For blowing the whistle, Edward Snowden has to live in exile, Julian Assange took refuge in an embassy and Chelsea Manning was sent to prison. I received a phone call from Luciano Pavarotti.
I was co-founder of War Child, a charity set up in 1992 to help child victims of war in the former Yugoslavia. Our first project was a mobile bakery feeding hungry families, but we soon found that it was not enough to just feed the body. The mind needs food as well. For us, that food was music.
Under shell fire in Sarajevo and Mostar, we brought traumatised children and young people together in cellars and broken buildings to sing, beat drums and make music – so they could begin to feel human again.
We quickly attracted support from the music business. War Child’s early patrons included Luciano Pavarotti, Brian Eno and David Bowie. With them on board, we decided to build a music centre, something positive to bring together communities that had been divided by war. Something permanent that would outlast the conflict.
In a bombed-out school in Mostar, a new building rose from the rubble: the Pavarotti Music Centre. On Sunday afternoons, 60 excited children would play djembes, maracas, handbells, marimbas and wood blocks. Music workshops were taken into local schools and orphanages. I was appointed its first director.
I had hoped the centre would act as a template for similar work in other conflict zones – that it would be a revolutionary model for using music projects to help heal children traumatised by war.
Sadly, the dream was not to last.
The construction company offered a “gift” to those in the charity responsible for awarding the building contract. When I found out, I reported it to our trustees. They decided that the project manager would remain in place until the centre opened, after which he must never be associated with the charity again.
There the matter might have rested. But as a result of my disclosure I found myself isolated and ostracised within the charity. I was living in Mostar, far away from the London office, but it was not far enough. There were constant claims that I was ill, that I needed leave, that I had “gone native”.
Two years later, I found out that the project manager had been employed by the charity on another programme. It was then I got my phone call from Pavarotti. He asked me to fly to New York to plan the charity’s reform and, with his backing, I resigned as director of the music centre in Mostar and returned to work in London. Within months, I had been sacked.
Pavarotti and Eno dropped their support for War Child but it made no difference. Influential patrons may have the ability to generate media interest and fundraising for charities, but they have no legal status or authority under charity conventions. Their high-profile departure had little effect on the trustees.
When I tried to explain the situation to the Charity Commission, they refused to meet me or read my documentation on the grounds that I was no longer employed by the charity. Catch 22. I had no option but to approach the press. It took four years for the truth to come out and the people responsible to be held to account.
Truth-tellers are not popular. After the story broke, I was unable to find work in the aid world and started selling hi-fi systems. Sixteen years later, the legacy of my whistleblowing still lingers. When I offered my services recently as a volunteer to a well-known charity, I told them I had been a founder of War Child. Their initial eagerness to have me stuff envelopes disappeared.
Since my sacking, the Charity Commission has started to offer greater support to whistleblowers. There is now a dedicated email contact for those brave enough to put their heads above the parapet. But they still emphasise that this is for employees only. Nearly 20 years on from the Public Interest Disclosure Act, I believe whistleblowers should still contact Public Concern at Work, the whistleblowers’ charity, as a first step. My advice: proceed with caution and with all your documents intact.
David Wilson’s memoir Left Field is published by Unbound/Penguin.
The events referred to in this article occurred 16 years ago and do not reflect the situation at War Child today.
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