The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) is on course for the highest annual fundraising total in its near 200-year history. Donations swelled after the charity attracted huge public support following rightwing attacks for helping save the lives of asylum seekers at risk of drowning in the Channel.
The RNLI said it has received a significant increase in support, with online donations rising by 50% this year.
Founded in 1824, the UK’s network of volunteer lifeboats has been inundated with donations and messages of support after high-profile attacks from individuals such as Nigel Farage and elements of the media, who have called the charity “woke” for fulfilling its humanitarian mission to save lives at sea.
Their claims are believed to have encouraged a group of fishermen who in November allegedly attempted to block a lifeboat from going to the Channel to rescue asylum seekers, days before 27 people drowned in the Channel.
Jayne George, the RNLI’s fundraising director, said that such hostility appeared to have had the opposite effect to what its architects would have wanted.
“We’ve had a better response to almost everything that we’ve done in 2021. At the end of the year, we’re going to have more members, we’re going to have more cash donors and more people who give to us via direct debit,” she said.George added that the charity’s database of supporters had also grown appreciably, with the organisation now in regular contact with 300,000 people.
Channel crossings have become one of the most politicised issues in British politics, with the home secretary, Priti Patel, staking her reputation on making the route “unviable” yet unable to prevent almost 28,000 people arriving in small boats in 2021, compared with just over 8,400 the previous year.
Her controversial borders bill intends to reduce such numbers and contained, until recently, proposals that appeared to criminalise organisations such as the RNLI for rescuing asylum seekers in the Channel.
“We can’t help but notice that it’s a really divisive issue that’s in the news almost daily. Whatever the negatives, the positive is that it brings out this significant reaction in terms of people wanting to support us, particularly our work in the eastern Channel,” said George.
She added that the boom in staycations during the pandemic meant more people were exposed to its work than usual: 2020 was one of the charity’s busiest on record, with 8,239 lifeboat launches that assisted 8,374 people and saved 239 lives.
The organisation has also noted that support is not just confined to coastal areas. “In fact the majority of our most successful cohorts of fundraisers are in the major cities. We’ve got a Leeds business branch that is really successful and two committees in London that have raised significant sums of money, and also Birmingham as well,” said George.
Sunday is the 20th anniversary of lifeboats on the Thames, where they were introduced after the 1989 Marchioness pleasure boat disaster in which 51 people died.
Despite repeated assertions from the Home Office that it is heavily targeting small boat crossings, a parliamentary report last month said the government’s operations in the Channel “rely heavily on voluntary organisations, such as the RNLI, or independent lifeboats”.
George said: “Our core purpose is humanitarian – we exist to save everyone.”
Source: Guardian
