A Cause for Our Times: Oxfam: The First 50 Years

by Maggie Black

Oxfam is one of the best known and most successful charities in Britain. It is also one of the most controversial. This immensely readable history explores Oxfam's evolution from a small, local, wartime charity to Britain's largest overseas aid agency. From its initial mission to bring relief
to Greece during the darkest days of the Second World War, to the recent Charity Commission investigation into its campaigning activities, Oxfam has rarely been out of the news. Widely respected and supported, but sometimes regarded with suspicion, its humanitarian mission has never been "safe,"
whether in Africa or Vietnam, Central America or the Middle East; whether in hard-hitting fund-raising or educational activity, in nagging governments into helping famine victims or flying mercy cargoes into the teeth of conflict. In keeping with that tradition, Maggie Black, an experienced author
and journalist, explores those engagements with a critical eye. In so doing, she projects Oxfam's own development against a backdrop of changing ideas in international affairs and charitable giving of which its growth is both an inspiration and an expression.

334 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1992

About the author

Maggie Black is the author of several publications including From Handpumps to Health: The Evolution of Water and Sanitation Programmes in Bangladesh, India and Nigeria and In the Twilight Zone: Child Workers in the Hotel, Tourism and Catering Industry. She has worked as a consultant for UNICEF, Anti-Slavery International, and WaterAid, among others, and has written for The Guardian, The Economist, and BBC World Service.

Reviews

[Rosemary]

I enjoyed the early part of this, about how Oxfam was set up in Oxford during the Second World War with the aim of raising money for famine relief in Nazi-occupied parts of Europe, which the British government wouldn't help because it was like helping the enemy in a sense. And who knows how much of the aid did get diverted - which became an ongoing challenge for aid agencies as they spread to other parts of the world with dubious governments or occupying powers.

But after reading about the jumble sales in Broad Street and so on, I lost track of who was who and stopped reading as the charity began looking about rather randomly, it seemed, for who to support next. And it was two years ago that I put it aside, so it's probably time to mark this DNF.