Did Oxfam donors know they were funding a lefty think tank?

Some time ago I labelled Oxfam ‘the anti-capitalist lobby group which is also a part-time aid charity’: my column has repeatedly highlighted the fact that donors have unknowingly funded a hard-left think-tank (recent publisher of a list of ‘the eight people who own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’) as well as a Third World relief operation that has now been tainted by allegations of sex abuse. I also objected to the plague of its 650 charity shops, cannibalising the trade of established small businesses in struggling high streets.

So I have scant sympathy for Oxfam’s embattled boss Mark Goldring. But I would not want the current witch hunt for disrespecters of women (and worse) to lead, as some wealth managers have predicted, to a fall-off in philanthropic giving. Britons donate almost £10 billion a year to good causes, and the fragile fabric of a society in which public funding is increasingly scarce depends upon us continuing to do so.