McGovern v Attorney-General: ChD 1982

Amnesty International established a trust with a view to obtaining charitable status for some of its activities.
Held: The trust established to promote certain of its objects was not charitable because it was established for political purpose; however a trust for research into the observance of human rights and the dissemination of the results of such research could be charitable. Slade J refused a declaration that the Trust ought to be registered as a charity. He found that although a trust set up for the relief of human suffering and distress would be capable of being charitable in nature it would not be charitable if any of its main objects were of a political nature that: trusts for the purpose of seeking to alter the laws of the United Kingdom or a foreign country or persuading a country’s government to alter its policies or administrative decisions were political in nature; and that, accordingly, the object of the trust to secure the release of prisoners of conscience by procuring the reversal of governmental policy or decisions by lawful persuasion was of a political nature and since that object affected all the trusts of the trustee, the trust was not a charitable one. But the object clauses of the Trust set up by Amnesty were very different from the rules of Bangor and the decision seems to me clearly distinguishable.’

Slade J
[1982] 1 Ch 321, [1981] 3 All ER 493
England and Wales
Cited by:
CitedRegina v Bow Street Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate, ex parte Pinochet Ugarte (No 2) HL 15-Jan-1999
A petition was brought to request that a judgment of the House be set aside because the wife of one their lordships, Lord Hoffmann, was as an unpaid director of a subsidiary of Amnesty International which had in turn been involved in a campaign . .

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Charity

Leading Case

Updated: 01 November 2021; Ref: scu.183295