In 2013 Gwythian Prins, a member of the board of the Charity Commission for England and Wales, made a remark during an interview that became a catchphrase and a talking point in the voluntary sector. Sitting in the impressive drawing room of the Athenaeum Club in London's Pall Mall, he argued that some charities were getting too deeply involved in campaigning. “The weather has changed on this front,” said Prins, a historian and specialist in defence affairs. “The public expects charities to stick to their knitting, to use an old-fashioned phrase.”

The remark signalled a renewed focus by the regulator, supported by some politicians, on the vexed question of whether charities should be allowed to campaign or get involved in politics – a question that has been controversial since Victorian times. Prins's clear implication was that charities should stay out of politics and confine themselves to the relief of distress. The contrasting view is that charities have always tried to eliminate the causes of distress – that William Wilberforce, for example, didn't achieve the abolition of slavery by providing soup kitchens for slaves. The late Stephen Lloyd, an influential charity lawyer, argued in 2014 that charities are ‘necessarily and inevitably’ caught up in politics:

This chapter examines how the boundary between charities and politics has moved back and forth in modern times as political attitudes have fluctuated and the law has been developed and reinterpreted. In the second decade of the 21st century the pendulum swung towards a tighter regime, and many charities featured later in this book – especially those involved in the kinds of causes mentioned by Lloyd – have learned to tread carefully to stay out of trouble.

The history of charity campaigning

The simple relief of need was the principal function of charities in mediaeval times, when monasteries and the Church provided almshouses, hospitals and schools. These were financed by donations from a population that saw charitable works as a way of securing salvation in the next world.