British Helsinki Human Rights Group - Membership and Funding

Membership and Funding

The BHHRG was founded in 1992. It is run from the Oxford home of historian Professor Norman Stone, who has on occasion taken part in BHHRG activities, and was co-founded by his wife Christine Stone and fellow Oxford historian Mark Almond (who is also its chairman). Its trustees comprise Mark Almond, Anthony Daniels (who writes for the Daily Telegraph under the pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple), John Laughland, Christine Stone and Mary Walsh. Almond, Daniels, Laughland and Stone are members of Britain's conservative intelligentsia and are regular contributors to British newspapers. Chad Nagle, an American lawyer who frequently contributes to the libertarian isolationist antiwar.com website, is also associated with the group. Noel Malcolm, a historian of early modern Britain and Europe who in the 1990s and early 2000s wrote a couple of mass market books on some aspects of Balkan history, appeared on a 1994 list of founders and spoke on its behalf as recently as 1999 but has apparently since left the group.

The BHHRG is not an "official" Helsinki Committee, as it is not affiliated with the Helsinki Committees' umbrella organisation, the International Helsinki Federation (IHF). The United Kingdom's representative in the IHF is the British Helsinki Subcommittee of the Parliamentary Human Rights Group, established in 1976. This led to the BHHRG being mistakenly labelled the British Helsinki Committee, which prompted the British Helsinki Subcommittee to ask visitors to its website to

"PLEASE NOTE that the so-called British Helsinki Group is NOT affiliated with the IHF" .

For its part, the BHHRG website says nothing on the subject.

The membership, management and funding of the BHHRG are somewhat obscure. These aspects do not appear to be discussed at all on its website, and the details of its trustees are given only in its legally required returns to the UK's Charity Commission. Its published accounts state that it received £417,332 in income between 1997–2003 and spent £449,086 in the same period. The organisation appears to have fallen on hard times recently, with its funding falling by nearly 99% after 2001. A possible reason is suggested by The Economist, which reports that

"the group lost almost all its supporters when it threw its weight behind people like Mr Milošević."

The identity of its backers is also unclear. Still with them in 1999, Noel Malcolm explained that the group does not disclose its donors

"for obvious reason: they would then start to campaign with the financial backers."

Only a few contributors are known by name. Material that the BHHRG issued in 1992 cited the Tory peer Lord Pearson of Rannoch and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation as donors. The BHHRG's "About Us" page states that it "does not receive funding from any government" but, according to a Foreign Office source, it did receive money from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for an election observer mission in 1995. The source said funding was cut off because they found the group prejudiced, and partial and unreliable.

It has received no funding from this source since then and its advocates now say this proves the group is independent of governments.