Funding crisis hits anti-bigot campaign

NIL BY MOUTH, Scotland's biggest anti-sectarian charity, is to downscale to a voluntary organisation and lose its only member of staff in a crisis over funding.

• A campaign poster for Nil By Mouth

The influential campaign, which celebrated its tenth anniversary last year and is credited with a series of pioneering initiatives to tackle religious bigotry, will run out of money at the end of next month.

Although it has applied to the Scottish Government for 60,000 funding, it will not hear until the middle of March whether or not its application has been successful, by which time it will have lost its only full-time employee.

Nil By Mouth spokeswoman Lisa Campbell, who is leaving next month, said: "It's the 11th hour really. There is an application process taking place and we're waiting on the outcome. At the moment we will be reverting to being a voluntary organisation. Unless we get some other money, that's the only way we will survive."

Former First Minister and Labour MSP Jack McConnell, who supported a number of anti-bigotry initiatives during his time in government, said that, if funding was not approved, a decade of good work would be eroded.

"If this withdrawal of funding goes ahead, and is not reversed, it will be a kick in the teeth for all those who have campaigned against sectarianism, particularly in education and in local communities over the past ten years," he said.

"Nil By Mouth has spearheaded the transformation in attitudes to sectarianism over the past decade and if they are allowed to wither away and are treated in this appalling way then that will be a signal to the bigots that they can come back."

New figures released last week show that sectarian offences have decreased slightly in the past two years. During 2009-2010, there were 235 convictions across Scotland for such offences, more than half of which occurred in Glasgow. In the period from 2008-2009, there were 291 convictions.

But Glasgow Anniesland Labour MSP Bill Butler, who has campaigned in the past for a sectarian "tsar" to be appointed, said the figures showed sectarianism was still rife in some parts of Scotland. "These statistics demand urgent action and must serve as a wake-up call to anyone who doubts the need for a charity like Nil By Mouth," Butler said.

"Nil by Mouth has been at the forefront of getting Scotland to face up to this deep-seated and complex problem. It would be a tragedy if, due to government indifference, this pioneering charity was to cease to exist."

Campbell said the charity had been exploring other sources of funding but had yet to win support. She added: "We do a bit of fundraising but it's a difficult subject to fundraise for, particularly in these straitened times."

Nil By Mouth was founded in 2000 by teenager Cara Henderson, whose friend, 16-year-old Glasgow Academy schoolboy and Celtic fan Mark Scott was murdered in an unprovoked sectarian attack in 1995. It has pioneered a number of education and awareness campaigns, most recently a campaign to tackle sectarianism in the workplace. Along with Celtic, Rangers, churches and Glasgow City Council, Nil By Mouth started the "Sense Over Sectarianism" campaign in 2001. The charity's founders wrote its social charter and it went on to receive a Philip Lawrence Award for its work - an accolade named after a London school master stabbed to death when he tried to save a pupil from a gang attack.

Henderson remains an honorary patron of the charity but now plays no active role.

Scott's murderer, 23-year-old Jason Campbell, was jailed for life. However, it was reported last year that he had been granted home leave in preparation for release, and had spent several days over Christmas 2009 at his family home in the Bridgeton area of Glasgow.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "The Scottish Government greatly values the excellent work carried out by organisations such as Nil By Mouth to tackle the scourge of sectarianism.

"All organisations currently in receipt of Scottish Government funding, such as Nil By Mouth, were issued with funding application packs on 25 January for the 2011-12 financial year.

"We are committed to working with organisations to tackle the scourge of sectarianism and, on 30 November, 2010, the minister for community safety [Fergus Ewing] officially launched Nil By Mouth's ‘Addressing Sectarianism in the Workplace' scheme.

"The Scottish Government is keen to continue working with Nil By Mouth to see this very positive initiative rolled out and used by workplaces across Scotland."

n [email protected]