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Frontliners, a pioneering self-help organisation, went under
in March 1991, amid charges of financial fraud and nepotism
in its employment practices. According to sources available
to The News, Europe's first gay monthly newspaper, the Charity
Commission, which has been investigating the closure of Frontliners,
is going to pass on its files to the Metropolitan Police Fraud
Squad. In addition, a confidential Department of Health report
indicated that Frontliners had hired people on the basis of
performance in bed rather than relevant job skills.
The Terrence Higgins Trust (THT), described by former Chief
Executive Naomi Wayne as "the premier voluntary HIV/AIDS
service organisation outside the USA", has had a sullied
reputation for many years. The organisation's first Chief
Executive, John Fitzpatrick, resigned in 1988; he told The
News that he had been "horrified at the mis-spending
of Trust monies".
Fitzpatrick was succeeded by Martin Eede, who left for "professional
reasons".
The next Chief Executive was Naomi Wayne, who was forced by
the THT board to resign for reasons that "remain private".
She was given a pay-off of £15,000. According to an
article in The News:
'Mysteriously, a delegation of three senior Trust executives,
led by Chairman Martyn Taylor, flew to Ireland in an all-expenses
paid junket during the first week of September to speak with
Ms Wayne who was there on holiday. She immediately returned
to London to face a fraught meeting with the Board of Directors.
A long-standing senior Trust volunteer, who declined to be
named under threat of disciplinary action, tells us that the
meeting discussed "personal matters" relating to
Ms Wayne's recruitment. Her resignation followed within days
and Mr Partridge was again asked by the Board to stand in
as Acting Chief Executive'.
The current charges of fraud and corruption revolve around
Nick Partridge, the Acting Chief Executive. He receives a
salary of £31,500, which by English standards is enormous.
Partridge joined the Trust in 1985 as a clerk, with previous
job experience as a copy boy for a news agency.
 Signs
of THT's financial irregularities began to surface when the
Group Leaders Committee questioned the organisation's finances
at an Extraordinary General Meeting held at the Trust's Gray's
Inn Road headquarters on 28 October 1991. Nick Partridge announced
that, owing to "financial difficulties", eleven
people would need to be laid off.
The organisation's financial policies were then questioned,
in particular payments totalling £115,000 made to an
outside fund-raiser, Andrew McDonald. The money had been given
to McDonald to set up a 'Capital Appeal' from which the Trust
hoped to raise £8 million to buy its own premises. McDonald
never raised a penny in 17 months and his contract was terminated
in September by "mutual consent".
McDonald was implicated in 1987 by UK's premier investigative
publication Private Eye for his association with Practical
Investor magazine:
'The Amsterdam-based publishing company was exposed as having
fleeced thousands of prospective shareholders worldwide, who
had been encouraged to invest in the publication by an extremely
active telesales campaign. The magazine was never published,
and an estimated £1 million has never been accounted
for'.
Nick Partridge told the meeting that, although the loss of
money (£115,000) was "unfortunate", the Trust
had "gained a lot of experience". His insouciance
was later surpassed by Tim Costello, Solicitor and Director
of the Trust, who said the amount of money paid to McDonald
was "insignificant".
Four days after the Extraordinary General Meeting, the Group
Leaders Committee uncovered further examples of "questionable
management practices". They learned that £78,000
of pension funds had been siphoned off in order to pay staff
salaries. This improper use of pension fund money to meet
current expenditure caused "alarm and concern" among
the Group Leaders, who convened an internal inquiry and demanded
a joint meeting with The Board of Directors. The assigned
an unpaid full-time volunteer, Michael Murphy, to conduct
an undercover investigation.
The THT leadership responded with an iron fist. On 4 November,
Janet Green, head of the Trust's Volunteers Division, proposed
scrapping the Group Leaders Committee and replacing it with
a "Consultative Forum", which would be powerless
to question the organisation's finances. Her proposal was
described as "a blatant attempt to silence yet another
voice of discontent within the Trust. It is at best a crude
attempt to silence criticism, and at worst a cover up".
At a meeting between the Group Leaders Committee and the THT
Board of Directors on 18 November 1991, Steve Smith, leader
of the Trust's Buddies Group, resigned from his post, saying
that "his action reflected the lack of confidence that
was widely felt by a majority of volunteers in relation to
the Trust's financial management". The Buddies Group,
made up of over over 600 members, is by far the largest volunteer
group within the Trust.
On 27 November 1991, Michael Murphy was suspended by Nick
Partridge, who accused him of having "leaked" information
to a reporter from The Independent. Murphy was summoned to
a private meeting before the Trust's Personnel Committee on
11 December 1991. But after he was denied access to independent
advice, Murphy decided the hearing would not be fair and he
resigned. "There is absolutely no way that I would be
prepared to subject myself to such a kangaroo court. The management
clearly have something to hide", he said.
But the cat was out of the bag, and prominent news stories
of THT's financial turpitude were run in the gay and general
press. The Sunday Express ran a story about Andrew McDonald's
'Capital Appeal' rip-off, and in the process showed Partridge
as a blatant liar:
'Mr Partridge said the Trust had benefited from McDonald's
work because he had secured donations from Elton John and
the late Freddie Mercury. But spokesmen for both stars denied
the gifts were made because of the appeal and McDonald'.
The Sunday Express followed up on 29 December 1991 with a
front-page story, 'Call for AIDS Charity Probe'. Nick Partridge
responded on 31 December 1991 by mailing a "Dear Colleague"
letter to 1,000 supporters. Under the headline, "The
Sunday Express is Making Mischief", Partridge claimed
that the Sunday Express story was "based almost entirely
on claims made by a volunteer who resigned from the Trust
on 11 December 1991, just before a disciplinary hearing was
due to consider complaints of gross misconduct against him".
Amidst a flurry of platitudes, Partridge blamed the Trust's
financial difficulties on the recession and the stinginess
of the government, despite the Trust having received a recent
grant of £450,000.
The Sunday Express fought back on 12 January 1992, charging
that the recipients of Partridge's letter found it "patronising
and insulting":
'In recent weeks, we revealed how the Trust's £8 million
'Capital Appeal' turned into a fiasco. They paid £115,000
to a professional fund-raising firm which failed to raise
a penny. We told how staff were so angry at the way the Trust
was being run they called for a Charity Commission inquiry.
Trust workers were furious over the letter and said we had
reported the situation accurately. "The letter is very
patronising and insulting to our intelligence. Most people
think that it is a waste of time and money", said one
worker who, along with 34 colleagues, has signed a petition
calling for an Extraordinary General Meeting and an independent
inquiry'.
The Pink Paper, Britain's leading gay newspaper, referred
to the Trust as the "Terrence Maxwell Trust" (after
arch-criminal Robert Maxwell, who had plundered millions of
pounds from his various companies pension funds and died in
mysterious circumstances shortly afterwards), disclosing that
the desperate transfer of monies, from the pension fund to
salary payments, was "made just four days after the Trust's
Board was reassured that the charity was not in financial
difficulty".
The London gay newspaper, Capital Gay, under a front-page
banner headline, "CHARITY WATCHDOG PROBES TRUST",
said : "Britain's top AIDS charity, the Terrence Higgins
Trust, is being investigated by the Charity Commission after
two months of press challenges over its financial affairs.
The Trust says the inquiry is a routine matter". Nick
Partridge is quoted as saying "We are absolutely clear
that the organisation is being satisfactorily run".
Frontliners and THT scandals
part 2
John Lauritsen then addresses the vexed question
of the four brochures published by THT and Wellcome, a matter
in which he had a particular interest as the author of bestseller
'AZT: Poison by Prescription'. in which he details how the
promotion and prescription of AZT was based on junk science.
A newly formed group in London, the AIDS Liberation Front
(ALF), charged Nick Partridge with being an "AZT pimp"
owing to his close relationship with Wellcome, the manufacturer
of AZT. Nowhere is the reader (of the brochures) made aware
that Wellcome is the manufacturer of AZT. The brochures were
produced surreptitiously, with Partridge the only staffer
who knew of them until they were launched in December 1991.
According to The Pink Paper, in an article entitled 'Row over
drug fix' published on 5 January 1992, "In an unprecedented
move, the leaflets were the first to be produced by the Terrence
Higgins Trust without being presented to the Trust's Viewing
Committee, a group of volunteers, employees and directors
who have historically scrutinised all publications bearing
the Trust's imprint'.The ALF charged that the brochures were
"riddled with medical and scientific inaccuracies and
are dangerously misleading".
Simon Watney, a prominent AIDS writer, denounced the brochures
to The News as "a crock of shit - they are a blatant
public relations job for Wellcome and AZT". Watney told
The Pink Paper "If money is coming from a monopoly drug
company, then this should be made clear. In this case, the
process has broken down".
A THT staff member, who requested that he remain anonymous
under threat of dismissal, told The Pink Paper: "People
should be able to make informed choices about the treatment
they receive and this includes knowing who funds the advice
on offer".
(Lauritsen then devotes several pages to deconstructing and
challenging the science behind the promotion and prescription
of AZT, describing the brochures as being "part and parcel
of a programme of genocide that is being conducted against
gay men". It is this direct quote that led to the formation
shortly after publication of the AIDS activist group in London,
Gays Against Genocide.)
Lauritsen continues: The episode of the brochures is by no
means the first indication that Nick Partridge is a puppet
of Wellcome. According to sources in London, he toured Australia
at Wellcome's expense, staying in first-class hotels and receiving
a handsome honorarium in addition to his more than ample salary.
Wellcome has planned for him to tour the United States this
spring. In addition, Partridge has control of the THT Helpline,
which, according to a pamphlet of the ALF, "only gives
out information sanctioned by him via his Wellcome masters".
Partridge also played a major role in bringing complaints
against the British film company Meditel for its documentary
The AIDS Catch, which was broadcast on Channel 4 television
in June 1991. The AIDS Catch provided a critical view of...AZT
therapy. Complaints that the documentary "unfairly treated
the drug AZT" was brought before the Broadcasting Complaints
Commission (BCC) by Wellcome, THT, Frontliners and Positively
Women. Nick Partridge represented all three of the (aforementioned)
charities. The impression was thereby given of broad opposition
to the documentary, whereas in reality the opposition consisted
of Wellcome and its puppets and front groups.
The BCC issued a mild rebuke (which resulted in) David Lloyd,
Senior Commissioning Editor, News and Current Affairs, at
Channel 4, writing on 17 October 1991: "The BCC will
only regain the confidence of the broadcasters...or at least,
of this broadcaster, when it formulates proper rules of evidence
and sticks to them. One can have little respect for a body
that changes - on the eve of a hearing - the basis on which
a complaint is being entertained, passes confidential documents
to a complainant in a separate hearing and hasn't the procedure
to sift out the fibs from fact".
Frontliners and THT scandals
part 3
Gay McCarthyism in
England May 1991 The gay community is divided and intimidated
by a terror campaign spearheaded by a journalist, Duncan Campbell.
"McCarthyism" is the closest word I can find to
describe his approach -- fostering of fear and suspicion,
character assassinations based on unsubstantiated charges,
guilt-by-association, violent rhetoric, malignant innuendos,
repudiation of logic. And I speak as one whose adolescence
occurred in the America of the fifties.
Frontliners and THT scandals
part 4
When I (Martin Walker) was writing Dirty Medicine
from 1988 to 1993, I don’t think I realised the importance
of the attack on vitamins and mineral supplements. It’s
only recently that I’ve understood that the people attached
to the Campaign Against Health Fraud (CAHF - now called HealthWatch)
in the UK, the American National Council Against Health Fraud
(NCAHF) and Quackbusters in America were only the first wave
of a more organised, powerful and centralised attempt to destroy
vitamin and mineral supplements. Martin Walker exposed THT
in its actions against Gays Against Genocide and Positively
Healthy in his book Dirty Medicine. Click
to read the article.
Frontliners and Terrence
Higgins Trust vs People with AIDS
When investigative journalist and researcher Jad Adams published
his book AIDS: The HIV Myth in 1989, Positively Healthy (Posh)
was the only UK AIDS agency to dispassionately read it and
examine its central assertion, which was that HIV may not
be the cause of AIDS. Adams was also involved with the TV
company Meditel, which had broadcast programmes in the Dispatches
series on Channel 4, challenging the consensus that HIV was
the cause of AIDS and that AZT was an appropriate therapy
for treating HIV.
Posh's public support for Adams resulted in a telephone call
being received from Frontliners chairman Michael Howard, who
asked for an urgent meeting with Posh's Chairman, Cass Mann,
and this took place the day following the telephone call.
At this meeting Howard threatened Mann that Frontliners would
"close down" Posh using its own muscle and that
of THT, unless Mann guaranteed that Posh would withdraw support
from Adams, as well as from Meditel (with whom it had co-operated
in the making of the Dispatches programmes).
Mann refused and war was declared on Posh by Frontliners.
Later, at a public meeting to launch and debate Adams' book
held by Macmillan, the publishers, Frontliners official Steve
Anders further threatened Mann with the closure of Posh when
Mann and his colleagues from Posh supported Adams during the
presentation, in the face of a barrage of vituperation directed
toward Adams from the podium and the floor. Anders claimed
that Posh would be shut down "within six months"
for being the only UK AIDS agency not to toe the Frontliners-THT
party line on HIV and AZT.
The first shot fired at Posh came when Dr Michael Kirkman
contacted Posh, asking for co-operation in the testing of
a blood analysis product launched by his company BIAT. Kirkman
had been recommended to Posh by London Lighthouse, Frontliners
and THT personnel. Shortly after this, Posh held a conference
at the Royal Entomological Society In London, at which Kirkman
was a presenter, and during which it was hoped the pros and
cons of BIAT's claims for their analysis could be debated
publicly. 235 persons attended, including several Frontliners
personnel including Steve Anders and Nick Woodhead, hierarchs
at the agency.
Following the conference, during which Frontliners remained
silent, open warfare began. Frontliners accused Posh of "promoting
a dangerous and worthless product" and benefiting financially
from it. Posh easily refuted the financial allegation as there
was no connection whatsoever with BIAT, but was made privy
to a series of extraordinary allegations from Dr Kirkman.
Dr Kirkman alleged that Michael Howard, Frontliners Chairman,
had been employed as his chauffeur during the doctor's travels
on the Continent a few years preceding, and had hosted the
doctor at his family home in Germany, Howard being Anglo-German.
Dr Kirkman was to remark later on the quantity of Nazi regalia
allegedly hung on the walls of Howard's family home and on
the plethora of photographs of the Howard clan allegedly with
Nazi hierarchs. Dr Kirkman, when the attacks on Posh began
and Frontliners were identified as the shooters, advised Posh
that he had been advised to contact Posh by Howard and that
Howard would "fully support both Posh and Dr Kirkman"
in testing the BIAT product. Needless to say, both Posh and
Dr Kirkman had been set up, but both survived the first battle
with Frontliners. However, it turned out a few years later
that Dr. Kirkman was struck off by
the GMC for malpractice but this was nothing to do with
his peripheral involvement with POSH years earlier.
On a personal note, during a 'Gay Men's Week' holiday held
at Lauritsen Hall in Scotland hosted by the Edward Carpenter
Community, following the conference, Mann found himself in
the company of Steve Anders and his acolytes. Anders produced
and starred in a sketch during the cabaret which capped the
week, which was nothing less than a sustained attack on Mann
and Posh. Anders was to die shortly after his return to London.
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