BLM UK’s opaque £1m crowdfunding campaign leaves questions to be asked

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, countless crowdfunding campaigns were organised to take advantage of the resultant unrest across the western world. Anyone could start a crowdfund, and not all were vetted, but the moment demanded action and many such campaigns went viral.

The Minnesota Freedom Fund in the United States, whose crowdfunding page was shared by countless celebrities as a symbol of “doing something”, raised $30 million in the days that followed Floyd’s death.

Looking back, however, questions are being asked as to why the crowdfund was ever considered to be legitimate. According to the New York Times, the fund’s only employee is facing allegations that she lied about her identity as an indigenous woman, and its list of board members displayed only white faces before it was taken down.

Black Lives Matter UK (BLMUK), which organised a crowdfunding campaign eight days after Floyd’s death and raised £1 million from over 33,000 donors, is facing similar questions over its legitimacy.

This British group went further than other crowdfunds by adopting the name of the movement, thus allowing itself to become the fundraising face of British protests. Yet this self-association is inconsistent with the official Black Lives Matter website, which lists chapters across the United States and Canada, but none in the United Kingdom.

There also appears to be a divergence of goals between the British group and the official movement. BLMUK calls for abolition of the police, whereas the official movement seeks police reform and cuts to spending on military equipment for police departments; BLMUK calls for the abolition of prisons, whereas the official movement seeks criminal justice reform; and BLMUK seeks to “dismantle capitalism”, which is in a completely separate playing field to the official movement’s focus on race.

More troublingly, there is a complete lack of transparency as to who is behind the BLMUK. Despite committing itself to “ways of organising that centre transparency and accountability”, the group’s crowdfunding page provides no names, few details as to where the money will be spent, and not a single contact address or website.

And, despite an occasional propensity to block airport runways, it also doesn’t have the kind of ground-presence one would expect from a professional racial justice campaign. Jay Kast, a youth violence prevention mentor and activist, told Reaction: “We are at community meetings and local events regularly, they don’t turn up. Nobody knows them. They are shrouded in darkness.”

This opaqueness has not gone unnoticed by black British politicians and activists, who have become increasingly vocal with their concerns. Dwayne Vincent, co-founder of the rap group So Solid Crew, tweeted: “We need to know the persons who are running this and their names. You shouldn’t hide who you are, you should show a point of contact.”

Vincent’s ire, usually targeted at the government or newspapers, had turned to a supposed racial justice organisation – an uncharacteristic intervention, but one that reflected a growing anger among black public figures towards the group’s refusal to release the names of its financial recipients.

Lord Simon Woolley, the advisory chair of the government’s Racial Disparity Unit, has also made his concerns public, telling Reaction that he felt there was a “deeply troubling” element to the fundraiser.

“The British public want to give to black organisations who are fighting systemic racism. Any organisation crowdfunding for black groups and not giving them the vast majority of the money are fraudulent, immoral, and dare I say it racist,” he added.

The available information suggests that, rather than an international branch of the official Black Lives Matter, BLMUK is a separate group altogether – more radical, and less transparent. This would be consistent with a theme in recent years of hard-left organisations adopting politically benign names such as “Stand up to Racism” to push their message.

The only name publicly associated with BLMUK, Joshua Virasami, a singer and writer who has a history of taking radical, and sometimes illegal action. He was convicted for pushing police in 2015, and again convicted in 2017 for obstructing the M4 spur route to Heathrow Airport.

We also know, as recently I reported in The Times, that members of the Socialist Workers Party have conspired to drag young Black Lives Matter protestors “kicking and screaming” towards the hard left by “fanning the flames” of recent protests.

The trouble here is not the politics of this small, radical left-wing group, but the fact that it appears to have misled generous supporters of the official Black Lives Matter movement. Would it have raised as much money had it not been named “Black Lives Matter UK”, and does every donor understand that they did not, in fact, donate to the movement?

It could therefore be argued that the group’s behaviour presents a breach of the Fundraising Regulator’s code, which states: “You and the fundraising materials you use must not mislead anyone, or be likely to mislead anyone, either by leaving out information or by being inaccurate or ambiguous or by exaggerating details.”

In a statement on June 13, BLMUK said it recognised concerns regarding transparency: “In the coming days there will be a website you can head to. We believe this… will help to ease any confusion around which of the many Black Lives Matter organisations and platforms that have emerged is actually us.” Almost a fortnight later, however, there has been no update.