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TSUNAMI IMPACT: British Donating 2m Dollars an Hour

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Jan 4 2005 (IPS) - There is nothing quite like a calamity to bring the best out of the British. Over the last two days British people have been donating something like two million dollars an hour for people hit by the tsunami.

British foreign secretary Jack Straw has said the government will match donations made by the public, but people response is fast outpacing what the government has done.

By Tuesday mid-day British public contributions had reached 150 million dollars. The government has so far committed 96 million dollars.

"The British public have a history of giving to countries affected by disasters," an official spokesperson at Oxfam told IPS. "But this is unprecedented in terms of the volume of donations people are giving."

Oxfam which has 750 shops across Britain is being "overwhelmed" by donations, she said. Oxfam has announced the need for an extra 10,000 staff at its stores just to handle donations. Without extra staff some of the stores may have to close because they cannot cope.

"People have been touched in many ways," the Oxfam spokesperson said. "Some know a friend or family member affected, but others have been just horrified by what they have seen."

Donations are coming in both from individuals and companies. The highest individual donation has been close to 10,000 dollars.

"We are getting donations also from a lot of businesses, from mobile phone companies to solicitors’ firms," she said.

The 20 football clubs in the British Premiership League donated two million dollars to the fund. The England cricket team donated 28,000 dollars.

One reason for the greater outpouring of support compared to many other countries is that even though Britain is an island state, "it is quite a multicultural society," the spokesperson said. "People live here from all around the world, and that gives people here a broader outlook."

But the prime reason could lie in the way charities are organised in Britain. Twelve leading charities including the British Red Cross, Cafod, Oxfam, Save the Children, and Tearfund come together in a Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) for such purposes.

"This is the biggest ever response we’ve had but charities have been working together under the DEC since 1963, and this is our 51st appeal," Tricia O’Rourke from the DEC told IPS. The last appeal was for people in Darfur in Sudan.

"There is great public understanding when there is a major disaster and on every occasion people have given generously," O’Rourke said. "But British charities are also in a unique position of working together rather than individually."

This not only concentrates the appeal, but draws effective media support, she said. "We get enormous support from national and regional media alike," she said. "We get to make a single appeal on prime television, and the media support is given free. We also get many celebrities on board in a single appeal that brings an incredible joining together."

Brendan Gormley, the DEC chief executive, said the response to TV and radio appeals had been "absolutely phenomenal".

But it cannot end here, he said. "The scale of this disaster means that the recovery process will be very long term and we really would encourage people to continue giving," he said. The DEC has provided several thousand telephone lines for people to give donations.

Queen Elizabeth declared in a statement that she was impressed by the help coming from British people by way of "donations, time, money or help with the relief effort on the ground."

The outpouring of public contributions is now putting pressure on the government to do more. Straw said Tuesday there is "no cap" on British government aid.

He said earlier he was in "no doubt" that the government would match the "enormous generosity" of the public. Asked if the government would match the sum pledged by the public, he said: "I am almost certain we will do in the end."

Public contributions in Britain are expected to reach 250 million dollars over the next few days. If the government matches that, the total British contribution by the end of the week could be half a billion dollars.

That could put total British aid ahead of U.S. aid. The U.S. government has so far pledged 350 million dollars. The Japanese government has pledged half a billion dollars. Public contributions – and pressure – could put Britain among the top donors for the tsunami affected.

More than 150,000 people are believed to have died in 11 Asian countries in the tsunami – a massive tidal wave set off by an earthquake under the sea near Indonesia. About five million homes are believed to have been damaged or destroyed.

This is leading in turn to the largest ever relief effort. Governments have between them pledged more than two billion dollars in aid so far.