Labour & The NGO Sector…
I was asked to be on the panel today with epic people to talk about how NGOs, charities and campaign groups should react to the new Labour government.
It was great to be asked, the other panelists and host were amazing and I hope the people that came enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.
We were all asked to prepare a two minute intro to include our general thoughts on the topic. My rough notes are pasted below.
Hello everyone. I’m Paul de Gregorio, pronouns, he/him, and I’m the founder of Rally. I won’t say anymore about Rally as that’s not what you’re here for - but we have a website > we are rally . co. uk.
I’m so happy we are having this conversation because it means that after 14 years we’ve finally booted the Tories out.
I don’t like dwelling on the negative or the past. But I do think we should pause for a moment and remember just how difficult the last 14 years have been for those of us campaigning for change and progress.
After coming into power in 2010, they quickly moved from Cameron’s big society, to the charities minister saying that charities ‘should stick to their knitting’ in 2014.
I think the last Tory government succeeded in taking the edge off of the charity sector's voice, almost scaring us into silence on some of the big structural issues facing society. They did this in a number of ways, the politicisation of the charity commission and the culture war they started that only they and their friends in the media wanted to fight.
These grubby and divisive culture wars were started on many fronts, from attacking lefty lawyers and social media do-gooders to the sustained assault on any organisations fighting for equality for Trans people, the suppression of protest through the introduction of draconian laws and the constant and intellectually vapid labelling of anything that didn’t match up to their world view as woke.
Let’s also not forget that the National Trust, RSPB and RNLI all came under sustained attack in the culture wars and to their credit were having none of it - The National Trust in particular have come under attack from Tufton Street backed groups and in many cases Tory ministers for the crime of accurately telling our history. And I shit you not on the 1st April this year a Telegraph headline was that ‘National Trust criticised over ‘secretly woke’ vegan scones’ I think the National Trust, RSPB and RNLI are an inspiration to us all, as thy didn’t back down and they weren’t silenced - why - well one of the reasons is that they have big and genuinely engaged supporter bases and public trust, so they were confident that they’d see off a vapid culture war attack.
So, as you can guess I’m glad they are gone. And I think this new Labour government creates a fantastic opportunity for us as a sector to get back on the front foot and stop being defensive. A chance to be clear about what we need to see happen to drive progress rather than have to defend the bare minimum.
Labour aren’t perfect, far from it, on a whole range of issues. But I would rather the sector had Labour as an opponent on issues than the Tories.
If you were there, you’ll know that I went off script multiple times.
Also. Always spell out your company’s URL rather than bore people to tears with your origin story, and if you’re a geek like me have Google Analytics live view open in another window.
Thanks as ever for dropping by.
Main Photo by Thomas Kelley on Unsplash
