding stuff: World’s 100 largest philanthropic foundations list | ARCO
Yep. That is why I bang on and on about dismantling bureaucracy. As long as they exist they’re going to to keep coming at you and you either fight them or they overrun you. If you don’t constantly want to be fighting them, you have to eliminate them (as a bureaucracy, not physically…:-)
They have an endowment now worth more than £1billion, from a city bloke who was a “Conservative” in the 30s at least. Wonder if he would approve of what they are doing now, looking at it from when he founded it in 1961.
Comment before reading: Thanks for this article. I thought this would be a good topic for you when I discovered this foundation as spiritus rector behind the decolonization of Shakespeare.
List of grants to the EFF:
https://grantnav.threesixtygiving.org/search?recipientOrganization=GB-CHC-200051
They’ve even got money directly from DEFRA plus a bunch of other foundations (Paul Hamlyn etc) which are getting money from the state.
Well spotted – over 300k from DEFRA so they are indeed getting money from us. Also a big chunk from the National Lottery. I do our local air ambulance lottery, certainly would not want to do the national one.
Brilliant research, Charlotte Gill. I too share an interest in the malign influence some charities and NGOs are having on our nation. I find the EFF especially upsetting because the Foundation was set up by business tycoon Ian Fairbairn in memory of his wife after she was killed by an air-raid in London. He set the Foundation up to further knowledge of money-management in the lower orders of society thus making them resilient to economic downfall. His aim has been utterly sabotaged and now his money is given to organisations which undermine our country and its people. It’s brazenly disgusting is what it is. The Paul Hamlyn Trust is similarly abused.
I am pretty sure the founder Ian Fairbairn had none of what the charity he founded in his wife’s memory does today in mind.
‘His purpose in establishing the Foundation was two-fold. In the interests of wider prosperity, he aimed to promote a greater understanding of economic and financial issues through education. He also wanted to establish a memorial to his wife, Esmée, who had played a prominent role in developing the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service and the Citizens Advice Bureau. She was killed in an air raid during the Second World War.’
Nor would have believed a trustee such as this:
Dr Wanda Wyporska, FRHistS, is Chief Executive Officer of Safe Passage International. Before this, she was Chief Executive of the Black Equity Organisation, Chief Executive of the Society of Genealogists, and previously led The Equality Trust. She has served as an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion advisor to the Mayor of London’s Recovery Board and was on the ONS Inclusive Data Taskforce.
So who funds the EFF? Is it purely from one initial source of funding?