Every so often I collect together some books I no longer need, and take them to the Oxfam second-hand bookshop in Oxford, not far from where the organisation set up its first outlet in 1949.
Deep in my DNA is the thought that Oxfam was founded by decent people for good purposes — the alleviation of famine and poverty among the world’s poorest.
I wonder what those high-minded creators of the organisation would make of its latest report, which is designed through the misleading and often incorrect use of statistics to persuade us that modern capitalism is the great scourge of the poor.
Criticising capitalism in overtly political terms — and serving as a kind of intellectual outrider to the Corbynistas — is surely evidence that Oxfam is not observing the rules
According to Oxfam, 82 per cent of money generated last year went to the richest 1 per cent of the global population, while the poorest half saw no increase at all in their income. I don’t know where this figure comes from, but I bet every book remaining in my possession that it’s wrong.
How can anyone produce such a precise number — 82 per cent — as a percentage of the tens of billions of pounds of wealth generated worldwide as recently as 2017, which ended only 26 days ago? It’s a piece of eye-catching nonsense, intended to shock.
In any case, I very much doubt that the top 1 per cent could have grabbed so large a slice of everything produced last year. It sounds like a piece of Corbynista propaganda such as Jeremy himself might have spouted.
But then Oxfam has a shameful history of being free with its facts. A year ago it produced the extraordinary figure that the world’s eight richest individuals had as much wealth as the poorest half of the world.
This year the charity has changed its mind, and says 42 people have as much wealth as the poorest 50 per cent. Oh, and last year it was 61 people, not eight. Convinced? I’m certainly not.
Oxfam had better beware. It could find itself shunned by thousands of moderate, mainstream donors if it is seen to be pursuing a factional political agenda rather than a purely ethical one
Possibly Oxfam has been relying too much on its ‘senior strategic adviser’, Duncan Green. In 2010 he wrote a paean of praise to Hugo Chavez, then the autocratic far-Left leader of Venezuela, also a particular favourite of Jeremy Corbyn’s.
Mr Green wrote that ‘Venezuela certainly seems to be getting something right on inequality’. I don’t suppose even he would repeat this ridiculous assertion now that the country, under Chavez’s Left-wing successor Nicolas Maduro, is sliding into poverty, chaos and tyranny.
More from Stephen Glover for the Daily Mail…
Somehow, a once well-meaning and politically neutral organisation has turned itself into a Corbynista anti-capitalist pressure group which recently tweeted on its official feed: ‘We have an extreme form of capitalism that only works for those at the top.’
God knows capitalism has its failings. But it remains the case that this allegedly wicked economic system has lifted billions of people out of poverty — many more than all the aid charities in the world combined.
Look at China. Since its leadership junked state ownership and control in the early Eighties in favour of capitalism, the previously sluggish Chinese economy has grown more quickly than any in history.
India (which together with China accounts for more than a third of the world’s population) has also shown phenomenal growth after liberalising its economy some 30 years ago, though it has not quite matched China’s prowess.
These two countries, which in living memory were dirt poor, have hundreds of millions of people living in infinitely better conditions than their grandparents could ever have dreamed.
According to the World Bank, in 1990 1.9 billion people (or 37.1 per cent of the global population at the time) lived on less than $1.90 a day, compared to 702 million (9.6 per cent) in 2015.
This unprecedentedly rapid change is not the result of aid. No, it is chiefly the consequence of the adoption of the kind of capitalism which Oxfam erroneously claims works only for ‘those at the top’.
Needless to say, the creation of such enormous wealth produces dozens of multi-millionaires and billionaires — a species especially detestable to the leftists who call the shots at Oxfam.
But what is the problem if these super-rich people and their companies are made to pay their fair share of tax? If they don’t do so, that is likely to be because governments are corrupt or weak.
However, think of China with its thousands of miles of new high-speed railways and motorways and burgeoning armed forces. Capitalism in that country — which I grant is tightly regulated by the State — has produced soaring levels of government expenditure.
This year the charity has changed its mind, and says 42 people have as much wealth as the poorest 50 per cent. Oh, and last year it was 61 people, not eight. Convinced? I’m certainly not
Does it matter that Oxfam has become so politicised? I believe it does — very much. Charities enjoy all kinds of privileges (such as not having to pay tax) and one of the key conditions they are supposed to fulfil is that they should not be political.
Criticising capitalism in overtly political terms — and serving as a kind of intellectual outrider to the Corbynistas — is surely evidence that Oxfam is not observing the rules.
The charity has form. In 2014, it put out a tweet speaking of a ‘perfect storm’ of ‘zero-hours contracts, high prices, benefit cuts and unemployment’. It was chided by the Charity Commission, which judged that the tweet could have been ‘misconstrued as party political campaigning’.
I wonder what Oxfam would make of figures recently released by the Office for National Statistics which show that since 2008 — not so long before the Tories took over government — the average disposable income of the poorest fifth of UK households has risen by 15 per cent, while that of the richest fifth has grown by just 0.4 per cent.
We may be sure that such figures will not be included in the charity’s next report, since they contradict its premise that the poor are forever getting poorer — and the rich richer.
Oxfam had better beware. It could find itself shunned by thousands of moderate, mainstream donors if it is seen to be pursuing a factional political agenda rather than a purely ethical one.
There are, after all, plenty of other charities. Why should people who do not subscribe to Oxfam’s Leftist, Corbynista view of the world continue to give it money when there are so many alternatives?
Oxfam had better beware. It could find itself shunned by thousands of moderate, mainstream donors
The truth is that the charity has become hidebound and ideological. It rubbishes capitalism which, as I say, has rescued countless numbers of people from poverty.
Yet it seldom, if ever, examines the limitations of foreign aid, billions of pounds of which have been poured into Africa over the past few decades with depressingly few tangible economic benefits.
Unsurprisingly, when it comes to paying its own senior staff, Oxfam is less doctrinaire. Its British chief executive, Mark Goldring, earned £127,753 last year, which some may think excessive, though it is less than many of the salaries paid to bosses of other big charities.
I certainly regard the package of more than half a million pounds paid to its U.S. boss — and the six-figure salaries doled out to several senior staff members in America — as well over the top.
Above all, it’s sad to see an organisation founded to help the destitute becoming so politicised that it spends so much of its energy wrong-headedly decrying capitalism.
Poor Oxfam. This can’t be what its founders envisaged. The next time I collect some books to give away, I’m going to take them to a charity which isn’t an outpost of the bigoted Hard Left.