disabled children’s charity funds shady think tanks

  • Post last modified:September 6, 2024
  • Reading time:10 mins read


The Good Law project has uncovered a donor to the shadowy network of right-wing dark money think tanks based at Tufton Street. Joining the ranks of its usual band of malign clandestine donors from fossil fuel firms, to tobacco corporations is UK nonprofit the Street Foundation. What does it exist to do? Help disabled children.

Because nothing says disabled kids’ charity more than ploughing cash into the covert coffers of a bunch of Tufton Street cunts poisoning our politics and secretively backed by an infamous syndicate of planet-wrecking industries.

Tufton Street: disabled children’s charity

The Street Foundation’s page on the Charity Commission says that it makes:

grants to individuals and organisations involved with children/young people with a disability/special needs.

There’s no website (that I can find), so fuck knows how individuals and orgs are meant to go about applying for these grants. Of course, if you’re in the know, you’re in the know. And the scheming sycophants at 55 Tufton Street are tapping their noses all the way to the bank.

That would be because, the Good Law Project found the so-called charity funnelling £749,000 – more than 40% of its funding over the last five years – to a conniving congregation of just such dark money think tanks at the notorious London address.

The Street Foundation threw a nice chunk – over a third – of this dosh to the New Culture Forum (NCF). It’s helping disabled kiddos out by seeking the abolishment of the Equality Act. Because why would a disabled child need protection from discrimination across any realm of public life?

But don’t say it hasn’t got disabled children’s back at school. The NCF is countering the “left-wing bias” evidently rife in academia and the media.

Lining up for the Street Foundation to line its pockets next? The shady Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). Notably, the Street Foundation gave the free market think tank with the best worst history of political influence £55,000. Quietly likely the largest lobbying force behind Thatcher’s neoliberalism, the think tank has a nefarious rap-sheet of promoting capitalist vested policies.

As the Good Law Project has pointed out, the IEA’s work has been the literal antithesis of championing disabled children’s rights. In particular, it noted how:

Speaking on the institute’s podcast in May, editorial and research fellow Professor Len Shackleton tried to make a contrast between people with “genuine problems” and “areas in which it’s really not possible to get inside people’s heads” such as back health and mental health. The group also published a report in 2016 which suggested people could opt out of Employment and Support Allowance, and “take out private disability insurance instead”.

As for the rest, the Street Foundation poured it into a murky mix of right-wing pressure groups. This included climate denial and Brexit-pushing organisations like Civitas, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), The Politics and Economics Research Trust (PERT), and the Hampden Trust.

In bed with the Tories and Reform

However, if you thought that was the end of this whole despicable fiasco, buckle up.

The Good Law Project identified that the Street Foundation gets the bulk of its funding from aerospace company HR Smith Group.

So, a corporation supplying equipment to military planes is a Tufton Street front-charity’s biggest benefactor – go figure. But the social-washing implications are just the start. Significantly, as it turned out:

one of its subsidiaries, TechTest. HR Smith Group has also given £50,000 to Reform UK and £10,000 to the Conservatives, while TechTest has given £890,000 to Reform, UKIP, the Tories, and campaigns to leave the European Union.

Lets get this straight then. An aerospace company is donating to a supposed disabled children’s charity. At the same time, that very corporation has been donating to the right-wing goons at Reform UK and the Conservative Party. That charity is then funnelling a sizeable wedge of its funding to a unscrupulous assemblage of right-wing think tanks. Those think tanks are surreptitiously lobbying the same hard right parties and politicians.

One person on X wondered if the ostensible slush fund set-up might have something to do tax deductions:

A new scummy right-wing corruption term just dropped:

Funnily enough, or perhaps not so much, TechTest CEO Richard Smith and his immediate family are the trustees of the Street Foundation. He also just so happens to own the building that hosts this group of shadowy think tanks.

In the tangled web he’s woven, Smith also serves on the NCF’s advisory committee. What’s more, the Good Law Project pinpointed his membership of yet another notorious Tufton Street heavyweight – the Taxpayers’ Alliance.

Charities a ‘slush fund’ for capitalist interests at Tufton Street

Given the absolute state of all this, people on X were calling for the Charity Commission to intervene. However, some understandably didn’t have much faith in the spineless body:

One reason for this was a beneficiary of the Street Foundation’s right-wing funding frenzy. Specifically, the GWPF:

Notably, the Good Law Project has also been challenging the GWPF’s status as an education charity. In October 2022, a cross-party group of MPs lodged a complaint against it. This was for pouring thousands of pounds into climate denial campaign group Net Zero Watch, and research downplaying the climate crisis.

Ultimately, the Charity Commission took GWPF trustees at their word about its funding. It ignored extensive evidence of the ‘charity’s’ fossil fuel-linked financiers. Naturally, it imposed no sanctions on the group for its dodgy activities.

Of course, this is the same GWPF that longtime Labour MP Graham Stringer is a trustee.

Similarly, the Charity Commission gave the IEA just a light slap on the wrist for its duplicitous work in 2018. This was for the IEA – again marked an educational charity – publishing a report calling for a hard Brexit. Crucially, this constituted a “political activity” in breach of its charity status. For its illicit manoeuvre? Just a legal warning.

Bigots boasting charity status

Moreover, speaking of dubious charitable credentials, some astute posters highlighted a certain hate group that also sits on the ill-reputed London lane:

Of course, despite its vehement campaign of transphobia, the Charity Commission awarded the group charity status in 2021.

Given the Charity Commission’s half-assed response to a slate of the Street Foundation’s Tufton Street donees then, there seems a fat chance it’ll come down on the charity with any real force.

A poster on X summed up the whole fiasco in a nutshell:

Just when you think the evil actors at the infamous London location couldn’t get any worse, they go one step further. Using a purported disabled children’s charity as a front for funnelling cash into its toxic network is a new, disgusting low.

Feature image via Youtube – Led By Donkeys





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