Charity begins at school

Among the many organisations which donors to Comic Relief have generously helped to support is Tar Isteach, a Dublin-based group of former IRA terrorists led by Tommy Quigley, who was jailed in 1985 for three murders. The group recently received £80,000 for its programme of events supposedly aimed at rehabilitating prisoners released under the Good Friday agreement, which consisted of, among other things, a ‘hill walk’ that just happened to retrace a route taken by escaping IRA prisoners, and a talk by Danny Morrison on ‘current developments in the struggle against a broad background of what is going on in the six counties’.

It isn’t this use of charity money that appears to concern Labour, however; it is the thought that private schools should qualify for charitable status. This week the government publishes its Charities Bill, which will review the definition of a charity in English law. In particular, the Bill demands that independent schools and hospitals justify their charitable status in terms of the public benefit they offer.