With the fund-raising methods of Tony Blairs tennis partner cum Middle East envoy, Lord Levy, continuing to attract widespread attention (not to mention the occasional knock on the door from the boys in blue),our attention was drawn to an article in the Red Pepper archives.
In 1998 we sent Martin McIvor to interview Henry Drucker, who had given fund-raising advice to the Labour Party in 1996 but resigned after a fall out with Blairs new fund-raiser, then simply Mr Michael Levy. The disagreement was over the use of blind trusts a funding conduit (since made illegal) that allowed people to make donations to politicians via independent trustees, supposedly so that the politicians themselves didnt know who was backing them. Druckers advice to the Labour Party was highly critical of the blind trusts. And in general, his answers to our questions were prescient:
How did your work with the Labour Party end?
The day before we presented our report, we had an altercation with Michael Levy over the blind funds and about his authority over us. We went to interview him. And he threw us out shouted at us for, I dont know, 15 minutes, half an hour.
Literally threw you out?
Literally threw us out. But there was a wonderful moment, which Ill treasure for a long time. We were in his stunningly beautiful and showy house; he stood up throughout. After five minutes he realised hed forgotten something. Oh! Oh! I I should have offered you coffee! My wifes out and the servants are at the other end of the house and, er, I dont know how to make coffee! And then he went back to his previous line of conversation. And eventually threw us out. The end result was that Levy wanted the blind funds to stay. He advised Tony and Tony accepted his advice.
How did the blind trusts issue come up?
Although Jonathan Powell (head of Blairs office) wanted us simply to fundraise, I had insisted that the professional way to handle it is to study the market and to produce a report about how much you might raise and what mechanisms to use to raise it. So we conducted interviews of past and possible future donors. The issue of blind trusts came up in our interviews repeatedly. There were three such trusts: Tony Blairs which he says has been closed; Gordon Browns; and John Prescotts. A number of Labours biggest donors are very unhappy about them very unhappy. These were honourable people who were giving to the Labour Party because they believed in what it stood for and they wanted to be in the company of other honourable people, and they didnt see why honourable people would want to give to a blind fund. We were quite convinced that Labour would have done much better if it had got rid of these secretive funds, which were opposed to the principles the party had begun to annunciate when it wanted the funding of political parties to be transparent. There has to be a suspicion after all, anyone who gives to a blind fund has some reason for wanting his gift to be kept secret. Why?
Isnt that suspicion removed by the beneficiary not knowing who the donors are?
If you believe that. I was pretty damn sure Jonathan Powell knew exactly who had given to the blind fund, and how much. And he wasnt a trustee was he? Brenda Dean, Merlyn Rees and Baroness Jay are the trustees. Everybody who talked to us was saying, Come on, lets cut the cackle, people wouldnt give to the fund if they didnt think the leader knew who gave the gift to them … Drucker concluded the interview in 1998 by telling Red Pepper: `My strong suspicion is that until we have the accounts of the blind funds made public, there are skeletons in the cupboard, which can come out at any moment …
Sadly, we cannot go back to Henry Drucker as the cupboard door is opened. He died from a heart attack in 2002. So well give the last word to David Osler from his book Labour Party Plc; New Labour as a Party of Business.
The problem with blind trusts is that they are not so much blind as just a little bit short-sighted. Not only did the beneficiaries regularly find out who their supporters were, but sometimes the world and her cohabiting partner did so as well. Such was the public disquiet that such arrangements are now banned under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.
But Levy took full advantage of the system while the going was good. His adept blind trust fundraising enabled Blair to run the biggest opposition leaders office in history, employing some 20 full-time staff on appreciable salaries. Although figures remain confidential, the best guess is that in just three years the Labour leader received around £2.5 million in this manner before becoming prime minister …
Details (of who paid into the blind trusts and how their interests fared under New Labour) are sketchy at best. But one point is clear. Big business was the provenance of most of the money that flowed in. That, of course, dovetailed nicely with Blairs political project. Financial independence from union funding was seen as a good in itself. Conversely, the willingness of a layer of business people to put their hands in their pockets represented one of the first concrete manifestations of rapprochement with the private sector. In short, the rise of the blind trusts marked an important staging post in the partys
transformation.
With the fund-raising methods of Tony Blairs tennis partner cum Middle East envoy, Lord Levy, continuing to attract widespread attention (not to mention the occasional knock on the door from the boys in blue),our attention was drawn to an article in the Red Pepper archives.
In 1998 we sent Martin McIvor to interview Henry Drucker, who had given fund-raising advice to the Labour Party in 1996 but resigned after a fall out with Blairs new fund-raiser, then simply Mr Michael Levy. The disagreement was over the use of blind trusts a funding conduit (since made illegal) that allowed people to make donations to politicians via independent trustees, supposedly so that the politicians themselves didnt know who was backing them. Druckers advice to the Labour Party was highly critical of the blind trusts. And in general, his answers to our questions were prescient:
How did your work with the Labour Party end?
The day before we presented our report, we had an altercation with Michael Levy over the blind funds and about his authority over us. We went to interview him. And he threw us out shouted at us for, I dont know, 15 minutes, half an hour.
Literally threw you out?
Literally threw us out. But there was a wonderful moment, which Ill treasure for a long time. We were in his stunningly beautiful and showy house; he stood up throughout. After five minutes he realised hed forgotten something. Oh! Oh! I I should have offered you coffee! My wifes out and the servants are at the other end of the house and, er, I dont know how to make coffee! And then he went back to his previous line of conversation. And eventually threw us out. The end result was that Levy wanted the blind funds to stay. He advised Tony and Tony accepted his advice.
How did the blind trusts issue come up?
Although Jonathan Powell (head of Blairs office) wanted us simply to fundraise, I had insisted that the professional way to handle it is to study the market and to produce a report about how much you might raise and what mechanisms to use to raise it. So we conducted interviews of past and possible future donors. The issue of blind trusts came up in our interviews repeatedly. There were three such trusts: Tony Blairs which he says has been closed; Gordon Browns; and John Prescotts. A number of Labours biggest donors are very unhappy about them very unhappy. These were honourable people who were giving to the Labour Party because they believed in what it stood for and they wanted to be in the company of other honourable people, and they didnt see why honourable people would want to give to a blind fund. We were quite convinced that Labour would have done much better if it had got rid of these secretive funds, which were opposed to the principles the party had begun to annunciate when it wanted the funding of political parties to be transparent. There has to be a suspicion after all, anyone who gives to a blind fund has some reason for wanting his gift to be kept secret. Why?
Isnt that suspicion removed by the beneficiary not knowing who the donors are?
If you believe that. I was pretty damn sure Jonathan Powell knew exactly who had given to the blind fund, and how much. And he wasnt a trustee was he? Brenda Dean, Merlyn Rees and Baroness Jay are the trustees. Everybody who talked to us was saying, Come on, lets cut the cackle, people wouldnt give to the fund if they didnt think the leader knew who gave the gift to them … Drucker concluded the interview in 1998 by telling Red Pepper: `My strong suspicion is that until we have the accounts of the blind funds made public, there are skeletons in the cupboard, which can come out at any moment …
Sadly, we cannot go back to Henry Drucker as the cupboard door is opened. He died from a heart attack in 2002. So well give the last word to David Osler from his book Labour Party Plc; New Labour as a Party of Business.
The problem with blind trusts is that they are not so much blind as just a little bit short-sighted. Not only did the beneficiaries regularly find out who their supporters were, but sometimes the world and her cohabiting partner did so as well. Such was the public disquiet that such arrangements are now banned under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.
But Levy took full advantage of the system while the going was good. His adept blind trust fundraising enabled Blair to run the biggest opposition leaders office in history, employing some 20 full-time staff on appreciable salaries. Although figures remain confidential, the best guess is that in just three years the Labour leader received around £2.5 million in this manner before becoming prime minister …
Details (of who paid into the blind trusts and how their interests fared under New Labour) are sketchy at best. But one point is clear. Big business was the provenance of most of the money that flowed in. That, of course, dovetailed nicely with Blairs political project. Financial independence from union funding was seen as a good in itself. Conversely, the willingness of a layer of business people to put their hands in their pockets represented one of the first concrete manifestations of rapprochement with the private sector. In short, the rise of the blind trusts marked an important staging post in the partys
transformation.