Why charities can't stay out of politics

The recent article by the chair of the Charity Commission calling on charities to steer clear of politics has met with the predictable waves of criticism from charity leaders. However, it’s important to understand the ideological and historical roots of this kind of argument if we want to safeguard the future of the social sector.

Baroness Stowell’s claim boils down to a simple idea. Apolitical work is legitimate, politics is not. But deciding what’s political and what isn’t is itself a deeply political question. 

The idea that politics is suspect is associated largely (but not exclusively) with the conservative Right who like to advance their agenda while pretending their views are no more than common-sense. A classic example was the coalition government’s success in framing a politically-driven programme of austerity as nothing more than the obvious response to the state of the public finances. Anyone who disagreed was condemned as having been blinded by their own partisan agenda. 

It’s no surprise that being non-political usually means accepting the status quo. A charity that chooses to leave in place statues of imperialists and slave-owners? Apolitical. One that chooses to take them down? Political. In the frequently quoted words of Brazilian archbishop and liberation theologian Helder Camara: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist”. 

The fact that government and sector leaders are at cross-purposes over the legitimacy of charities acting politically stems from the ambiguity of the concept ‘charity’ itself. The word is actually a homonym and is currently used in two totally different ways.

The first echoes the Victorian roots of the charity sector – a network of institutions whose role was to help the poor. The assumption was that poverty was an unavoidable human condition. All decent people could do was to ameliorate the conditions of the most vulnerable members of society. Going slightly hungry was better than starving to death. Charity was about enabling people to survive the status quo, not about changing it. This view underlies the role government tends to ascribe to charities to this day. They are seen as a way of outsourcing services while saving money in the process. 

While many donors no doubt implicitly share this view, most people on the front line of charity work realise that it’s unsustainable. For them, poverty and the other problems they combat every day are the results of political decisions and the way we’ve chosen to structure our society. If they want to help their beneficiaries, they have no choice but to address themselves to social change. It’s no surprise that service delivery organisations almost always branch out into campaigning. Charity in this view is the opposite of accepting the world as it is – it’s about creating the world as we want it to be.

It should be clear by this point that we’re not talking about a clash between ‘political’ and ‘apolitical’ views of charity. This is a conflict between two equally political, ideological conceptions of the voluntary sector’s role. The dilemma for social sector leaders who adhere to the more progressive view is how to drum up support from a government – and possibly a public – who not only take a more conservative line, but who see their views as apolitical common-sense.

A final word from my own, faith-based, perspective. The word ‘charity’ comes via the Latin caritas from the Greek agape – meaning love. In Christian tradition, charity is a voluntary act motivated by love of God and neighbour. In Judaism, the word usually translated as charity, tzedaka, comes from the same root as tzedek – justice. Tzedaka is a legal and moral obligation, not a voluntary act. For many Jews, the term’s etymology gives it a radical complexion. Tzedakah, charity, is the obligation to pursue a world built on justice. It’s hard to see how that can be separated from politics.