‘The Commission has made clear to the trustees their legal and regulatory responsibilities and that the Charity’s current activities must cease immediately.’
– Charity Commission Regulatory Case Report: The Atlantic Bridge

Regular readers will be well aware of my one man campaign against the Atlantic Bridge, a charity established by defence secretary Dr Liam Fox to promote the ‘special relationship as exemplified by the Reagan-Thatcher partnership’ that includes on its advisory council William Hague, George Osborne, Michael Gove, Chris Grayling, and other senior Conservatives.

The Charity Commission published its report earlier today. The good news is that the Atlantic Bridge was found guilty of being party political. It also failed the public benefit test because its work was found to be insufficiently educational (promotes a pre-determined point-of-view) and its events are not sufficiently open to the public. Despite this it retains it charitable status. Its punishment is to be given twelve months to get its act together.

That’s a great outcome for Liam Fox who registered the Atlantic Bridge as a charity in 2003 and has made no attempt to hide its political affiliations. The Atlantic Bridge achieved charitable status by claiming to be an educational trust, but in place of education has sponsored predominantly private events at which senior Conservatives – including present cabinet ministers – and their US allies may bond behind closed doors.

Throughout this period, it has enjoyed tax exempt status and so its activities have been subsidised by the taxpayer.

These activities have included promoting a book by William Hague, subsidising a dinner for Tory MPs with a Fox News film reviewer in LA and sponsoring trips by Tory MPs to neo-Conservative think tanks in Washington DC.

The Charity Commission has now agreed to turn a blind eye to all of this, if the Atlantic Bridge agrees to comply with the law within the next 12 months. In no other arena would such a blatant disregard for the law go unpunished.
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William Hague’s office has kindly emailed to deny that it hosted the New York launch if his biography of William Wilberforce. I had asked Hague to explain why he had failed to declare the sponsorship in the House of Commons’ Register of Members Financial Interests.

Here’s how the Atlantic Bridge used to describe the event on its website:

‘The Atlantic Bridge is proud to host an evening with William Hague – the shadow foreign secretary of the British Parliament – to celebrate his latest literary achievement, a major biography of the abolitionist William Wilberforce.’

Mr Hague’s personal assistant has written that no declaration was made as no fee was paid. Yet it is clear that Hague benefitted from the promotion of his book and he would he have been best advised to declare the sponsorship.

His PA, clearly not worried that the Charity Commission is investigating allegations that the Atlantic Bridge is party political, retorts: ‘Mr Hague was in New York to undertake some engagements in connection with the publication of his book in the US and Atlantic Bridge, given its links with the Conservative Party, asked Mr Hague if he could address one of their events.’

The Atlantic Bridge operates two charities, one in the UK and one in the USA, and William Hague has refused to confirm which paid this sponsorship (although it does not appear in the UK accounts). US law forbids, ‘any person… in a position to exercise substantial influence over the affairs of the organization’ from benefiting from its largesse. William Hague is a member of the Atlantic Bridge Advisory Board.
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The Atlantic Bridge, a UK charity founded by Dr Liam Fox, has launched a new website with references to its ‘simple aim of “Strengthening the Special Relationship” exemplified by the Reagan-Thatcher partnership of the 1980s,’ removed. The pledge has also been removed from the website of its sister US charity, Atlantic Bridge Inc.

The move comes as the Charity Commission investigates a number of allegations including that the Atlantic Bridge has broken charity law by supporting a political party.

In addition, the organisation now pays lip service to the public benefit requirements of the 2006 Charities Act, claiming ‘it is axiomatic that good relations with other countries are for the public benefit’ and so, apparently, that they need offer no evidence that their work is charitable.

The Atlantic Bridge spends its money, much of which would otherwise be collected as tax, helping senior Conservatives and their US allies get together. They certainly need some support. When US senator Jon Kyl came to London to see Henry Kissinger receive the oxymoronic Thatcher Medal of Freedom, the Atlantic Bridge paid out around £1,450 on his hotel room alone.

The Charity Commission has issued guidance specific to the Atlantic Bridge over at least three letters and one face-to-face meeting. But the commission argues it is in the public interest to keep this guidance secret, a move that fuels suspicions that the regulator is bending over backwards to protect senior Conservatives connected to the Atlantic Bridge, including William Hague, George Obsborne, Chris Grayling and Michael Gove.
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A US non-profit (the UK equivalent would be a charity), spending US$2,471.70 on one nights’ accommodation for a US senator might ordinarily raise some eyebrows but, to be fair, this non-profit is the Atlantic Bridge, Inc., which has been established as a travel club for senior members of the British Conservative Party and their US allies.

To be clear, that US$2,471.70 (about £1,450 at the time) was for Senator Jon Kyl’s hotel room only. There’s no travel in that total; his airfare, also met the US charity, was US$4,405.63 (£2,650) and a further US$100 (£60) went on food (perhaps he was saving himself for that night’s fund raising dinner).

Senator Jon Kyl is a particularly good friend of the Conservatives and was in London to see Henry Kissinger receive the oxymoronic Margaret Thatcher Medal of Freedom. A similar event with Rudolph Giuliani in 2007 raised £53,037 with an event auction raising a further £40,000 (US$185,265 in total). The cheap seats at this event were £400 (US$650), with priority seating available at an extra £350 (US$580).

As the Honorary US chair of the Atlantic Bridge, Senator Jon Kyl is one of the people these charities (the Atlantic Bridge consists of a UK and a US charity) have been established to support. Their role is to divert money that would otherwise be collected as tax to supporting the Thatcherite wing of the British Conservative Party. They ensure that instead of helping pay for healthcare, education, national debt or equipping troops in Afghanistan, this money instead ensures that people like Sen. Jon Kyl have somewhere nice to stay while on their jollies.

Interestingly, Sen. Jon Kyl’s hotel bill did catch the eye of the Senate Select Committee on Ethics. But Sen. Jon Kyl was able to fob them off. He blamed the well-known Tory Party fundraiser Sallie Hendry and claimed that the fundraiser was actually an educational event.

Given our MPs’ current reputation, the suspicion must be that the only educating going on was Sen. Jon Kyl receiving a master class in how to maximise one’s expenses.
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I’ve been a quiet blogger of late, but those of you who have taken an interest in the Charity Commission’s investigation of the Atlantic Bridge need not assume that I’ve let things go. You may recall that this organisation consists of at least two entities – a UK-based charity and a US-based charity – dedicated to ‘the simple aim of “Strengthening the Special Relationship” exemplified by the Reagan-Thatcher partnership of the 1980s.’

The Atlantic Bridge diverts money that would otherwise be collected as tax — and help pay for health, education, national debt or equipping troops in Afghanistan — to support the Thatcherite wing of the British Conservative Party and its US allies; US allies drawn from that country’s pro-tobacco, anti-healthcare and anti-environmentalist lobbies.

November saw the UK charity submit its annual report to the Charity Commission, which normally publishes such documents on its website. At time of writing it’s still not landed there and the commission was very reluctant indeed to let me have a copy (even though the Charities Act obliges the commission to make it available for public inspection). In the end they caved in, but not before I’d received a copy from another source.

Indeed, the Charity Commission has been incredibly soft on the Atlantic Bridge. When Andrew Lloyd Webber borrowed art from a charity in his name he was rightly slapped down because you are not allowed to benefit from any charities you have established or manage (and Lloyd Webber is hardly a charity case). But when Tory MP Liam Fox established a charity to subsidise the cost of flying himself, other senior Tories and their US allies back and forth across the Atlantic nothing happened. And when William Hague, a member of the Atlantic Bridge advisory board, got help with cost of his US book launch, nobody seemed bothered (although it’s most likely lucky US taxpayers helped out with that one).

Anyway. For the period of these accounts, the Atlantic Bridge spent more than £80,000 on just three substantial events, two of which were in partnership with the American Legislative Exchange Council.

ALEC was exposed in 1998 when the US tobacco industry made a multi-billion dollar settlement of dozens of lawsuits which included releasing thousands of internal documents. These documents prove beyond doubt that the tobacco industry used ALEC to launder favours and donations to US legislators.

Incredibly, ALEC survived to continue this work — it continues to receive funding from tobacco — but today it is at least as well known for opposing healthcare and for its anti-environmentalism. It is well funded by the oil and pharmaceutical industries, including Pfizer who have directly supported the Atlantic Bridge.

Dr Liam Fox MP established the Atlantic Bridge as a think-tank in 1997, but Fox is no intellectual and so ten years on it had still to publish a single thought. ALEC decided it was time for a relaunch and employed a Conservative Party activist to organise ‘a series of events aimed at conservative leaders from the field of politics, media, business, and academia – exposing them to innovative conservative thinking from the U.S. and Great Britain and helping them forge new transatlantic relationships.’ All subsidised by British and American taxpayers thanks to the organisation’s charitable status.

Despite all this, the Charity Commission has decided to allow the Atlantic Bridge to continue to enjoy the benefits of charitable status. The commission has merely asked the Atlantic Bridge to conform with the UK’s tough sounding laws on public benefit from this point on. If they can do that, they will be allowed to keep the many thousands of pounds, that would otherwise have been collected in taxes, that they have accrued since registering as a charity in 2003.

Yet even this is something the Atlantic Bridge has struggled with. Initially, it posted a vague statement on its website. Now it’s given up and taken the site down altogether.
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The Atlantic Bridge, a charity dedicated to ‘the simple aim of “Strengthening the Special Relationship” exemplified by the Reagan-Thatcher partnership of the 1980s,’ receives a much needed boost tomorrow evening, when Dr Henry Kissinger arrives in London to collect the oxymoronic Margaret Thatcher Medal of Freedom.

This is the organisation’s first major event since the cancellation of its Conservative Party Conference reception in the wake of a Charity Commission investigation of allegations it is too close to the Tories.

The think tank explains that Baroness Thatcher herself endowed it with her Medal of Freedom and an annual lecture in her name in 2007 and the night promises to be a significant boost to the Tory travel club’s finances. Tickets are £400 and £750 per head with no discount for tables of ten.

Despite winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for negotiating a ceasefire in the Vietnam War, Kissinger’s record on promoting freedom is limited. He is better known for his involvement in the secret bombing of Cambodia and helping Pinochet overthrow democracy in Chile amongst other things. But then Thatcher’s foreign policy record is shameful.
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When Tory shadow home secretary Chris Grayling claimed that parts of Britain looked like scenes from The Wire, many people rushed to condemn him (especially as he appeared to have not seen very much of the popular TV show). The Manchester Evening News’ David Ottewell reports he enters the Tory conference unrepentant.

For those unfamiliar, a key storyline includes politicians stealing from charities that they have themselves established. When caught they protest that they are the victims of a vicious hate campaign and that the accusations are politically motivated.

Chris Graying is a member of the Atlantic Bridge’s advisory board. It is most unlikely that he would ever steal from that organisation. He has no need to as it appears to have been established for the benefit of senior Conservatives such as himself.

We all know what The Wire’s Senator Clay Davis would say about that: ‘Shee-ee-ee-it!’ If only Clay had thought of making himself the beneficiary of his charities, he’d have saved himself some bother.
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It seems the closest the Atlantic Bridge has ever come to educating the public is hosting the launch of a book by William Hague in New York.

Officially an education and research scheme, or ‘think tank,’ hosting events like this is essential if the Atlantic Bridge is to retain its charitable status both here in the UK and in the USA.

Yet even here, the charity sails close to the wind. In the US persons, ‘in a position to exercise substantial influence over the affairs of the organization,’ may not benefit from its activities. Let’s hope that William Hague’s position on the Atlantic Bridge advisory board doesn’t upset the US Inland Revenue Service (IRS), too much. Or maybe it was the British taxpayer who subsidised this one.
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‘When events occur in America, expenses are paid by the Atlantic Bridge Inc (US), run by Scott Syfert. If a British citizen wishes to attend an event in the US… the UK charity will accept the donations on behalf of Atlantic Bridge Inc.’
– Atlantic Bridge Trustees Report & Financial Statement

It seems that if you are lucky enough to qualify for an Atlantic Bridge jolly – that is to say you’re a top Tory who needs to get chummy with an American Conservative – your donation to the Atlantic Bridge (UK) will qualify you to have your expenses paid by Atlantic Bridge, Inc (US).

As a higher rate taxpayer, a £1,000 trip to see comedian James Hirsen in LA, for example, would be covered by a £600 donation. The remaining £400 would then be claimed from British taxpayers. It sounds like an invitation to take part in well planned, systematic corruption.

You might think that Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs would have something to say about that. The good news is that they do and their strict limits on what a charity may give a donor mean that a £1,000 trip to the USA could never be legitimate.

One does wonder who qualifies to have their US travel expenses paid in return for donations. It sounds like such a good deal and yet nobody has admitted taking them up on the offer.

Of course a clever Tory could get someone else to make the donation on their behalf. Lucky Stephen Hammond, Conservative MP for Wimbledon, has declared trips to the USA funded by the Atlantic Bridge and so must be very important. There’s nothing to say he made a donation to qualify for his jolly.

Other Conservative MPs appear less fortunate. They have instead declared USA travel and accommodation to have been ‘met by Dr Liam Fox’s office from a donation by Mr Michael Lewis, a businessman from London.’

Dr Liam Fox chairs the Atlantic Bridge (UK), Michael Lewis is an Atlantic Bridge donor and yet declarations like this make no mention of the Atlantic Bridge. The Tory MPs involved appear to be too junior to receive the charity’s support.

Conservative MPs who have declared USA travel and accommodation to have been ‘met by Dr Liam Fox’s office from a donation by Mr Michael Lewis, a businessman from London,’ include Mark Harper of Forest of Dean; John Penrose of Weston-Super-Mare; Brooks Newmark of Braintree; and Philip Dunne of Ludlow.
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Following a complaint from this blogger, the Charity Commission has launched an inquiry into the status of the Atlantic Bridge, a charity whose main activity appears to be the sponsorship of predominantly private events at which senior Conservatives – including shadow cabinet ministers – and their US allies may bond behind closed doors.

Now the Atlantic Bridge has cancelled its reception at this year’s Conservative Party conference where, ‘members of the Shadow Cabinet [were to] be joined by a prominent American leader.’ This is a bitter blow to the organisation, which has been denied the chance to defy health secretary Andy Burnam’s call to ban anti-NHS Tories from the Manchester event.

A charity must never endorse a political party or play any part in party politics, so the Atlantic Bridge achieved charitable status in 2003 by claiming to be an education and research scheme or think tank.

The Atlantic Bridge’s partisan agenda was clearly affirmed by Margaret Thatcher (with whom they are obsessed) at a dinner in New York. Concluding what the Margaret Thatcher Foundation has ranked as a major speech, she set the Atlantic Bridge a clear goal: it was to become ‘a bulwark against the… people on the left’.

With Margaret Thatcher as its honorary patron, the Atlantic Bridge includes on its advisory board shadow chancellor George Osbourne, former Tory leader and shadow foreign secretary William Hague, shadow home secretary Chris Grayling and two other shadow cabinet members. Another shadow minister, a hereditary Conservative peer and a backbench Tory MP complete the UK line-up.

A submission to the Charity Commission misleadingly claims the Atlantic Bridge is dedicated to fostering good transatlantic relations and developing policy solutions for common problems. The organisation’s website is more candid declaring, ‘the simple aim of “Strengthening the Special Relationship” exemplified by the Reagan-Thatcher partnership of the 1980s.’

The Reagan-Thatcher partnership

Far from being an exemplar, the Reagan-Thatcher partnership famously sponsored the Taliban in Afghanistan; sponsored Saddam Hussein in Iraq as he embarked on genocide; supported Pinochet in Chile as he made thousands of people disappear; it defended the apartheid regime in South Africa (the only evil for which current Tory leader David Cameron has apologised).

Thatcher gave the developing world’s shadiest regimes master classes in corruption. Britain’s aid budget was used not to boost development, but to subsidise the arms trade and businesses who donated to the Conservative Party. Thatcher was so corrupt, she even used overseas aid money to support the career of her arms dealer son, a man who may not enter the USA because he has been convicted of a terrorism related offence.

The Thatcher years were years of shame for Britain to which nobody outside of the Conservative Party would ever wish to return.

The Atlantic Bridge and charity status

Founded in 1997 by Dr Liam Fox, current shadow defence secretary, the Atlantic Bridge registered as a charity in 2003. In order to become a charity the trustees submitted a quite different set of objectives from those stated elsewhere. Most importantly, these objectives make no reference to the Conservatism and idolisation of Thatcher that actually defines the Atlantic Bridge.

In common with the charity’s advisory board, the current trustees are all very experienced Conservative politicians. In addition to Liam Fox, they are Professor Patrick Minford, who sits on the council of Conservative Way Forward, which exists, ‘to defend and build upon the achievements of the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher’s leadership’; Lord Astor of Hever, a hereditary Conservative peer; and the lobbyist Andrew Dunlop a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher.

Last year the Charity Commission concluded an investigation of the Smith Institute, a charity that had become too close to Labour, and set the following criteria to determine, ‘whether the educational and research work carried out by the Institute is educational in a charity law context.’ It asked if the charity’s work was:

• of educational value or merit;
• balanced and not seeking to promote a particular point of view; and
• made sufficiently available to the public.

The Atlantic Bridge appears to have made remarkably little effort to conform to these requirements. In defiance of the obligation to share its thoughts with the public, it has yet to publish the results of any study.

Typical Atlantic Bridge activities include paying for Tory MPs to visit Washington to meet fellow Conservatives, or to have dinner in Los Angeles with Fox News personalities. No similar opportunities are offered to politicians from other parties or any attempts made to share what they have learned with the wider public.

In 2006, Liam Fox gave an unashamedly party political interview to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. It reported that he was in Pittsburgh, ‘to promote The Atlantic Bridge, an organization he founded in 1997 to build close personal and political relationships between American and British conservatives.’

It is more than reasonable to expect such senior and experienced politicians – and their advisors – to understand that charities may not take part in party politics. The Charity Commission is unaware of any case of a charity being identified as a sham by a court in England and Wales. The Atlantic Bridge may be the first.
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