A key campaign organisation and its sister charity lobbying the Labour Party government to pass a new law on assisted dying has taken significant funds from a billionaire’s philanthropic fund that’s separately ploughed hundreds of thousands of pounds into shady right-wing, Islamophobic think tanks and pro-Israel lobby groups.
As a new bill to introduce assisted dying starts to make its way through parliament, the stakes for chronically ill and disabled people are ramping up fast. However, donor details buried in financial accounts from various charities have revealed the scale of the neoliberal capitalist forces they could be up against.
Assisted dying bill: a well-funded lobbying campaign
Currently, it is a criminal offence in the UK to aid someone in taking their own life via assisted dying – also known as assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia. However, this could be about to change. Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s private members ‘Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults Bills [HL]‘ would allow terminally ill adults with a life expectancy of less than six months to seek medical assistance to end their own life.
On the 16 October, the House of Commons hosted its first reading. Now, it’s set to hold its second reading on the 29 November. In other words, things are moving quickly on this.
Dignity in Dying is amongst the most prolific of lobbying groups pushing for parliamentarians to make it law. And it has been throwing millions of pounds at trying to make it happen.
Follow the money…
According to its most recent annual account, the company had an income of over £2.6m in 2023 alone. This was up from £1.7m in 2022. It spent over £2m of this on a range of PR, media, research, and fundraising activities throughout the year.
Of course, this means the organisation is well-funded for its lobbying efforts. Across the year, the group hosted a parliamentary event, launched an open letter to party leaders, and ran a slick campaign to push for a debate in parliament.
However, if you wanted to know where that £2.6 funds came from, you’d be mostly out of luck. It only provides breakdowns for the types of donations, not who or what, any of it was from. So, all we do know is that:
- Nearly £1.4m came from membership subscriptions and donations
- Over £472,000 from legacies and bequests
- More than £827,000 from “high value donors”
- Around £23,000 marked as “other”
Notably though, the accounts don’t define what constitutes a “high value donor” – so it’s possible donors it has lumped in the first category may also have made sizeable contributions. Regardless, it doesn’t disclose who any of these are at any rate.
Dignity in Dying’s sister charity sheds light on its donors
It does however have a sister organisation – Compassion in Dying – and there is some information on its donors available.
Dignity in Dying set this up in 2008. Technically, it’s a legally separate organisation, but the degrees of separation really end there. It shares a number of the same staff, including chief executive Sarah Wootton, who leads both organisations. They operate out of the same offices on Oxford Street.
Purportedly, the difference between the two lies in their work. Specifically Dignity in Dying states that:
Dignity in Dying campaigns to change the law to allow the option of assisted dying for terminally ill, mentally competent adults in the UK. Compassion in Dying is a registered charity that supports people to be in control of their end-of-life decisions because there is no one better to make them. While the charity supports the law in principle, it does not campaign on assisted dying.
For all intents and purposes though, the pair are inextricably linked. In Compassion in Dying’s latest accounts, it owed £139,000 to Dignity in Dying for “staff resource and accommodation overheads”. This was for the last quarter of 2023.
So while it isn’t possible to see where Dignity in Dying’s donations are coming from, it was possible to glean some insight from its sister organisation. Considering Dignity in Dying had £139k due from it, some of Compassion in Dying’s funds are invariably making their way into its work.
In other words, whoever’s funding Compassion in Dying, is indirectly funding Dignity in Dying as well. So, the fact they claim financial independence is really just semantics.
Billionaire bungs to assisted dying campaign
By far its biggest funding has come from the Bernard Lewis Charitable Trust. Since 2017, it has funnelled £1.2m to the organisation. Additionally, between 2010 and 2012, it had given Compassion in Dying £270,000.
On top of this, it has also directly donated to Dignity in Dying too. It did so in 2009 with a £25,000 donation. The trust’s accounts for 2023 aren’t yet available. However, across 2021 and 2022, it funnelled £320,000 to Dignity in Dying, on top of its donations to the sister organisation.
Who owns the trust? That would be the exceedingly wealthy Lewis family of River Island fame. Of course, like most corporate capitalists, the family has its fingers in multifarious pies.
Founder Bernard Lewis is where it all began for the family’s fortunes. Companies House lists him alone as an active director of no fewer than 20 corporations. Another company called Cavendish Square Secretariat acts as secretary for 52 companies. It’s owned by the Lewis Trust Group. The group’s portfolio spans various investment companies in England, property development in Poland, and a chain of hotels in Israel and the US.
And if the company it keeps – or rather, the other organisations it donates to – is anything to go by, it seems it sits comfortably amidst right-wing neoliberal circles.
For one, it was a regular donor to the Conservative Party between 2008 and 2010 – though this was chump change to its billionaire owners at £52,000. Founder Bernard Lewis has also directly donated £46,000 to the Tories, with donations most recently in 2015.
Dark money think tanks and Zionist organisations
Some of its recipients just so happen to be right-wing, dark money think tanks. For instance, at different points, it has donated to the Islamophobic Henry Jackson Society, Iain Duncan Smith-founded the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), and Policy Exchange. It also funded “cross-party” think tank Demos – which has heavily involved in the 2010 Commission on Assisted Dying.
Alongside this, there’s a Who’s Who of pro-Israel and Zionist organisations raking in money from the trust. It includes the Community Security Trust (CST) and the Jewish Leadership Council, among other Zionist groups. It has provided £397,500 to the CST since 2009. To the Jewish Leadership Council it has also given nearly £300,000.
So you might wonder what business a trust channelling funds to these Apartheid-and now genocide-apologist organisations has with pushing assisted dying in the UK. It’s a damn good question, but the most obvious is that the right wing of politics and Zionism have significant crossovers and connections.
However, these links should be alarming for another reason too. That is, that the Labour Party government has been lurching to the right at every possible turn.
So, it’s perhaps no surprise that prime minister Keir Starmer has opened the door wide to the assisted dying bill as well.
The Canary asked both Dignity in Dying and Compassion in dying for comment. Interestingly, both groups had the same media officers. One of these came back to us with a short response, stating that:
Compassion in Dying’s funding sources are stated clearly in our public accounts.
Assisted dying campaign: a right-wing slippery slope
Obviously, assisted dying is an extremely sensitive, complex, and polarising issue. There surely must be few, if any topics that split the left and right so profoundly. There are course many who want to see it law as a compassionate option for those with terminal diagnosis.
That’s understandable – to an extent.
However, as we’ve underscored, that also brings up its own problems where economic burden narratives are concerned. The main problem is though, the buck doesn’t stop at terminally ill people.
The fact that Dignity in Dying and its sister organisation has courted donations from big billionaire capitalists funding right-wing think tanks somewhat proves the point disability rights campaigners have been making.
That is, when you take the assisted dying campaign in the context of the corporate capitalist ideology they espouse, it’s clear this will become a slippery slope.
The Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey has pointed out how this is happening already. Many MPs have been calling for parliament to widen the net. Invariably this will put chronically ill and disabled people in particular at risk of coercion.
Countries like Canada serve as a cautionary tale for what will come next – and it’s exactly this.
That powerful capitalist forces are wrapped up in Dignity in Dying’s assisted dying campaign should send alarm bells ringing. These are the same opaquely-funded organisations punching down and devaluing sick, disabled, and Palestinian lives.
When it comes down to it – these are the moneyed actors pushing for the bill – and that should be cause for immense concern.
Featured image via France24 – YouTube
