Bob Geldof and Oban’s Pagan way to will relief of poverty overseas

Any Pagan way is somehow an attractive notion. The Pagan way of many of Scotland’s solicitors is as potent as rain dances. In fact it can amount to something not far off the result of a rain dance. And the willing of relief of poverty in the third world is both the power of will to make this happen and the use of a will to bring the relief. Your will. And this doesn’t mean what you might think, so read on.

Before we stop playing mystery games, there’s a health warning. Prepare to be disappointed in improper conduct where you would least expect to find it. This is an inspiring story – and one where a stroke of genius unlocked a simple way of doing serious good. But it is also an object lesson in what should never happen.

The benevolent inspiration

The Pagan is no Druid but Graeme Pagan, an Oban solicitor, now retired, who, when he was Vice Dean of the Oban Faculty of Solicitors, was moved by Bob Geldof’s powerful Band Aid and Live Aid, bringing food and sustainable development to starving millions, first in Ethiopia.

In 1988, the Oban Faculty of Solicitors was celebrating its centenary. To mark this event, Graeme Pagan came up with the idea of Will Aid.

The Oban solicitors took their starting point from the series of Wills Weeks organised by the Law Society of Scotland and aimed at getting people to realise how important it is to make a will in good time – and to keep it up to date with your intentions should your circumstances and thinking change.

Graeme Pagan got solicitors in Scotland to agree, in October 1988, to draw up wills for clients and charge no fee, providing that the client donated to a group of named charities specialising in famine relief and development projects in the world’s poorer countries.

The charities in question were: Action Aid, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Save the Children and the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund.

No less than a third of Scottish Legal Practices took part in Will Aid 1988 – about 500 firms in all, together raising £90,000 for these charities.

Two years later, in 1990, solicitors in England and Wales were encouraged to take up the scheme, raising £575,000. Solicitors from all three countries took part in Will Aid 1992 (November), raising £910,000, with £102,000 of this coming from Scotland.

After this and with the addition of solicitors in Ireland, further Will Aid events took place in 1994, 1996 and 1998. By the end of this time, the scheme had raised £3.5 million in this way, with a further £4 million promised in legacies.

Another Will Aid followed in sequence in November 2000, benefiting a group of charities then including: Action Aid, Christian Aid, British Red Cross, Save the Children, Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (Scotland), Sight Savers International and Trocaire (Northern Ireland).

The usual biennial Will Aid event was planned for 2004, after which the total raised was around £5 million in donations made in exchange for wills and benefiting only poorer countries overseas.

The worm in the apple

But it was this 2004 event that saw the entire beneficent magnificence of this scheme skewed improperly by the ruling consortium’s introduction – against Graeme Pagan’s express will – of charities using their money to benefit people in the UK and Ireland. The Will Aid name had been registered in England a few years before 2006, with Graeme Pagan’s consent and on the understanding that the original principles of the founding organisation bearing the name should be maintained.

Since these principles centred on the bringing of relief to poorer overseas countries, the diversion of funds to needs within the UK and Ireland was a core infringement of the agreement made. However, with the Will Aid name registered in England and controlled by a consortium at liberty to ignore the founding principles – and content to do so – Grame Pagan was faced with a moral dilemma.

He resolved it by starting a new organisation in Scotland, called Solicitors Will Aid Scotland, designed to continue the funding of aid to poorer countries overseas. He then found himself threatened with court proceedings by the English Will Aid organisation to which he had given the name – unless he gave up using the name Will Aid in any form.

Angered by the willingness of a consortium of charities to spend funds raised for the relief of poverty on legal fees and determined not to be lured into the same thing himself, Graeme Pagan took the pragmatic route and renamed his second generation scheme – Will Relief Scotland.

The conduct of the consortium of charities in this matter seems explicable only by priorities which have nothing to do with the integrity the public assume to guide such organisations. They know who they are and so do we.

However, the important focus is the hugely positive and selfless work of Graeme Pagan and the participating Scottish Legal Practices as they set themselves to work again this month to raise more funds for the desperately needy overseas. This is the big story

Will Relief Scotland September 2009

Scottish solicitors support Will Relief Scotland and Mr Pagan assured people at its foundation in 2006 that, with the exception only of essential printing and other related costs, all of the money raised by Will Relief Scotland will be spent only on the relief of suffering in some of the world’s poorer countries.

Now, in September 2009 – and in what is left if it – Will Relief Scotland 2009 gives everyone the opportunity:

• to make a will, ensuring that their wishes are legally protected
• to pay no fee for this service to the Scottish solicitor participating in the scheme
• to make a donation to the group of charities involved in Will Relief Scotland
• to know that this action is making a real difference to people in poorer countries overseas without the lifeline public services we in the UK enjoy

The five Scotland-based charities in partnership with Scottish Solicitors in Will Relief Scotland are: Blythswood Care – Evanton Ross-shire; EMMS International – Edinburgh; Mission Aviation Fellowship – Glasgow; Mary’s Meals – Dalmally, Argyll; and Signpost International – Dundee.

Patrons of Will Relief Scotland are Shireen Nanjiani, Lord Mackay of Clashfern and Sir Tom Farmer. The scheme also has the support of First Minister, Alex Salmond.

The scale of donations recommended by Will Relief Scotland in exchange for having your will drawn up free during this month of September 2009 are:

• £70: Single Will
• £95: Mirror Wills
• £35: Codicil

For more information, a list of partipating Scottish Legal Practices and contacts for Will Relief Scotland - visit its website.

We all need to make wills and to make them in good time. This inspired idea of benefiting others through doing what we have to do for ourselves was born in Argyll. We can be proud of it. Will Relief Scotland’s unwavering principles are Scottish in character as is its benevolent reaching out to those poorer and more powerless than we are.

Try the Pagan way and will the rain dance.

The photograph at the top of this article is of Graeme Pagan.