Emma Cowing: Kindness gets press money can’t buy

It’s not that I disagree with her statement this week that the PM and the Chancellor are “arrogant posh boys” – there are schoolchildren in Inverkeithing who could have told us that – it’s the fact that she so clearly made the statement in order to get her name in the headlines.

From a woman who once led a (mercifully defeated) amendment in the House of Commons that aimed to strip abortion providers of their role in counselling women, it’s a name many of us would rather forget.

Some names however, should stay with us.

Another woman who made headlines this week, for infinitely different and more tragic reasons, is Claire Squires.

She did not ask for publicity, nor did she wish to trend on Twitter. But her tragic death at the age of 30 on Sunday during the last mile of the London marathon, which she was running for the Samaritans, has ensured that her name has never been far from the front pages since.

Squires was the first woman to die running the London marathon since its inception.

The cause of her death has yet to be determined. And since her passing, something remarkable has happened. People have gone online, and donated money to her charity.

By yesterday morning, the total amount donated had reached more than £245,000. It is a remarkable achievement for someone whose modest aim had been to raise £500.

Perhaps one of the most touching things about the donations that have been made is that most of them are small. A fiver here. A tenner there, £2, £3, £20.

Scrolling through the pages it becomes clear that people have paid whatever they can afford, whether it be a little, or a lot.

Many of the donations are anonymous, too. Some signed with a single ‘X’. Others by people who identify themselves as “fellow marathon runners”.

It flies in the face of the notion that most of us give to charity because we secretly “want to talk about it”. Most of us give to charity because the cause has touched us, and we want to help. Squires’s untimely death, and the charity she supported, is a cause that has touched the hearts of many.

This is a tough time for many charities, large and small, up and down Britain.

We are not the free and easy big spenders we were ten or even five years ago. Money is tight. Unemployment is up. Philanthrophy is increasingly thin on the ground while the government’s latest plan to limit tax relief on charitable donations (any reason you didn’t pipe up on this one, Ms Dorries?) will make things even harder for a sector that is already struggling.

The irony, of course, is that it is during the tough times that charities are needed more than ever.

From those who help the homeless, to those who care for the elderly, to the ones – like the Samaritans, the cause that Squires chose to raise money for – who provide a lifeline to those who are in desperate need of help and advice – everyone out there in the charity sector is struggling.

Thank goodness then, for sites like JustGiving, that make it so much easier to donate to charities than it has been in the past. While most of us, grumpy and late, may scuttle past a charity can collector on the street with our heads bowed, an almost equal amount of us will, it seems, take the time to log on, tap in a few details, and donate our hard-earned cash.

Squires’s page, and the outpouring of kindness and generosity it has prompted, has given the country a well-timed reminder, during this time of anger, political frustration and (god help us) pasty taxes, that people are essentially good, and capable of acts of selfless giving.

It is a shot in the arm not just for the Samaritans, but for all those working in the charity sector.

On Squires’s JustGiving Page, she wrote: “I’m running the London marathon for Samaritans because they continuously support others”.

Yet it is the support that she chose to give them that not only means they will be able to go on doing their jobs, but has reminded a nation of its capacity for kindness. As legacies go, it is a remarkable one.