New Labour: Donors

This section features details of the many 'high-value' donors and sponsors of the Labour Party since 1996. All those listed here have given more than £5,000 (the exact figures are given when we could find them). The Labour Party's accounts for 1999 show that 60% of its income comes from donors (20% from donors over £5,000) and 10% comes from commercial activities (events and sponsorship). The Trade Unions, who once generated 90% of the Party's income, now provide only 30% (and only 3 high-value donations in 1998-9).

The proportion of New Labour's funds coming from very rich individuals has dramatically increased in the last 4 years and continues to do so, as Tony Blair moves to distance himself from any responsibility to the Unions and the Party's traditional core of working class supporters. What was supposed to be the 'Party of the working class' is funded by the rich and packed out with businessmen.

The rewards are big for the big spenders - for example, of the 97 official high-value donors in 1998-9 more than 30 have received some kind of Government job. A large number of rich donors have received peerages, knighthoods or Task Force jobs, establishing a set of unelected bosses and millionaires in the heart of the Labour Government - from Lord Sainsbury's peerage and Science Minister job (he has given more than £3 million since 1996) to Robert Devereux's job as Chair of the Creative Industries Task Force.

The list also includes companies like Raytheon Systems, an arms manufacturer bidding for Government contracts and Enron, the failed energy multinational which is the subject of a huge financial scandal. Lobbying companies with clients that include Rupert Murdoch's News International, Tesco and Scottish Power also feature heavily.

In September 1999 an opinion poll (ICM) found that 52% of people thought that Tony Blair did not care enough about Labour's traditional working class supporters. Almost the same amount thought Blair paid too much attention to rich people who give Labour large donations.

In another poll the month before, only 26% of workers said they believed that management and employees were 'on the same side' (Joseph Rowntree Foundation study). In a country where 55% of the population consider themselves to be working class (ICM poll), Blair's 1999 speech to the CBI that he is 'proud to be pro-business' places him very squarely in opposition to those same workers.