Political Neutrality
Oxfam Great Britain was strongly criticised by other NGOs for becoming too close to Tony Blair's New Labour government in the UK.
In October, 2011, Oxfam's campaign for a financial transaction tax resulted in it seeking court action to ban a pensioner, Barry Nowlan, from one of its shops, asking him to pay a £10,000 legal bill after he complained about a poster which highlighted Oxfam’s call for a 'Robin Hood' tax of banks and financial institutions.
On 25 October 2011, the dispute was settled amicably in Taunton County Court. Afterwards Mr Nowlan said: "The matter has been settled between Oxfam and myself on a mutually satisfactory basis." Oxfam declined to comment on the court case, saying simply: "It is a private matter."
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or neutrality:
“It is certainly safe, in view of the movement to the right of intellectuals and political thinkers, to pronounce the brain death of socialism.”
—Norman Tebbit (b. 1931)
“My father and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy—a sort of armed neutrality, so to speak. At irregular intervals this neutrality was broken, and suffering ensued; but I will be candid enough to say that the breaking and the suffering were always divided up with strict impartiality between us—which is to say, my father did the breaking, and I did the suffering.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)