Common Purpose
Common Purpose (CP) is a not-for-profit organisation that was started by Demos trustee Julia Middleton. It has been around for sometime but gained much funding with the advent of New Labour and its service towards business elites. Initially money was put in by David Bell, the Chairman of the Financial Times (and the Millennium Bridge Trust).
Contents
Board
Current members
- Sir David Bell - Chairman, Financial Times Group
- Albert Tucker - Independent Consultant
- Chris Mathias - Founder, Arbor Ventures
- Mark Linder -Bell Pottinger Group
- Miriam Mulcahy - Media Consultant
- Peter Kulloi - Director, Budapesti Ingatlan
- Philip Wright - Partner, PriceWaterhouseCoopers UK
- Richard Charkin Executive Director, Bloomsbury Publishing [1]
Former members
The board at one point included Lord Dahrendorf, the chairman of the right-wing Ditchley Foundation and Prof. Laurence Martin of the like-minded Royal Institute of International Affairs. It was composed of representatives of big business (mostly Labour party donors) including multinationals, the police, the MOD, banks and their associates:
- Gillian Ashmore(Cabinet Office)
- Sir Jeremy Beecham(Association of Metropolitan Authorities)
- David Bell(Financial Times)
- Dr. Andrew Bird (Zeneca)
- Dr. Kevin Bond (Yorkshire Water)
- Jeremy Hall (Dean Clough Ltd)
- Richard Hatfield (Ministry of Defence)
- John Lee (Halifax plc)
- Ruth MacKenzie (ex-Scottish Opera)
- Vincent McGinlay (Marks & Spencer plc)
- Baroness Genista McIntosh (Royal National Theatre)
- Tim Melville-Ross (Institute of Directors)
- Sir Alastair Morton (Shadow Strategic Railway Authority and British Railways Board)
- Sir Herman Ouseley (Commission for Racial Equality)
- Janet Paraskeva (National Lottery Charities Board)
- Graham Prentice (Nestle UK Ltd)
- John Rivers (Rolls-Royce plc)
- Gerry Robinson (Arts Council of England)
- Richard Sambrook (BBC)
- Barry Shaw (Cleveland Constabulary)
- Jan Shawe (Prudential Corporation plc)
- Vivien Stern (The International Centre for Prison Studies)
- Peter Stoddart (Nissan UK Ltd)
- Paul Whitehouse (Sussex Police)
- Ken Williams (Norfolk Constabulary)
- Ruth Wishart (Freelance Journalist)
Corporate Sponsors
CP's list of corporate sponsors is impressive and they say they have offices in every UK city. CP says it tries to promote 'corporate community engagement', and a synergy with big business. Relationships between corporate CP funders such as BAe Systems, Royal Ordinance and GEC-Marconi and, say, the work of CP trustee David Grayson of the National Disability Council are unexplained. The idea is to accentuate the positive. The real value of CP must be measured by its closeness to power. For example former board member Gillian Ashmore from the Cabinet Office:
- Gillian Ashmore is currently on secondment from the Department of Transport to the British Railways Board working on railway privatisation. She joined the Civil Service in 1971 and has worked variously in the Departments of the Environment, Transport, Employment and Trade and Industry. On the Transport side, she has worked mainly in the public transport field. In the latter two Departments she was Deputy Director of the Enterprise and Deregulation Unit. Mrs. Ashmore has also been a non-executive director of P & O European Transport.[1] Cite error: Closing
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Former staff
- Nelisha Wickremasinghe - (2005-09)
Notes
- ↑ Common Purpose Trustees, accessed 12 July 2011
- ^ http://www.commonpurpose.org.uk/Public/jobs/pforum.htm. Barclays also sponsored Common Purpose's Alchemist Awards to various friends including the Founders of Jubilee 2000 which aims to ask the banks to abandon third world debts.
- ^ Which recently shiftily changed its name to the 'Community Fund'. Monopoly anyone?
- ^ http://www.camelotplc.com/press/archive/pressreleases/pressczclaunc.asp
