It may have escaped your attention, but Alcohol Concern (AC) and
Alcohol Research UK (ARUK), the UK’s two leading anti-alcohol sock puppet
charities, are to merge. This merger has consequences for the way in which
anti-alcohol advocacy will be conducted going forward, but first, a little bit
of history:
Alcohol Concern and the International Order of Good Templars
The International Order of Good Templars, or ‘IOGT International’ as
they now refer to themselves, was the most zealous of the clutch of
anti-alcohol groups that sprang up in the 1850s. Despite the repeal of
Prohibition in America in 1933, it remained in existence as a hard-line
anti-alcohol sect until the 1970s, when its leader Derek Rutherford,
recognising that campaigning for the outright prohibition of alcohol was a lost
cause, moved IOGT to an apparently softer line of campaigning to reduce
alcohol-related harms. Initially, in the UK, IOGT worked with the National
Council on Alcoholism, which later evolved into the anti-alcohol advocacy group
Alcohol Concern (AC).
The two groups parted company in 1982 after a row with the new
chairman who said he had no time for “a bunch of Methodist teetotallers.” IOGT
walked out and Rutherford, along with Andrew McNeill set up the Institute of
Alcohol studies as an alcohol research organisation. So, whilst the National
Council on Alcoholism and IOGT parted company, the legacy organisations they
spawned have their roots deeply embedded in historical temperance.
Alcohol Research UK (ARUK)
ARUK is another organisation with its roots in historical temperance.
Indeed, today 70% of its income is derived from returns on an investment fund
that arose out of the Licensing Act 1904! The government of Conservative Prime
Minister Arthur Balfour established the ‘Licensing Compensation Scheme’ to
compensate licensees who lost their licences through no fault of their own, but
as a result of action by local Justices to close down premises in areas where
they deemed there was overprovision. The scheme was funded by a levy on all
licensed property, from £1 on small beer houses to £150 on large hotels. The
scheme was not popular with either side in the alcohol/society debate, with
temperance campaigners dubbing it the “Brewers Endowment Fund” and brewers
calling it the “Mutual Burial Fund”.
The scheme didn’t last for long, but the money collected was not
returned to the trade from whose pockets it had been picked. The fund was left
in abeyance, and it wasn’t until the 1981 Act that half of the residual funds
were transferred via a liquidator to establish the Alcohol Education and
Research Council (AERC). In 2011 the AERC was wound up and the investment fund
was transferred to a new charity, Alcohol Research UK.
The merger
On the 7th December 2016 there was a joint press release
announcing that AC and ARUK are to “merge” by April 2017. Why has this
happened? If you look at the published accounts of both organisations this
gives you a clue. AC has struggled to fund itself since it lost core funding
from the UK government in 2012. It still receives taxpayers’ money from the
Welsh Assembly government totalling £185,108 in 2016, with its second biggest
funder being the Big Lottery – Pembrokeshire which contributed £62,459 in the
same year. In the recent past AC has received money from the pharmaceutical
industry for its support for a treatment for ‘mild alcoholism’ that was
marketed as ‘Selincro’. However, in 2016 its expenditure exceeded its income by
some £72,330 and it is apparent that AC struggles to make ends meet, and if the
UK government isn’t going to finance its sock puppet activities using public
funds to lobby for public policy change, then its long-term future looked
uncertain at best.
ARUK, on the other hand, is losing even more money, with its
expenditure exceeding its income in 2015 by £317,701. Whilst this is a much
bigger budget deficit than Alcohol Concern’s, ARUK does have a dependable
source of income from its historical investment fund of £15.7 million, which
delivered £548,855 in 2015, with just £51,972 from voluntary donations and an
income of just £17,864 from “charitable activities”.
So, when is a merger not really a merger? Well, the CEO of the
newly-merged organisation will be Dave Roberts, who currently heads up ARUK. AC’s
current CEO Joanna Simons was appointed with the specific remit of looking at
options for its future strategy and she will leave in April 2017, when the
merger is accomplished. Emily Robinson, AC’s deputy CEO has already left. So,
it appears that ARUK will gain AC’s income of around £950K a year, lose the
cost of the two biggest earners from its payroll, and, presumably merge the two
offices and save even more cost. All very sensible.
But what will really remain of AC’s campaigning efforts in the future?
‘Dry January’ will presumably still go ahead in January 2017, but after that
will it be retained, rather like Fidel Castro’s cigar, as the signature symbol
of a dead icon, or will it be dispensed with? I guess that will depend on
whether AC’s funders are prepared to fund the AC part of the merged charity.
And what will be the position of those key figures in ARUK who insist
that theirs is an objective, independent research organisation, now that they
are about to acquire an organisation dedicated to advocacy and campaigning?
ARUK states that its aim is to “reduce levels of alcohol-related harm by
ensuring that policy and practice can always be developed on the basis of
research-based evidence”; whereas AC states that they “work throughout England
and Wales towards our vision of a world where alcohol does no harm”.
There is a big difference between
reducing levels of harm, and
creating a world where alcohol does no
harm – which, given the mantra of “there is no safe level of alcohol
consumption” - can only mean a world without alcohol. Whose vision will
prevail? Given the tendency of anti-alcohol groups to undergo Trotskyite-like
splits, will this marriage of financial convenience last, or might the
Institute of Alcohol Studies and IOGT win-out in the neo-temperance merger
stakes? We’ll have to wait and see.
Paul Chase
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