Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Archive

Records of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust (previously the Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust), comprising records concerning its foundation and governing instruments, 1903-1990; administration, [1898]-1990; finance, 1904-2016; grants and projects, 1903-2016; inter trust and company relations, 1930-2004; JRSST Charitable Trust, 1949-2013; JRRT Investments Limited and JRRT Properties Limited, 1976-2007; publications and audiovisual library, 1893-2017.

The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust (JRRT) was founded in 1904 as the Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust Ltd (JRSST). It was one of three Trusts established by the York Quaker philanthropist and businessman Joseph Rowntree; the others being the Joseph Rowntree Village Trust (now the Joseph Rowntree Foundation) and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. In contrast to its sister Trusts, the JRRT was created as a limited company, subject to tax but free to fund or undertake political and non-charitable work which the other Trusts could not.
The Trust has two subsidiary companies, JRRT (Investments) Ltd which was created in 1976 as the holding company for the Trust’s investment portfolio, and JRRT (Properties) Ltd, which was created as Poland Street Publications Ltd in 1977, changing its name to the present form in 1991. It holds the Trust’s investment properties. The directors of the JRRT are also trustees of the JRSST Charitable Trust, founded in 1955 to make tax exempt charitable grants in line with the wider aims of the JRSST.
As of 2023 the JRRT describes its priority area of work as democratic and political reform, in order to create a political system that is open, inclusive and responsive.
Foundation and administration
At its foundation the JRSST was not intended to be a permanent body. Both the JRSST and JRCT were created for a period of 35 years, at which time, it was hoped, both would have achieved their aims. At this point both could be closed down and their remaining assets transferred to the JRVT, which would continue indefinitely, or refounded as new Trusts with similar aims. In the founding memorandum which set out his intentions for the three trusts in 1904, Joseph Rowntree expressed his hope that the JRSST would use its income in this time to influence public thought in right channels and support work ‘influenced by the spirit of human brotherhood and alive to the claims of social justice.’ In 1925 the objects of the Trust were given as the investigation of social ills and the influencing of public opinion ‘in the direction of their alleviation and removal.’
The JRSST Ltd was incorporated as a public company on 15 December 1904 and the first meeting of the company was held on 21 December at the Cocoa Works, York, the Rowntree company factory which housed the shared office of all three trusts until the 1940s. The company administration then comprised a managing board of directors (from which was appointed a chairman), company members and a secretary and solicitor. Its first Chairman was Joseph Rowntree, who held the position until his death in 1925 whereupon he was succeeded by Arnold Stephenson Rowntree, and its directors were all initially drawn from his immediate family; Joseph’s sons Benjamin Seebohm, Joseph Stephenson, John Wilhelm and Oscar Frederick and his nephew Arnold. The company members however included individuals from outside the family such as John Bowes Morrell and Thomas Henry Appleton.
Initially the role of company secretary was taken by director Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree but from 1906 the Trust began to appoint a part time honorary secretary on a more permanent basis, beginning with Elihu Richard Cross, the Rowntree company solicitor, who served in the role until his death in 1917. Between 1917 and 1925 secretarial duties were shared between Ernest E. Taylor, who took over secretarial duties in 1916 and continued to carry out all the business of the Trust attaching to the office of secretary until 1925, and R. L. Reiss who was officially appointed to the position from 1919 (at which time Taylor was given the title of minute secretary). E. Remmer took over as Secretary in 1925 and was succeeded in 1933 by his assistant P. J. Pfluger. The role was still part time, with both Remmer and Pfluger also serving as secretaries to the JRVT. Finally in 1936 J. Roland Whiting, already full time secretary to the JRCT, was appointed to the role, with Pfluger continuing to prepare the Trust’s annual accounts.
The JRSST was administered through four quarterly meetings of the directors held each year and an annual general meeting of company members and directors. By the 1920s it was the practice to review the financial position of the company at the first quarterly meeting and make the principal grants for the coming year. Individual directors often took responsibility for certain fields of investigation and made reports to their colleagues at the quarterly meetings.
Like all of the trusts, the JRSST was endowed with Rowntree company shares although it had the power to make additional investments. By 1925 its main income came from 139,865 ordinary Rowntree shares but it also owned shares in various newspaper companies and in Welwyn Garden City. The company could make grants to the JRCT for charitable purposes, and indeed the two Trusts often worked closely together and shared several of their directors. However due to its non-charitable status the JRCT could not make grants in return. Whilst the JRSST could also make grants to the JRVT this happened less frequently as the JRVT had the most substantial endowment of the three trusts.
Work of the Trust 1904-1939
Before 1939 the Trust defined its role narrowly. In the 1920s it set out its immediate policies as being mainly concerned with temperance, housing, international peace and improved conditions in industry and in all of these areas their efforts were largely channelled through the acquisition of newspapers and periodicals which were to be run not with a primary view to profit but rather to influence public opinion ‘in right channels’. Joseph Rowntree had long been concerned with the survival of liberal newspapers to counter what he saw as anti-liberal bias in the press and in 1903 he had purchased the daily newspaper The Northern Echo, together with two weekly papers, incorporating them as The North of England Newspaper Company Ltd. In 1904 control of this company was transferred to the JRSST and much of their early meetings were concerned with its finances and management. The company’s board of directors included JRSST trustees Arnold Stephenson Rowntree (who was also Chairman), John Bowes Morrell and Ernest E. Taylor (who was its secretary from 1906), alongside Northern Echo editor Charles Starmer who later became a Liberal MP.
Over the following fifteen years the JRSST continued to devote a large proportion of its income to preserving a ‘robust and independent’ liberal press, some forty five per cent of its total expenditure between 1905 and 1939. In 1905 it acquired the Yorkshire Gazette and the Malton Gazette. In 1906 it acquired a controlling share in The Speaker newspaper, appointing a special committee in November of that year to represent the Trust’s interests. In 1907 it added the new weekly liberal publication The Nation, edited by radical journalist H. W. Massingham, and in 1909 it added the Sheffield Independent to the holdings of its North of England Newspaper Company. In 1909 the JRSST joined together with the Cadbury family’s Daily News Ltd to acquire equal controlling shares in the Morning Leader and Star, a national morning daily paper and a London evening paper that were both in severe financial difficulties. In 1920 the JRSST also purchased The National Press Agency in order to supply the press with articles on issues such as housing, temperance, the League of Nations, education and prison reform. This was sold in 1931 to Westminster Press Ltd and in 1932 it became the Plough Agency Ltd.
It had always been intended that the newspapers and periodicals acquired by the JRSST should eventually become self supporting. However this proved increasingly difficult in the years during and after the First World War when sales of regional newspapers declined drastically. The Morning Leader and Star had already proven to be a significant financial drain on the Trust, as well as provoking controversy with the continued inclusion of betting tips in the Star (which the Rowntrees, as Quakers, were morally opposed to). The JRSST had transferred both newspapers to the Cadburys in 1911. In 1917 they had acquired The Atheneum, the established literary magazine, only to be forced by decreasing circulation to amalgamate it with The Nation in 1921.
In 1920 the difficult financial situation prompted the Trust to merge their newspapers with the Westminster Press Ltd to form the new Westminster Press Provincial Newspapers Ltd, bankrolled by the wealthy liberal businessman Lord Cowdray. Interest in the new company was shared between Cowdray and the JRSST with Trust directors such as Arnold Stephenson Rowntree and John Bowes Morrell serving on its management board.
In 1919 the JRSST directors also took the decision to consolidate its various publishing interests by forming the periodical publishing and advertising company British Periodicals Ltd, all shares in which were held by the JRSST. The firm of Loxley Brothers was subsequently formed to bring together all the printing businesses that had hitherto been part of British Periodicals. By 1922 British Periodicals Ltd published The Contemporary Review, The Challenge, Women’s Leader, The Friend, The Friends’ Quarterly Examiner and the New Republic, as well as managing advertisements for the periodicals Baker and Confectioner, The Journal of Industrial Welfare, Everyday Science, and Allotments and Gardens.
Whilst the acquisition and management of its press interests was the JRSST’s primary expense during these early years, they also made grants to other organisations and individuals whose work furthered their commitment to social reform. In the fields of housing and temperance work the Trust gave grants to the JRVT for the development of improved housing at New Earswick model village outside York and to the National Housing and Town Planning Council. It also made regular grants to the JRCT to support its charitable work, and to the Temperance Legislation League and, from 1930, the National Anti-Gambling League. Between 1907 and 1909 it also took charge of Norwood Sanatorium for Inebriates, a business in London which had previously been supported by Joseph Rowntree.
The biggest single beneficiary of its funding for improved conditions in industry in this period was Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree who received multiple grants to fund research which became his ‘Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium’ in 1910 and his ‘The Human Needs of Labour’ in 1918, as well as his investigations of manufacturing methods, minimum wage, and educational and social work at Rowntree & Co. From 1926 the JRSST also gave financial support to the newly established British Management Association, led by Seebohm, and subsequently to the work of its Management Research Groups and then to the International Industrial Relations Association.
The Trust’s political work was still limited, beyond its commitments to a liberal press. In the 1920s it funded the Labour Campaign Committee and in 1932 it made a grant to the National Liberal Federation to campaign for the restoration of Free Trade.
The reconstituted Trust 1938-1940
Under the terms of the founding Memorandum and Articles of Association the JRSST was to be wound up no later than 35 years after its formation. The reason given for this set period was that both the JRSST and the JRCT (which was also bound to 35 years) would be mainly administered by the original Trustees who would be most ‘closely in sympathy’ with the thoughts and aims of the founder. However Joseph Rowntree did not rule out a continuation of either Trust should their Trustees be in agreement and should there be enough capital remaining.
Discussion of the continuation and future direction of the JRSST took place throughout the 1930s. In 1935 the JRCT apprised the Trust of its decision to continue its work at the end of the 35 years and in 1938 the JRSST directors passed a resolution to do the same at their May quarterly meeting. The reconstituted Trust would continue under the same name but its objects would be reviewed and new directions for ‘useful expenditure’ explored. The directors also expressed a wish for two or three younger directors and members to join the company that were in sympathy with the founder’s aims but could carry the work forward. In October 1938 William Bowes Morrell (son of director John Bowes Morrell) and B. Phillip Rowntree (son of director Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree) were appointed to the board and the total number of directors permitted was raised from seven to ten.
In the same month Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree prepared a memorandum on the future of the JRSST in which he set out the direction he felt the new Trust’s work should take. Acknowledging that the Trust had, in the past, given a large proportion of its income to the support and management of certain newspapers he stated that he did not expect this to continue, although the Trust would maintain its substantial financial interest. He also ruled out housing matters as being better suited to the JRVT and felt that the urgency of temperance work was less now than it had been. Instead he proposed that the Trust focus its future efforts in three areas: social investigation, social work, and politics, with the ultimate purpose of the Trust nothing less ‘than to support world betterment.’
His fellow directors agreed and the old Trust was formally dissolved in December 1939 with all property transferred to the new York Social Service Trust, which was created for a term of thirty years and renamed the Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust on 2 January 1940. The first meeting of the new Trust was held on 4 December 1939 at the Cocoa Works. The company directors were named as Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree (who was also elected Chairman), Arnold Stephenson Rowntree, John Bowes Morrell, Ernest E. Taylor, Benjamin Phillip Rowntree and William Bowes Morrell. The company secretary was J. Roland Whiting.
The second Trust 1939 - 1969
In accordance with the 1938 memorandum, the reconstituted Trust took a greater interest in social work and investigation and in the field of politics, although the majority of its activities remained non-political and distinctly charitable in nature. By 1955 their activities in these areas had been grouped under three main headings: ‘research into the conditions of life today’, the ‘influencing of public opinion to remove evils or improve conditions’, and the more general ‘religious, charitable, benevolent, philanthropic, public or useful objects.’ Their expenditure typically took the form of long term covenanted grants to individuals and organisations, usually confirmed in the first quarterly meeting of the year, and various ‘one off’ or short term grants in response to unsolicited applications for funding or particular causes championed by a director or sister Trust. In the latter part of this period a significant number of these were made through the JRSST’s own Charitable Trust, which was established in 1955 to make charitable grants in cases where the grant was not intended to be of sufficient duration to be given under deed of covenant. The Charitable Trust was funded through a capital gift from its parent body.
The Trust’s political work in this period focused on the British Liberal Party and on the survival of liberalism worldwide as a counterweight to what they perceived as a dangerous polarisation of party politics between left and right. Where previously the JRSST had supported the cause of liberalism through the press, from 1939 they began to make annual grants directly to the Liberal Party and to the Liberal Party Organisation instead, eventually becoming the party’s largest single donor and an essential component of its survival as a political force. From 1946 they also made regular donations to the British Group of the newly founded Liberal International, a worldwide federation of liberal political parties, and in the 1950s they began funding the Liberal Party’s Research and Information Department. By 1962 recipients of grants included the Liberal Party Organisation, the Liberal Party’s Research and Information Department, the Liberal Party Special Research Department, the Liberal Party Assembly Appeal, Liberal International and the Liberal Party Leader’s Personal Assistant, as well as the Unservile State Group, an academic liberal think tank.
This financial support underpinned a close working relationship between Party and Trust. Trust Chairman Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree was a lifelong supporter of the party and played an important role in the development of its policies. Liberal MPs Richard Wainwright and Jo Grimond (who was also leader of the Liberal Party between 1956 and 1967) both served lengthy terms as directors of the JRSST, Wainwright between 1959 and 1984 and Grimond between 1967 and 1985. In 1969 Pratap Chitnis, previously head of the Liberal Party Organisation, became a highly influential full time secretary and from 1975 Chief Executive and Director of the Trust.
Despite the Trust’s financial support for the Liberal Party however, it failed to make the recovery directors had hoped for in the 1945 General Election. The directors felt there was a need for a separate charitable organisation, distinct from Trust and party, but which could provide a forum for liberal thought and undertake liberal social research and the publication of relevant books and pamphlets to disseminate their ideas. The resulting organisation was launched by the JRSST in 1948 as The Acton Society Trust with its object ‘the promotion of the study and general knowledge of ethical, political, economic and social science and conditions in the UK and elsewhere.’ Although distinct, the directors of the JRSST made regular grants to the organisation (from 1956 this was made through the JRSST Charitable Trust) and discussed its activities at their quarterly meetings.
Whilst Joseph Rowntree had intended his Trusts to focus their efforts on the UK, all three Trusts applied limited funds to welfare and educational causes in the former British colonies. As early as 1955 director Roger C. Wilson, who was also Chairman of the JRCT, made the case for the JRSST to join its sister Trust’s work in Africa, resulting in the first grant to the Africa Bureau, a quasi-political organisation which opposed racial inequality and advised and supported Africans who wished to oppose the rule of alien governments by constitutional means. JRSST support for the Bureau and its subsidiary trusts, the Africa Publications Trust, the Africa Protectorate Trust and the African Schools Trust, continued into the 1960s, championed by Wilson. Other overseas grants supported educational and community endeavours. In 1958 they made grants through the JRSST Charitable Trust to the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland for research in the social sciences, and to Seretse Khama’s community centre scheme in Bechuanaland. In the 1960s the JRSST Charitable Trust made a grant to an interracial secondary school in Swaziland and Swaneng Hill School in Bechuanaland, as well as to Quaker schools in Botswana and Kenya.
In 1965 the Trust also gave generous early support to the recently founded human rights organisation Amnesty International, making an initial three year grant through its charitable trust towards its Prisoners of Conscience fund, which it renewed in 1967. This was followed in 1968 by financial support for the Child Poverty Action Group, a UK charity and pressure group working to alleviate child poverty and social exclusion. Other political grants in this period were made to the Proportional Representation Society (later the Electoral Reform Society), the Campaign against Capital Punishment, to campaigns and studies in favour of nuclear disarmament, and to a study of party politics in local government.
Whilst the JRSST continued to support the Anti Temperance League and their campaign for public ownership of the drinks trade until the early 1950s, they also began to offer increasing support to groups for the treatment of alcoholism. In 1946 William Bowes Morrell reported to his colleagues on the success of the American organisation Alcoholics Anonymous. Their interest led him to undertake an informal investigation into the treatment of alcoholism in the UK with a view of finding organisations or studies that could benefit from Trust grants. In 1956 the Trust created a steering committee, led by Morrell, and a subcommittee to explore the best use of funds for this purpose. In 1959 the JRSST made a five year grant to the Advisory Council on Alcoholism through their Charitable Trust, followed in 1962 by a grant to the newly formed National Council on Alcoholism for the creation of Alcoholism Information Centres in provincial towns and cities. In 1964 they agreed to fund an enquiry into patterns of alcohol drinking in Britain, to be carried out by researcher Jean Wallace through the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of York.
It was the Trust’s central role in the creation of the university at York in 1963 that represents its greatest contribution in the areas of education and civic life in this period. In 1949 the Trust made the first grant in what would be a lengthy commitment to the development of tertiary education in York when they agreed to help the York Civic Trust (YCT) Academic Development Committee to establish a permanent college or institute of historical research and archives as the first step in the campaign for a city university. In 1951 the JRSST agreed to advance them the income from the estate of the late William Borthwick, which the Civic Trust had secured as an endowment for their venture. The institute would finally open in 1953 as the Borthwick Institute for Historical Research. In the meantime the JRSST also gave funding to the committee’s successful summer schools in 1951 and 1952 by reimbursing grants to the York Civic Trust made through the Community Education Trust.
In 1955 the Trust acquired Heslington Hall near York, together with its 17.5 acre estate and immediately created a sub-committee to consider the uses to which it might be put. Ideas included using it as a youth hostel or developing the grounds as a Folk Park but as plans for a University of York began to take on greater momentum in the late 1950s under the York Academic Trust (the successor to the Academic Development Committee) it was suggested that the estate might form part of a campus. In 1959 the JRMT (previously the JRVT) committed to a grant of £100,000 to the proposed University of York over ten years. In the same year the JRSST in turn pledged to transfer Heslington Hall and grounds and £150,000 over ten years, one third of which was to be for the university’s general use and the remainder for the development of its advanced and specialist studies. In 1961 the Trust also purchased Micklegate House from the chemists and druggists Raimes & Co. for transfer to the university. The new university was viewed by the directors as an ideal vehicle for carrying out certain of their objects, such as their commitment to social research which, like the alcohol enquiry, could now be effectively channelled through bodies such as the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
The Trust’s newspaper and periodical interests provided them with an income throughout this period and continued to be developed, albeit in a much smaller way after 1939. A significant expenditure in 1946 was the £15,000 invested by the Trust in British Weekly, a social and Christian weekly periodical concerned with social reform which had been purchased by Sydney Walton in the hope of improving its circulation and using it to campaign for progressive legislation. Two JRSST directors were subsequently appointed to the management board but this did not prove to be a long term investment for the Trust and declining circulation led them to gift the title to the Church of Scotland in 1958. In 1952-1953 the Trust also acquired the magazines Photographic Trade Bulletin, Amateur Ciné World and Miniature Camera World through their subsidiary companies, using the profits from these titles to fund their annual grant to the York Civic Trust. Between 1953 and 1960 they gave a small annual grant to assist in the continued publication of the Sociological Review by the University College of North Staffordshire.
Beyond these key areas the Trust continued to make various small grants, both annual and one-off, to support a variety of causes brought together in 1965 under the headings of social pathology (including the ‘increasing’ issue of racial discrimination), education and industrial relations. Recipients of Trust funds included the Industrial Co Partnership Association which promoted the use of profit sharing schemes in industry, something which had already been adopted at Rowntree and Co, and the Outward Bound Trust (of which Seebohm Rowntree was President) which offered an outdoor education to young men from all walks of life. From 1952 the Trust also made an annual covenanted grant to cover the office and clerical costs of the York Peptic Ulcer Research Trust which was undertaking an investigation of the social background of peptic ulcer cases. Other grants were made to groups such as the Home Industry Organisation in 1954; to Wings of Friendship, an organisation to help refugees establish trades or businesses, in 1956; and to a number of prisoners’ aid societies in the 1960s.
Throughout this period relations between the JRSST and its sister Trusts remained close. Prior to the establishment of its own charitable trust in 1955 the JRSST carried out all of its charitable work through an annual covenanted grant to the JRCT. The JRCT Chairman Roger C. Wilson became a director of the JRSST in 1950 and made regular reports on its activities and the use made of its JRSST grant. In 1953 for example the grant went towards social research by Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, the Churches Committee on Gambling, and the Quaker Field of International Relations, all issues in sympathy with the objects of the JRSST.
Care was also taken that the activities of the three Trusts should be coordinated where possible, with regular meetings and discussions held between the three Trust Chairmen. The Trusts kept each other informed of the appointment of new Trustees, and indeed often shared Trustees who could then act as an additional channel of communication. The Trusts worked together to create agreements with the Rowntree company in 1953 and 1968 (see below) and in 1955 they further agreed between themselves that in the event any one of them should wish to sell Rowntree shares they would first be offered to the other Trusts before being offered for public sale. In 1968 the JRSST was invited to work with the JRCT in the field of race relations, joining a Race Relations Joint Working Group which considered how to best coordinate their charitable and non-charitable activities for maximum effectiveness. A major beneficiary of the group’s support was the recently founded race equality think tank the Runnymede Trust.
Trust finances and administration
Between 1939 and 1969 the administration and financial arrangements of the JRSST underwent minor changes. The management of the trust was still carried out through the four quarterly meetings of the directors, at which grants (given through the main Trust and from 1955 also the JRSST Charitable Trust ) were approved and key policy decisions taken. Subcommittees were appointed as and when necessary but none were permanent. In 1948 the Trust created an Investment Committee (renamed the Finance Committee from 1960) which had the power to decide policy and make financial decisions. It was chaired by the JRSST Chairman and continued to sit until 1966 when its business was reverted to the directors meeting and it was dissolved, together with a short lived ad hoc committee set up to deal with property matters. In 1963 the Trust created a development subcommittee to consider its expenditure policy and spheres of influence over the following five years.
There were also staffing changes. Following the retirement of Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree in 1951, John Bowes Morrell was appointed Trust Chairman. He was followed by his son William Bowes Morrell from 1963 to 1981. Frank Cooper became Trust Secretary in 1949, having served the Trust as tax advisor from 1946 and secretary to the Investment Committee from 1948. He held the position until his death in 1964 and was succeeded by B. Phillip Rowntree who also served as the Trust’s first Executive Officer from 1958 to 1969, having resigned his directorship to take up the new role. In 1964 Richard Stephenson Rowntree, the son of founder director Arnold Stephenson Rowntree, also joined the Trust as a Director.
The Trust continued to draw the majority of its income from its shares in the Rowntree company in this period and, with its sister Trusts, held a majority stake in the company until the 1970s. In the 1950s the relationship between the three Rowntree trusts and the company, and particularly the level of influence the Trusts had over company management, became a subject of discussion. Following a memorandum issued by William Wallace in his capacity as Rowntree company Chairman, the Chairmen of the three Trusts met together in June 1953 and drew up an agreement which formally set out the relationship between Trusts and Company. The agreement stated that the three Trusts would not interfere in the management of the company, except in cases when they felt its prosperity or positive industrial relations were under threat, and in return they would be consulted on the appointment of new directors and the company Chairman and Deputy Chairman and would have the opportunity to appoint a Trustee to the company Board of Directors. In addition they would receive an annual statement from the company Chairman and would meet informally with them from time to time on matters relevant to them as major shareholders. The agreement was revised in 1966 following a meeting between the Chairmen of the three Trusts and the new Chairman of the Rowntree Company Donald J. Barron.
In addition to their Rowntree shareholdings and their newspaper interests the Trust also made a number of significant investments during this period, acquiring as investment properties Bevois House and Pomeroy House in London in 1947, and 2 Castle Street and 34 Blue Boar Row in Salisbury in 1951-1952, together with the hairdressing business carried out in the Castle Street property under the name Beynon. In 1963 the Trust further acquired Argyll Mansions in Chelsea and Ashburn Gardens in Kensington and carried out extensive renovations before letting the properties as flats.
JRSST 1969-1980
The year 1969 brought the conclusion of the thirty year term of the reconstituted JRSST. In the mid 1960s the directors had discussed the future of the Trust at length, deciding that once again the Trust should continue, albeit with a review of its activities every ten years. In 1971 the Trust acquired a new office, moving from 29 St Saviourgate to rooms on the ground floor of Beverley House, which had been occupied by the JRMT and JRCT since the late 1940s.
It was in this period that the work of the Trust became more overtly political, a notable shift from earlier decades when the bulk of the Trust’s work had been largely charitable in nature. This was in part a reaction to the changing political landscape, as the protest movements of the 1960s matured into professional pressure groups and organisations campaigning for change in the UK and abroad. Since the nature of their activities meant such groups were ineligible for charitable grants, the JRSST became an invaluable source of alternate funding which was not subject to charity law and which could support a relatively wide range of activities linked to social and political reform. In the early 1970s the Trust had a Liberal Subcommittee to manage its grants to the Liberal Party and its related organisations. By 1978 this had been replaced by a Political Committee of six Trustees, which met under the chairmanship of Richard Wainwright to deal with all applications received from political parties.
In the same decade the Trust added three new, relatively young and politically active directors to its board, beginning in 1969 with the thirty-three year old Pratap Chitnis, later Lord Chitnis, who resigned as head of the Liberal Party Organisation and was offered the role of the Trust’s first full time paid secretary, bringing a greater professionalism to trust administration. In 1975 he joined the board of directors and was promoted to chief executive. Chitnis was joined on the board in 1975 by David Shutt, later Baron Shutt of Greetland, an accountant and Liberal Democrat councillor, and Trevor Smith, an academic, later Vice-Chancellor, University of Ulster and Baron Smith of Clifton Kt. who had joined the Trust as a research advisor in 1970.
In 1970, in response to multiple requests for help to pay rent on office space, the Trust leased 9 Poland Street in central London for the use of numerous small political groups who lacked the funding to maintain their own accommodation. The Trust equipped the building with phones, a communal photocopier and later a bookshop and publications support unit, the latter grouped together as the Trust owned subsidiary Poland Street Publications Ltd (which later became JRRT (Properties) Ltd). Dubbed by the press the ‘counter civil service’, the office block at 9 Poland Street became home to such diverse groups as the Tory Reform Group, Mothers in Action, the Socialist Society, the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, Friends of the Earth and the Low Pay Unit, finally closing in 1990. In 1977 the Trust bought and adapted an old Baptist chapel and Sunday School in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, to provide a similar resource in the north. The property, which was known as the Birchcliffe Centre, hosted The National Campaign for Electoral Reform, The Pennine Development Trust, and the Association of Liberal Councillors, among others.
Another innovation that took advantage of the Trust’s non-charitable status was the formation of the Outer Circle Policy Unit which operated between 1975 and 1980. The Unit, which was created and funded by the JRSST, offered a channel to advocate for legislative change on behalf of research organisations who were unable to do so because of their charitable status. The OCPU brought the results of this research directly to legislators, ensuring that these new ideas could more effectively influence political action.
In addition to this support for extra parliamentary democratic activity, the Trust also sought to improve the quality of parliamentary opposition in this period through their Political Fellowship or ‘Chocolate Soldier’ scheme in the early 1970s. The scheme introduced grants to finance assistants to leading MPs in all three parties in the House of Commons who, when not in power, lacked the research assistance afforded to those in government by the civil service. The scheme earned his ‘chocolate soldier’ nickname because of its association with the Rowntrees and proved so successful it was incorporated into law by the new Labour Government in 1974. The Trust later initiated a Hansard Society Commission Report into the funding of political parties which published its findings in 1981.
The majority of the Trust’s activities were still confined to the UK but the 1970s saw an expansion of their established funding for welfare and educational issues in the former British colonies overseas to include outright political causes. These included grants to the political and welfare wings of liberation movements in Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and Rhodesia, and to democratic organisations in Eastern Europe. The latter included money for the legal defence of prisoners of conscience in then Czechoslovakia, for a printing machine for Solidarity in Poland, and for the defence of dissident Russian Professor Yuri Orlov.
Between 1971 and 1975 their activities in Africa were coordinated by the Africa Subcommittee which had authority to consider applications and investigate ways that Trust support could be politically influential there and particularly to seek ways to ‘combat the obnoxious practice of Apartheid.’ In 1971 the Trust gave £5000 to the International Defence and Aid Fund for its non-charitable work in South Africa. In the US the Trust targeted regimes practising Apartheid through funding to the Center for International Policy which lobbied for a congressional amendment to block their access to loans.
The political grants made by the Trust occasionally provoked controversy in the press and between the JRSST and its sister Trusts which was not helped by the tendency of the press to treat the Rowntree Trusts and company as a single entity. The close relationship between the JRSST and the company came to an end however in 1975 when the Trust made the decision to sell all of its Rowntree shares. The decision to diversify their investments was a decision taken by all three Trusts and was prompted by the losses sustained by Rowntree Mackintosh Ltd on the cocoa terminal market in 1973. The Trusts subsequently set up an Inter-Trust sub committee (known as the Group of Ten) to consider their Rowntree shareholdings which, until the 1970s, gave them a combined majority stake.
The JRMT and JRCT chose to reduce their shareholdings but not dispose of them completely. However the JRSST, who also had objections to Rowntree employment policies in South Africa, chose to sever all financial connections with the company and invest instead in equity and property, with the caveat that these should not be connected with the tobacco, alcohol or armaments industries, or with the then Republic of South Africa. In 1976 the Trust created a subsidiary company JRRT (Investments) Ltd to hold their new investment portfolio.
JRSST in the 1980s
The ascendency of the Conservative Party in the 1980s led the Trust to focus its efforts on bolstering the political opposition in the interests of preserving a healthy and more diverse democracy. The Trust’s Political Committee was disbanded by 1981 and political grants were discussed at the full quarterly meetings until 1983 when directors created a Political Panel to consider future political initiatives. At the heart of their political activity was their support of constitutional and electoral reform. In the 1970s the Trust had supported the Centre for Constitutional Reform, in the 1980s it funded groups such as the successful pressure group Charter 88 which was formed following the Conservative reelection in 1987, and Common Voice (previously Tactical Voting ‘87). In the late 1980s it also brokered a merger between the failing New Statesman and New Society periodicals to ensure the survival of a weekly left wing journal to counter right wing monopolisation of the press. The Trust had already invested in New Society and thus became aware that its falling circulation made the title unsustainable.
The Trust also made grants to a variety of opposition causes, providing funding for the Association of Social and Liberal Democrat Councillors, the Liberal Democrats’ General Election campaign and the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform, as well as to Welsh and Scottish devolution campaigns through Plaid Cymru and the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly.
The 1980s also saw a number of changes to the board of directors as long standing Trustees such as Pratap Chitnis, Jo Grimond and Richard Wainwright left, to be replaced with the Trust’s first female director, the journalist Elinor Goodman, the Quaker educationist Christopher Greenfield, and Liberal Democrat MP Archy Kirkwood (previously a ‘Chocolate Soldier’). William Bowes Morrell also retired as Trust Chairman in 1981 and was replaced by Michael Hotham Rowntree, son of founding director Arnold Stephenson Rowntree. In 1989 the JRSST appointed its first Projects Consultant.
Efforts were also made to facilitate greater future cooperation between the JRSST and the JRCT, a relationship which had become strained in the 1970s. Following the 1987 General Election JRCT Chairman Grigor McClelland created a Democracy Committee with provision for including a JRSST director so that the two Trusts might combine forces in the future, the JRSST funding political campaigns whilst the JRCT supported the necessary research to underpin it.
JRRT 1990-2000
In 1990 the Trust changed its name to the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust (JRRT), feeling that this more accurately described their activities than ‘social services’ which had, by then, come to have a more specific meaning than the founder had intended. Its charitable trust however retained its original name. Two years later it moved offices from Beverley House to the purpose built Garden House in the grounds of The Homestead, York, where it remains, sharing the property with the JRCT. The Homestead is the headquarters of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (previously the JRVT and then the JRMT).
In many ways the 1990s saw a continuation of the Trust’s work of the previous decade, particularly with regards to electoral and constitutional reform which accounted for some two thirds of the Trust’s grants between 1992 and 1997. In 1991 it funded the first in what became a series of ‘State of the Nation’ polls, carried out by Ipsos MORI, to survey public opinion on a range of democratic issues such as constitutional reform, civil liberties, devolution, and the British government. It also funded the right wing Institute for Economic Affairs to support its work on constitutional reform, as well as the cross party think tank Demos which specialised in social policy.
Following the Conservative reelection in 1992 the Trust worked to keep constitutional reform on the political agenda, creating the post of Political Consultant in 1993 to advise directors on potential grants and offering continuing support to Charter 88, the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform, the Voting Reform Information Service and the Institute for Citizenship Studies as well as funding a series of seminars on civil liberties and sponsoring the John Smith Memorial Lectures. Large grants were also made to the Liberal Democrats, not just in the interests of maintaining a healthy multi-party democracy at a time when the party was losing support, but also because it remained the greatest parliamentary advocate of constitutional reform.
The Trust also supported campaigns for Scottish and Welsh devolution, making grants to the Parliament for Wales Campaign and Yes for Wales, and the Scottish Constitutional Convention and the Coalition for Scottish Democracy (later the Scottish Civic Assembly). In addition to offering grants, the JRRT also commissioned draft proposals for improving democratic participation in a devolved parliament, published as ‘A Parliament for the Millenium’ in 1998. In Northern Ireland the Trust focused its efforts on the movement towards a permanent peace, making grants to most of the province’s political parties and to groups such as the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition to enable them to take part in all-party talks.
Beyond these core causes the JRRT maintained its financial support for a variety of smaller political and social reform groups, many of which fell under the Trust’s small grants scheme (introduced in 1970). These included the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, the National Pensioners Convention and the Campaign Against the Asylum and Immigration Bill. It also made grants to employment organisations such as Full Employment UK and the Campaign for Work, as well as women’s and gay rights organisations such as the National Abortion Campaign, Fairshares, the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement and the Stonewall Group. In 1994 the Trust sponsored the publication of a directory of pressure groups and think tanks created by Parliamentary Monitoring Services.
Its parliamentary work in this period included support for Open Lines, a monthly magazine which successfully campaigned for the government to resume the publication of answers to MPs’ written questions in Hansard. The Trust also provided a travel fund for leading opposition MPs, resulting in the establishment of a publicly funded Foreign Travel Fund in 1993.
The landslide election of a Labour government in 1997 changed the political landscape once again, making the Conservatives a party of opposition for the first time in eighteen years. In keeping with their long standing policy of promoting a healthy parliamentary opposition the Trust consequently began making grants to Conservative groups, albeit ones that reflected its progressive values such as the Conservative Group for Europe. The Trust also made grants in this period to the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the new Scottish party Highland Alliance.
The Trust’s support for constitutional and electoral reform continued through support for Charter 88, the Yes for Wales devolution campaign, work by the John Wheatley Centre on the proposed new Scottish Parliament, and the campaign for a democratically elected London mayor, as well as campaigns for English regional devolution. Support for electoral reform was reflected in a generous grant to the Make Votes Count campaign and through the commissioning of two further State of the Nation polls in 1997 and 2000 which showed public backing for a proportional voting system.
The JRRT also made efforts to address the gender and racial imbalance in both Houses of Parliament after 1997. The latter was channelled through grants to groups such as the Fawcett Society, the Nancy Seear Trust, and Operation Black Vote.
Whilst the JRRT had scaled back its overseas expenditure since the 1970s and 1980s, around ten per cent of its total budget was still spent on European and international causes in the late 1990s. This included continued support for pro-European groups and initiatives such as the European Policy Forum and the Britain in Europe Campaign and international campaigns such as the Campaign Against Arms Trade and the Campaign Against Sanctions in Iraq. It also gave funding to the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe, the main political party opposing President Robert Mugabe, in an attempt to bolster the democratic process there.
JRRT in the 21st century
The activities of the JRRT since 2000 have been characterised by an increase in spending on general domestic reform and a move towards creating its own projects, rather than simply funding others. Its rare exemption from charitable law means the Trust remains committed to championing reforms that other similar bodies legally cannot, although it continues to make a variety of annual charitable grants through the JRSST Charitable Trust. As of 2022 its grants are categorised on the Trust website by themes of Democracy, Truth to Power, the UK Democracy Fund, and Political party, and include grants to the Liberal Democrats, Citizens UK, the Institute for Public Policy Research, Windrush Defenders Legal, Generation Rent, and Covid19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK.
Following the 2001 General Election, which had the lowest electoral turnout since 1918, the Trust turned its attention to the state of democracy in the UK, an area to which it still devotes considerable funds. It began by commissioning a new State of the Nation poll and an assessment of democratic progress in the UK by political analyst David Clark which was published in 2004 as ‘Paving the Way for a Progressive Century’. Concerns over public engagement with politics prompted the Trust to partner with the JRCT in launching the POWER/Citizens’ Inquiry in 2004, headed by an ex director of Charter 88, which invited the public to suggest ways to improve the extent and quality of public participation in the democratic process. In 2015 it joined with Demos and the Political Studies Association to develop Verto, a voter advice tool to encourage young people to vote in the General Election.
It maintained its support for electoral reform through grants to the Make Votes Count campaign and the Electoral Reform Society before the 2017 vote on the UK’s membership of the European Union. The Trust also continued to support better gender and racial balance in parliament with grants between 2007 and 2018 to the Campaign for Gender Balance, Women2Win and Operation Black Vote.
A particular concern of the Trust since 2000 had been the advance of far right parties and the likelihood of them achieving a degree of electoral success. Between 2000 and 2004 the Trust funded mainstream and anti-fascist parties in the run up to local elections and worked with the Commission for Racial Equality to set up the ‘Side by Side’ project in Oldham, Greater Manchester. Going forward they made multiple grants to the anti fascist group Searchlight between 2003 and 2008, as well as to Race Equality West Midlands in 2006, Hope Not Hate Yorkshire between 2006 and 2010 and to the Institute of Race Relations in 2012.
The Trust’s commitment to the safeguarding of personal liberties in this period has been channelled through a number of grants to organisations such as Liberty between 2003 and 2008 and the Open Rights Group between 2005 and 2017. Other grants have been made to support same sex marriage in Northern Ireland, the reform of the law on stalking, the ‘Hacked Off’ campaign against press intrusion, abortion rights, freedom of speech, medical confidentiality, and online privacy.
Funding for peace has focused on well established campaigns for nuclear disarmament and against the arms trade, with grants for Yorkshire Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the national Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Campaign Against Depleted Uranium, and Nuclear Information Services between 2005 and 2015. Other grants were made for the support of the Chagos Islanders and asylum seekers from Zimbabwe.
The Trust continued to give funding to a wide variety of single issue causes that shared its liberal and reformist values. Some of these represented long standing commitments, (although the groups themselves changed) to issues such as combating drug addiction and poverty, preserving public service broadcasting and raising housing standards. But others were new issues for a new political and cultural landscape, including campaigns against NHS privatisation and the growing influence of private corporations in the public sector, state pension inequality for women, the right to peaceful protest, child safety on the internet, and journalism in the digital age.
Trust finances and administration in the 21st century
At the time of its centenary in 2004 the Trust comprised nine directors as well as a full time secretary, project advisor and administrative secretary based at the Trust’s Garden House office in York. As of 2021 the number of directors stood at ten, in addition to a Chief Executive, Finance Manager and Company Secretary, Programme Manager (Grants), Grants and Learning Programme Manager, Head of UK Democracy Fund, and an Administrator. Before 2016 directors were appointed subject to their retirement at the age of seventy. Since that date appointments have been for three five year terms (with possible extensions to four terms) and retirement at seventy no longer applies.
The full board of directors continue to meet quarterly to approve grants by both the JRRT and the JRSST Charitable Trust (which shares both the JRRT’s directors and administrative staff) and expenditure is divided in their annual directors’ report into political and non-political purposes. The board can also approve grants via the ‘rapid response procedure’. The directors also sit on the board of the subsidiary company JRRT (Properties) Ltd which generates commercial income through its portfolio of commercial properties.
In addition to quarterly meetings directors can assess and make decisions of applications under the JRRT small grants scheme throughout the year. Three directors, including the Trust Vice Chair, also sit on the Finance Committee which meets two or three times a year. There are also Residential Review Meetings every two to three years in which directors formulate their priorities for the coming period.
Financially, it remains now the smallest of the three trusts, largely as a result of the decision to sell the Rowntree Mackintosh shares in December 1975 rather than being holders of this stock at the time of the Nestle take over in 1988. Its assets in 2014 were worth £44 million - an increase from £27 million in 2004 but in stark contrast to the JRCT assets of £160 million and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s of £300 million. In 2018 it distributed around £1.25 million a year in grants, and in 2021 this had risen to £1.85 million, with an average grant size of £70,931.
The JRRT publishes a full list of grant recipients on its website.

Records are open to the public, subject to the overriding provisions of relevant legislation, including data protection laws. 24 hours' notice is required to access photographic material.

The archive was deposited at the Borthwick Institute in 2006 by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. Further additions were made to the archive in 2016, 2021 and 2022.

The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust (JRRT) was founded in 1904 as the Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust Ltd (JRSST). It was one of three Trusts established by the York Quaker philanthropist and businessman Joseph Rowntree; the others being the Joseph Rowntree Village Trust (now the Joseph Rowntree Foundation) and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. In contrast to its sister Trusts, the JRRT was created as a limited company, subject to tax but free to fund or undertake political and non-charitable work which the other Trusts could not.
The Trust has two subsidiary companies, JRRT (Investments) Ltd which was created in 1976 as the holding company for the Trust’s investment portfolio, and JRRT (Properties) Ltd, which was created as Poland Street Publications Ltd in 1977, changing its name to the present form in 1991. It holds the Trust’s investment properties. The directors of the JRRT are also trustees of the JRSST Charitable Trust, founded in 1955 to make tax exempt charitable grants in line with the wider aims of the JRSST.
As of 2023 the JRRT describes its priority area of work as democratic and political reform, in order to create a political system that is open, inclusive and responsive.
Foundation and administration
At its foundation the JRSST was not intended to be a permanent body. Both the JRSST and JRCT were created for a period of 35 years, at which time, it was hoped, both would have achieved their aims. At this point both could be closed down and their remaining assets transferred to the JRVT, which would continue indefinitely, or refounded as new Trusts with similar aims. In the founding memorandum which set out his intentions for the three trusts in 1904, Joseph Rowntree expressed his hope that the JRSST would use its income in this time to influence public thought in right channels and support work ‘influenced by the spirit of human brotherhood and alive to the claims of social justice.’ In 1925 the objects of the Trust were given as the investigation of social ills and the influencing of public opinion ‘in the direction of their alleviation and removal.’
The JRSST Ltd was incorporated as a public company on 15 December 1904 and the first meeting of the company was held on 21 December at the Cocoa Works, York, the Rowntree company factory which housed the shared office of all three trusts until the 1940s. The company administration then comprised a managing board of directors (from which was appointed a chairman), company members and a secretary and solicitor. Its first Chairman was Joseph Rowntree, who held the position until his death in 1925 whereupon he was succeeded by Arnold Stephenson Rowntree, and its directors were all initially drawn from his immediate family; Joseph’s sons Benjamin Seebohm, Joseph Stephenson, John Wilhelm and Oscar Frederick and his nephew Arnold. The company members however included individuals from outside the family such as John Bowes Morrell and Thomas Henry Appleton.
Initially the role of company secretary was taken by director Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree but from 1906 the Trust began to appoint a part time honorary secretary on a more permanent basis, beginning with Elihu Richard Cross, the Rowntree company solicitor, who served in the role until his death in 1917. Between 1917 and 1925 secretarial duties were shared between Ernest E. Taylor, who took over secretarial duties in 1916 and continued to carry out all the business of the Trust attaching to the office of secretary until 1925, and R. L. Reiss who was officially appointed to the position from 1919 (at which time Taylor was given the title of minute secretary). E. Remmer took over as Secretary in 1925 and was succeeded in 1933 by his assistant P. J. Pfluger. The role was still part time, with both Remmer and Pfluger also serving as secretaries to the JRVT. Finally in 1936 J. Roland Whiting, already full time secretary to the JRCT, was appointed to the role, with Pfluger continuing to prepare the Trust’s annual accounts.
The JRSST was administered through four quarterly meetings of the directors held each year and an annual general meeting of company members and directors. By the 1920s it was the practice to review the financial position of the company at the first quarterly meeting and make the principal grants for the coming year. Individual directors often took responsibility for certain fields of investigation and made reports to their colleagues at the quarterly meetings.
Like all of the trusts, the JRSST was endowed with Rowntree company shares although it had the power to make additional investments. By 1925 its main income came from 139,865 ordinary Rowntree shares but it also owned shares in various newspaper companies and in Welwyn Garden City. The company could make grants to the JRCT for charitable purposes, and indeed the two Trusts often worked closely together and shared several of their directors. However due to its non-charitable status the JRCT could not make grants in return. Whilst the JRSST could also make grants to the JRVT this happened less frequently as the JRVT had the most substantial endowment of the three trusts.
Work of the Trust 1904-1939
Before 1939 the Trust defined its role narrowly. In the 1920s it set out its immediate policies as being mainly concerned with temperance, housing, international peace and improved conditions in industry and in all of these areas their efforts were largely channelled through the acquisition of newspapers and periodicals which were to be run not with a primary view to profit but rather to influence public opinion ‘in right channels’. Joseph Rowntree had long been concerned with the survival of liberal newspapers to counter what he saw as anti-liberal bias in the press and in 1903 he had purchased the daily newspaper The Northern Echo, together with two weekly papers, incorporating them as The North of England Newspaper Company Ltd. In 1904 control of this company was transferred to the JRSST and much of their early meetings were concerned with its finances and management. The company’s board of directors included JRSST trustees Arnold Stephenson Rowntree (who was also Chairman), John Bowes Morrell and Ernest E. Taylor (who was its secretary from 1906), alongside Northern Echo editor Charles Starmer who later became a Liberal MP.
Over the following fifteen years the JRSST continued to devote a large proportion of its income to preserving a ‘robust and independent’ liberal press, some forty five per cent of its total expenditure between 1905 and 1939. In 1905 it acquired the Yorkshire Gazette and the Malton Gazette. In 1906 it acquired a controlling share in The Speaker newspaper, appointing a special committee in November of that year to represent the Trust’s interests. In 1907 it added the new weekly liberal publication The Nation, edited by radical journalist H. W. Massingham, and in 1909 it added the Sheffield Independent to the holdings of its North of England Newspaper Company. In 1909 the JRSST joined together with the Cadbury family’s Daily News Ltd to acquire equal controlling shares in the Morning Leader and Star, a national morning daily paper and a London evening paper that were both in severe financial difficulties. In 1920 the JRSST also purchased The National Press Agency in order to supply the press with articles on issues such as housing, temperance, the League of Nations, education and prison reform. This was sold in 1931 to Westminster Press Ltd and in 1932 it became the Plough Agency Ltd.
It had always been intended that the newspapers and periodicals acquired by the JRSST should eventually become self supporting. However this proved increasingly difficult in the years during and after the First World War when sales of regional newspapers declined drastically. The Morning Leader and Star had already proven to be a significant financial drain on the Trust, as well as provoking controversy with the continued inclusion of betting tips in the Star (which the Rowntrees, as Quakers, were morally opposed to). The JRSST had transferred both newspapers to the Cadburys in 1911. In 1917 they had acquired The Atheneum, the established literary magazine, only to be forced by decreasing circulation to amalgamate it with The Nation in 1921.
In 1920 the difficult financial situation prompted the Trust to merge their newspapers with the Westminster Press Ltd to form the new Westminster Press Provincial Newspapers Ltd, bankrolled by the wealthy liberal businessman Lord Cowdray. Interest in the new company was shared between Cowdray and the JRSST with Trust directors such as Arnold Stephenson Rowntree and John Bowes Morrell serving on its management board.
In 1919 the JRSST directors also took the decision to consolidate its various publishing interests by forming the periodical publishing and advertising company British Periodicals Ltd, all shares in which were held by the JRSST. The firm of Loxley Brothers was subsequently formed to bring together all the printing businesses that had hitherto been part of British Periodicals. By 1922 British Periodicals Ltd published The Contemporary Review, The Challenge, Women’s Leader, The Friend, The Friends’ Quarterly Examiner and the New Republic, as well as managing advertisements for the periodicals Baker and Confectioner, The Journal of Industrial Welfare, Everyday Science, and Allotments and Gardens.
Whilst the acquisition and management of its press interests was the JRSST’s primary expense during these early years, they also made grants to other organisations and individuals whose work furthered their commitment to social reform. In the fields of housing and temperance work the Trust gave grants to the JRVT for the development of improved housing at New Earswick model village outside York and to the National Housing and Town Planning Council. It also made regular grants to the JRCT to support its charitable work, and to the Temperance Legislation League and, from 1930, the National Anti-Gambling League. Between 1907 and 1909 it also took charge of Norwood Sanatorium for Inebriates, a business in London which had previously been supported by Joseph Rowntree.
The biggest single beneficiary of its funding for improved conditions in industry in this period was Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree who received multiple grants to fund research which became his ‘Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium’ in 1910 and his ‘The Human Needs of Labour’ in 1918, as well as his investigations of manufacturing methods, minimum wage, and educational and social work at Rowntree & Co. From 1926 the JRSST also gave financial support to the newly established British Management Association, led by Seebohm, and subsequently to the work of its Management Research Groups and then to the International Industrial Relations Association.
The Trust’s political work was still limited, beyond its commitments to a liberal press. In the 1920s it funded the Labour Campaign Committee and in 1932 it made a grant to the National Liberal Federation to campaign for the restoration of Free Trade.
The reconstituted Trust 1938-1940
Under the terms of the founding Memorandum and Articles of Association the JRSST was to be wound up no later than 35 years after its formation. The reason given for this set period was that both the JRSST and the JRCT (which was also bound to 35 years) would be mainly administered by the original Trustees who would be most ‘closely in sympathy’ with the thoughts and aims of the founder. However Joseph Rowntree did not rule out a continuation of either Trust should their Trustees be in agreement and should there be enough capital remaining.
Discussion of the continuation and future direction of the JRSST took place throughout the 1930s. In 1935 the JRCT apprised the Trust of its decision to continue its work at the end of the 35 years and in 1938 the JRSST directors passed a resolution to do the same at their May quarterly meeting. The reconstituted Trust would continue under the same name but its objects would be reviewed and new directions for ‘useful expenditure’ explored. The directors also expressed a wish for two or three younger directors and members to join the company that were in sympathy with the founder’s aims but could carry the work forward. In October 1938 William Bowes Morrell (son of director John Bowes Morrell) and B. Phillip Rowntree (son of director Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree) were appointed to the board and the total number of directors permitted was raised from seven to ten.
In the same month Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree prepared a memorandum on the future of the JRSST in which he set out the direction he felt the new Trust’s work should take. Acknowledging that the Trust had, in the past, given a large proportion of its income to the support and management of certain newspapers he stated that he did not expect this to continue, although the Trust would maintain its substantial financial interest. He also ruled out housing matters as being better suited to the JRVT and felt that the urgency of temperance work was less now than it had been. Instead he proposed that the Trust focus its future efforts in three areas: social investigation, social work, and politics, with the ultimate purpose of the Trust nothing less ‘than to support world betterment.’
His fellow directors agreed and the old Trust was formally dissolved in December 1939 with all property transferred to the new York Social Service Trust, which was created for a term of thirty years and renamed the Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust on 2 January 1940. The first meeting of the new Trust was held on 4 December 1939 at the Cocoa Works. The company directors were named as Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree (who was also elected Chairman), Arnold Stephenson Rowntree, John Bowes Morrell, Ernest E. Taylor, Benjamin Phillip Rowntree and William Bowes Morrell. The company secretary was J. Roland Whiting.
The second Trust 1939 - 1969
In accordance with the 1938 memorandum, the reconstituted Trust took a greater interest in social work and investigation and in the field of politics, although the majority of its activities remained non-political and distinctly charitable in nature. By 1955 their activities in these areas had been grouped under three main headings: ‘research into the conditions of life today’, the ‘influencing of public opinion to remove evils or improve conditions’, and the more general ‘religious, charitable, benevolent, philanthropic, public or useful objects.’ Their expenditure typically took the form of long term covenanted grants to individuals and organisations, usually confirmed in the first quarterly meeting of the year, and various ‘one off’ or short term grants in response to unsolicited applications for funding or particular causes championed by a director or sister Trust. In the latter part of this period a significant number of these were made through the JRSST’s own Charitable Trust, which was established in 1955 to make charitable grants in cases where the grant was not intended to be of sufficient duration to be given under deed of covenant. The Charitable Trust was funded through a capital gift from its parent body.
The Trust’s political work in this period focused on the British Liberal Party and on the survival of liberalism worldwide as a counterweight to what they perceived as a dangerous polarisation of party politics between left and right. Where previously the JRSST had supported the cause of liberalism through the press, from 1939 they began to make annual grants directly to the Liberal Party and to the Liberal Party Organisation instead, eventually becoming the party’s largest single donor and an essential component of its survival as a political force. From 1946 they also made regular donations to the British Group of the newly founded Liberal International, a worldwide federation of liberal political parties, and in the 1950s they began funding the Liberal Party’s Research and Information Department. By 1962 recipients of grants included the Liberal Party Organisation, the Liberal Party’s Research and Information Department, the Liberal Party Special Research Department, the Liberal Party Assembly Appeal, Liberal International and the Liberal Party Leader’s Personal Assistant, as well as the Unservile State Group, an academic liberal think tank.
This financial support underpinned a close working relationship between Party and Trust. Trust Chairman Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree was a lifelong supporter of the party and played an important role in the development of its policies. Liberal MPs Richard Wainwright and Jo Grimond (who was also leader of the Liberal Party between 1956 and 1967) both served lengthy terms as directors of the JRSST, Wainwright between 1959 and 1984 and Grimond between 1967 and 1985. In 1969 Pratap Chitnis, previously head of the Liberal Party Organisation, became a highly influential full time secretary and from 1975 Chief Executive and Director of the Trust.
Despite the Trust’s financial support for the Liberal Party however, it failed to make the recovery directors had hoped for in the 1945 General Election. The directors felt there was a need for a separate charitable organisation, distinct from Trust and party, but which could provide a forum for liberal thought and undertake liberal social research and the publication of relevant books and pamphlets to disseminate their ideas. The resulting organisation was launched by the JRSST in 1948 as The Acton Society Trust with its object ‘the promotion of the study and general knowledge of ethical, political, economic and social science and conditions in the UK and elsewhere.’ Although distinct, the directors of the JRSST made regular grants to the organisation (from 1956 this was made through the JRSST Charitable Trust) and discussed its activities at their quarterly meetings.
Whilst Joseph Rowntree had intended his Trusts to focus their efforts on the UK, all three Trusts applied limited funds to welfare and educational causes in the former British colonies. As early as 1955 director Roger C. Wilson, who was also Chairman of the JRCT, made the case for the JRSST to join its sister Trust’s work in Africa, resulting in the first grant to the Africa Bureau, a quasi-political organisation which opposed racial inequality and advised and supported Africans who wished to oppose the rule of alien governments by constitutional means. JRSST support for the Bureau and its subsidiary trusts, the Africa Publications Trust, the Africa Protectorate Trust and the African Schools Trust, continued into the 1960s, championed by Wilson. Other overseas grants supported educational and community endeavours. In 1958 they made grants through the JRSST Charitable Trust to the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland for research in the social sciences, and to Seretse Khama’s community centre scheme in Bechuanaland. In the 1960s the JRSST Charitable Trust made a grant to an interracial secondary school in Swaziland and Swaneng Hill School in Bechuanaland, as well as to Quaker schools in Botswana and Kenya.
In 1965 the Trust also gave generous early support to the recently founded human rights organisation Amnesty International, making an initial three year grant through its charitable trust towards its Prisoners of Conscience fund, which it renewed in 1967. This was followed in 1968 by financial support for the Child Poverty Action Group, a UK charity and pressure group working to alleviate child poverty and social exclusion. Other political grants in this period were made to the Proportional Representation Society (later the Electoral Reform Society), the Campaign against Capital Punishment, to campaigns and studies in favour of nuclear disarmament, and to a study of party politics in local government.
Whilst the JRSST continued to support the Anti Temperance League and their campaign for public ownership of the drinks trade until the early 1950s, they also began to offer increasing support to groups for the treatment of alcoholism. In 1946 William Bowes Morrell reported to his colleagues on the success of the American organisation Alcoholics Anonymous. Their interest led him to undertake an informal investigation into the treatment of alcoholism in the UK with a view of finding organisations or studies that could benefit from Trust grants. In 1956 the Trust created a steering committee, led by Morrell, and a subcommittee to explore the best use of funds for this purpose. In 1959 the JRSST made a five year grant to the Advisory Council on Alcoholism through their Charitable Trust, followed in 1962 by a grant to the newly formed National Council on Alcoholism for the creation of Alcoholism Information Centres in provincial towns and cities. In 1964 they agreed to fund an enquiry into patterns of alcohol drinking in Britain, to be carried out by researcher Jean Wallace through the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of York.
It was the Trust’s central role in the creation of the university at York in 1963 that represents its greatest contribution in the areas of education and civic life in this period. In 1949 the Trust made the first grant in what would be a lengthy commitment to the development of tertiary education in York when they agreed to help the York Civic Trust (YCT) Academic Development Committee to establish a permanent college or institute of historical research and archives as the first step in the campaign for a city university. In 1951 the JRSST agreed to advance them the income from the estate of the late William Borthwick, which the Civic Trust had secured as an endowment for their venture. The institute would finally open in 1953 as the Borthwick Institute for Historical Research. In the meantime the JRSST also gave funding to the committee’s successful summer schools in 1951 and 1952 by reimbursing grants to the York Civic Trust made through the Community Education Trust.
In 1955 the Trust acquired Heslington Hall near York, together with its 17.5 acre estate and immediately created a sub-committee to consider the uses to which it might be put. Ideas included using it as a youth hostel or developing the grounds as a Folk Park but as plans for a University of York began to take on greater momentum in the late 1950s under the York Academic Trust (the successor to the Academic Development Committee) it was suggested that the estate might form part of a campus. In 1959 the JRMT (previously the JRVT) committed to a grant of £100,000 to the proposed University of York over ten years. In the same year the JRSST in turn pledged to transfer Heslington Hall and grounds and £150,000 over ten years, one third of which was to be for the university’s general use and the remainder for the development of its advanced and specialist studies. In 1961 the Trust also purchased Micklegate House from the chemists and druggists Raimes & Co. for transfer to the university. The new university was viewed by the directors as an ideal vehicle for carrying out certain of their objects, such as their commitment to social research which, like the alcohol enquiry, could now be effectively channelled through bodies such as the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
The Trust’s newspaper and periodical interests provided them with an income throughout this period and continued to be developed, albeit in a much smaller way after 1939. A significant expenditure in 1946 was the £15,000 invested by the Trust in British Weekly, a social and Christian weekly periodical concerned with social reform which had been purchased by Sydney Walton in the hope of improving its circulation and using it to campaign for progressive legislation. Two JRSST directors were subsequently appointed to the management board but this did not prove to be a long term investment for the Trust and declining circulation led them to gift the title to the Church of Scotland in 1958. In 1952-1953 the Trust also acquired the magazines Photographic Trade Bulletin, Amateur Ciné World and Miniature Camera World through their subsidiary companies, using the profits from these titles to fund their annual grant to the York Civic Trust. Between 1953 and 1960 they gave a small annual grant to assist in the continued publication of the Sociological Review by the University College of North Staffordshire.
Beyond these key areas the Trust continued to make various small grants, both annual and one-off, to support a variety of causes brought together in 1965 under the headings of social pathology (including the ‘increasing’ issue of racial discrimination), education and industrial relations. Recipients of Trust funds included the Industrial Co Partnership Association which promoted the use of profit sharing schemes in industry, something which had already been adopted at Rowntree and Co, and the Outward Bound Trust (of which Seebohm Rowntree was President) which offered an outdoor education to young men from all walks of life. From 1952 the Trust also made an annual covenanted grant to cover the office and clerical costs of the York Peptic Ulcer Research Trust which was undertaking an investigation of the social background of peptic ulcer cases. Other grants were made to groups such as the Home Industry Organisation in 1954; to Wings of Friendship, an organisation to help refugees establish trades or businesses, in 1956; and to a number of prisoners’ aid societies in the 1960s.
Throughout this period relations between the JRSST and its sister Trusts remained close. Prior to the establishment of its own charitable trust in 1955 the JRSST carried out all of its charitable work through an annual covenanted grant to the JRCT. The JRCT Chairman Roger C. Wilson became a director of the JRSST in 1950 and made regular reports on its activities and the use made of its JRSST grant. In 1953 for example the grant went towards social research by Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, the Churches Committee on Gambling, and the Quaker Field of International Relations, all issues in sympathy with the objects of the JRSST.
Care was also taken that the activities of the three Trusts should be coordinated where possible, with regular meetings and discussions held between the three Trust Chairmen. The Trusts kept each other informed of the appointment of new Trustees, and indeed often shared Trustees who could then act as an additional channel of communication. The Trusts worked together to create agreements with the Rowntree company in 1953 and 1968 (see below) and in 1955 they further agreed between themselves that in the event any one of them should wish to sell Rowntree shares they would first be offered to the other Trusts before being offered for public sale. In 1968 the JRSST was invited to work with the JRCT in the field of race relations, joining a Race Relations Joint Working Group which considered how to best coordinate their charitable and non-charitable activities for maximum effectiveness. A major beneficiary of the group’s support was the recently founded race equality think tank the Runnymede Trust.
Trust finances and administration
Between 1939 and 1969 the administration and financial arrangements of the JRSST underwent minor changes. The management of the trust was still carried out through the four quarterly meetings of the directors, at which grants (given through the main Trust and from 1955 also the JRSST Charitable Trust ) were approved and key policy decisions taken. Subcommittees were appointed as and when necessary but none were permanent. In 1948 the Trust created an Investment Committee (renamed the Finance Committee from 1960) which had the power to decide policy and make financial decisions. It was chaired by the JRSST Chairman and continued to sit until 1966 when its business was reverted to the directors meeting and it was dissolved, together with a short lived ad hoc committee set up to deal with property matters. In 1963 the Trust created a development subcommittee to consider its expenditure policy and spheres of influence over the following five years.
There were also staffing changes. Following the retirement of Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree in 1951, John Bowes Morrell was appointed Trust Chairman. He was followed by his son William Bowes Morrell from 1963 to 1981. Frank Cooper became Trust Secretary in 1949, having served the Trust as tax advisor from 1946 and secretary to the Investment Committee from 1948. He held the position until his death in 1964 and was succeeded by B. Phillip Rowntree who also served as the Trust’s first Executive Officer from 1958 to 1969, having resigned his directorship to take up the new role. In 1964 Richard Stephenson Rowntree, the son of founder director Arnold Stephenson Rowntree, also joined the Trust as a Director.
The Trust continued to draw the majority of its income from its shares in the Rowntree company in this period and, with its sister Trusts, held a majority stake in the company until the 1970s. In the 1950s the relationship between the three Rowntree trusts and the company, and particularly the level of influence the Trusts had over company management, became a subject of discussion. Following a memorandum issued by William Wallace in his capacity as Rowntree company Chairman, the Chairmen of the three Trusts met together in June 1953 and drew up an agreement which formally set out the relationship between Trusts and Company. The agreement stated that the three Trusts would not interfere in the management of the company, except in cases when they felt its prosperity or positive industrial relations were under threat, and in return they would be consulted on the appointment of new directors and the company Chairman and Deputy Chairman and would have the opportunity to appoint a Trustee to the company Board of Directors. In addition they would receive an annual statement from the company Chairman and would meet informally with them from time to time on matters relevant to them as major shareholders. The agreement was revised in 1966 following a meeting between the Chairmen of the three Trusts and the new Chairman of the Rowntree Company Donald J. Barron.
In addition to their Rowntree shareholdings and their newspaper interests the Trust also made a number of significant investments during this period, acquiring as investment properties Bevois House and Pomeroy House in London in 1947, and 2 Castle Street and 34 Blue Boar Row in Salisbury in 1951-1952, together with the hairdressing business carried out in the Castle Street property under the name Beynon. In 1963 the Trust further acquired Argyll Mansions in Chelsea and Ashburn Gardens in Kensington and carried out extensive renovations before letting the properties as flats.
JRSST 1969-1980
The year 1969 brought the conclusion of the thirty year term of the reconstituted JRSST. In the mid 1960s the directors had discussed the future of the Trust at length, deciding that once again the Trust should continue, albeit with a review of its activities every ten years. In 1971 the Trust acquired a new office, moving from 29 St Saviourgate to rooms on the ground floor of Beverley House, which had been occupied by the JRMT and JRCT since the late 1940s.
It was in this period that the work of the Trust became more overtly political, a notable shift from earlier decades when the bulk of the Trust’s work had been largely charitable in nature. This was in part a reaction to the changing political landscape, as the protest movements of the 1960s matured into professional pressure groups and organisations campaigning for change in the UK and abroad. Since the nature of their activities meant such groups were ineligible for charitable grants, the JRSST became an invaluable source of alternate funding which was not subject to charity law and which could support a relatively wide range of activities linked to social and political reform. In the early 1970s the Trust had a Liberal Subcommittee to manage its grants to the Liberal Party and its related organisations. By 1978 this had been replaced by a Political Committee of six Trustees, which met under the chairmanship of Richard Wainwright to deal with all applications received from political parties.
In the same decade the Trust added three new, relatively young and politically active directors to its board, beginning in 1969 with the thirty-three year old Pratap Chitnis, later Lord Chitnis, who resigned as head of the Liberal Party Organisation and was offered the role of the Trust’s first full time paid secretary, bringing a greater professionalism to trust administration. In 1975 he joined the board of directors and was promoted to chief executive. Chitnis was joined on the board in 1975 by David Shutt, later Baron Shutt of Greetland, an accountant and Liberal Democrat councillor, and Trevor Smith, an academic, later Vice-Chancellor, University of Ulster and Baron Smith of Clifton Kt. who had joined the Trust as a research advisor in 1970.
In 1970, in response to multiple requests for help to pay rent on office space, the Trust leased 9 Poland Street in central London for the use of numerous small political groups who lacked the funding to maintain their own accommodation. The Trust equipped the building with phones, a communal photocopier and later a bookshop and publications support unit, the latter grouped together as the Trust owned subsidiary Poland Street Publications Ltd (which later became JRRT (Properties) Ltd). Dubbed by the press the ‘counter civil service’, the office block at 9 Poland Street became home to such diverse groups as the Tory Reform Group, Mothers in Action, the Socialist Society, the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, Friends of the Earth and the Low Pay Unit, finally closing in 1990. In 1977 the Trust bought and adapted an old Baptist chapel and Sunday School in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, to provide a similar resource in the north. The property, which was known as the Birchcliffe Centre, hosted The National Campaign for Electoral Reform, The Pennine Development Trust, and the Association of Liberal Councillors, among others.
Another innovation that took advantage of the Trust’s non-charitable status was the formation of the Outer Circle Policy Unit which operated between 1975 and 1980. The Unit, which was created and funded by the JRSST, offered a channel to advocate for legislative change on behalf of research organisations who were unable to do so because of their charitable status. The OCPU brought the results of this research directly to legislators, ensuring that these new ideas could more effectively influence political action.
In addition to this support for extra parliamentary democratic activity, the Trust also sought to improve the quality of parliamentary opposition in this period through their Political Fellowship or ‘Chocolate Soldier’ scheme in the early 1970s. The scheme introduced grants to finance assistants to leading MPs in all three parties in the House of Commons who, when not in power, lacked the research assistance afforded to those in government by the civil service. The scheme earned his ‘chocolate soldier’ nickname because of its association with the Rowntrees and proved so successful it was incorporated into law by the new Labour Government in 1974. The Trust later initiated a Hansard Society Commission Report into the funding of political parties which published its findings in 1981.
The majority of the Trust’s activities were still confined to the UK but the 1970s saw an expansion of their established funding for welfare and educational issues in the former British colonies overseas to include outright political causes. These included grants to the political and welfare wings of liberation movements in Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and Rhodesia, and to democratic organisations in Eastern Europe. The latter included money for the legal defence of prisoners of conscience in then Czechoslovakia, for a printing machine for Solidarity in Poland, and for the defence of dissident Russian Professor Yuri Orlov.
Between 1971 and 1975 their activities in Africa were coordinated by the Africa Subcommittee which had authority to consider applications and investigate ways that Trust support could be politically influential there and particularly to seek ways to ‘combat the obnoxious practice of Apartheid.’ In 1971 the Trust gave £5000 to the International Defence and Aid Fund for its non-charitable work in South Africa. In the US the Trust targeted regimes practising Apartheid through funding to the Center for International Policy which lobbied for a congressional amendment to block their access to loans.
The political grants made by the Trust occasionally provoked controversy in the press and between the JRSST and its sister Trusts which was not helped by the tendency of the press to treat the Rowntree Trusts and company as a single entity. The close relationship between the JRSST and the company came to an end however in 1975 when the Trust made the decision to sell all of its Rowntree shares. The decision to diversify their investments was a decision taken by all three Trusts and was prompted by the losses sustained by Rowntree Mackintosh Ltd on the cocoa terminal market in 1973. The Trusts subsequently set up an Inter-Trust sub committee (known as the Group of Ten) to consider their Rowntree shareholdings which, until the 1970s, gave them a combined majority stake.
The JRMT and JRCT chose to reduce their shareholdings but not dispose of them completely. However the JRSST, who also had objections to Rowntree employment policies in South Africa, chose to sever all financial connections with the company and invest instead in equity and property, with the caveat that these should not be connected with the tobacco, alcohol or armaments industries, or with the then Republic of South Africa. In 1976 the Trust created a subsidiary company JRRT (Investments) Ltd to hold their new investment portfolio.
JRSST in the 1980s
The ascendency of the Conservative Party in the 1980s led the Trust to focus its efforts on bolstering the political opposition in the interests of preserving a healthy and more diverse democracy. The Trust’s Political Committee was disbanded by 1981 and political grants were discussed at the full quarterly meetings until 1983 when directors created a Political Panel to consider future political initiatives. At the heart of their political activity was their support of constitutional and electoral reform. In the 1970s the Trust had supported the Centre for Constitutional Reform, in the 1980s it funded groups such as the successful pressure group Charter 88 which was formed following the Conservative reelection in 1987, and Common Voice (previously Tactical Voting ‘87). In the late 1980s it also brokered a merger between the failing New Statesman and New Society periodicals to ensure the survival of a weekly left wing journal to counter right wing monopolisation of the press. The Trust had already invested in New Society and thus became aware that its falling circulation made the title unsustainable.
The Trust also made grants to a variety of opposition causes, providing funding for the Association of Social and Liberal Democrat Councillors, the Liberal Democrats’ General Election campaign and the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform, as well as to Welsh and Scottish devolution campaigns through Plaid Cymru and the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly.
The 1980s also saw a number of changes to the board of directors as long standing Trustees such as Pratap Chitnis, Jo Grimond and Richard Wainwright left, to be replaced with the Trust’s first female director, the journalist Elinor Goodman, the Quaker educationist Christopher Greenfield, and Liberal Democrat MP Archy Kirkwood (previously a ‘Chocolate Soldier’). William Bowes Morrell also retired as Trust Chairman in 1981 and was replaced by Michael Hotham Rowntree, son of founding director Arnold Stephenson Rowntree. In 1989 the JRSST appointed its first Projects Consultant.
Efforts were also made to facilitate greater future cooperation between the JRSST and the JRCT, a relationship which had become strained in the 1970s. Following the 1987 General Election JRCT Chairman Grigor McClelland created a Democracy Committee with provision for including a JRSST director so that the two Trusts might combine forces in the future, the JRSST funding political campaigns whilst the JRCT supported the necessary research to underpin it.
JRRT 1990-2000
In 1990 the Trust changed its name to the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust (JRRT), feeling that this more accurately described their activities than ‘social services’ which had, by then, come to have a more specific meaning than the founder had intended. Its charitable trust however retained its original name. Two years later it moved offices from Beverley House to the purpose built Garden House in the grounds of The Homestead, York, where it remains, sharing the property with the JRCT. The Homestead is the headquarters of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (previously the JRVT and then the JRMT).
In many ways the 1990s saw a continuation of the Trust’s work of the previous decade, particularly with regards to electoral and constitutional reform which accounted for some two thirds of the Trust’s grants between 1992 and 1997. In 1991 it funded the first in what became a series of ‘State of the Nation’ polls, carried out by Ipsos MORI, to survey public opinion on a range of democratic issues such as constitutional reform, civil liberties, devolution, and the British government. It also funded the right wing Institute for Economic Affairs to support its work on constitutional reform, as well as the cross party think tank Demos which specialised in social policy.
Following the Conservative reelection in 1992 the Trust worked to keep constitutional reform on the political agenda, creating the post of Political Consultant in 1993 to advise directors on potential grants and offering continuing support to Charter 88, the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform, the Voting Reform Information Service and the Institute for Citizenship Studies as well as funding a series of seminars on civil liberties and sponsoring the John Smith Memorial Lectures. Large grants were also made to the Liberal Democrats, not just in the interests of maintaining a healthy multi-party democracy at a time when the party was losing support, but also because it remained the greatest parliamentary advocate of constitutional reform.
The Trust also supported campaigns for Scottish and Welsh devolution, making grants to the Parliament for Wales Campaign and Yes for Wales, and the Scottish Constitutional Convention and the Coalition for Scottish Democracy (later the Scottish Civic Assembly). In addition to offering grants, the JRRT also commissioned draft proposals for improving democratic participation in a devolved parliament, published as ‘A Parliament for the Millenium’ in 1998. In Northern Ireland the Trust focused its efforts on the movement towards a permanent peace, making grants to most of the province’s political parties and to groups such as the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition to enable them to take part in all-party talks.
Beyond these core causes the JRRT maintained its financial support for a variety of smaller political and social reform groups, many of which fell under the Trust’s small grants scheme (introduced in 1970). These included the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, the National Pensioners Convention and the Campaign Against the Asylum and Immigration Bill. It also made grants to employment organisations such as Full Employment UK and the Campaign for Work, as well as women’s and gay rights organisations such as the National Abortion Campaign, Fairshares, the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement and the Stonewall Group. In 1994 the Trust sponsored the publication of a directory of pressure groups and think tanks created by Parliamentary Monitoring Services.
Its parliamentary work in this period included support for Open Lines, a monthly magazine which successfully campaigned for the government to resume the publication of answers to MPs’ written questions in Hansard. The Trust also provided a travel fund for leading opposition MPs, resulting in the establishment of a publicly funded Foreign Travel Fund in 1993.
The landslide election of a Labour government in 1997 changed the political landscape once again, making the Conservatives a party of opposition for the first time in eighteen years. In keeping with their long standing policy of promoting a healthy parliamentary opposition the Trust consequently began making grants to Conservative groups, albeit ones that reflected its progressive values such as the Conservative Group for Europe. The Trust also made grants in this period to the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the new Scottish party Highland Alliance.
The Trust’s support for constitutional and electoral reform continued through support for Charter 88, the Yes for Wales devolution campaign, work by the John Wheatley Centre on the proposed new Scottish Parliament, and the campaign for a democratically elected London mayor, as well as campaigns for English regional devolution. Support for electoral reform was reflected in a generous grant to the Make Votes Count campaign and through the commissioning of two further State of the Nation polls in 1997 and 2000 which showed public backing for a proportional voting system.
The JRRT also made efforts to address the gender and racial imbalance in both Houses of Parliament after 1997. The latter was channelled through grants to groups such as the Fawcett Society, the Nancy Seear Trust, and Operation Black Vote.
Whilst the JRRT had scaled back its overseas expenditure since the 1970s and 1980s, around ten per cent of its total budget was still spent on European and international causes in the late 1990s. This included continued support for pro-European groups and initiatives such as the European Policy Forum and the Britain in Europe Campaign and international campaigns such as the Campaign Against Arms Trade and the Campaign Against Sanctions in Iraq. It also gave funding to the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe, the main political party opposing President Robert Mugabe, in an attempt to bolster the democratic process there.
JRRT in the 21st century
The activities of the JRRT since 2000 have been characterised by an increase in spending on general domestic reform and a move towards creating its own projects, rather than simply funding others. Its rare exemption from charitable law means the Trust remains committed to championing reforms that other similar bodies legally cannot, although it continues to make a variety of annual charitable grants through the JRSST Charitable Trust. As of 2022 its grants are categorised on the Trust website by themes of Democracy, Truth to Power, the UK Democracy Fund, and Political party, and include grants to the Liberal Democrats, Citizens UK, the Institute for Public Policy Research, Windrush Defenders Legal, Generation Rent, and Covid19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK.
Following the 2001 General Election, which had the lowest electoral turnout since 1918, the Trust turned its attention to the state of democracy in the UK, an area to which it still devotes considerable funds. It began by commissioning a new State of the Nation poll and an assessment of democratic progress in the UK by political analyst David Clark which was published in 2004 as ‘Paving the Way for a Progressive Century’. Concerns over public engagement with politics prompted the Trust to partner with the JRCT in launching the POWER/Citizens’ Inquiry in 2004, headed by an ex director of Charter 88, which invited the public to suggest ways to improve the extent and quality of public participation in the democratic process. In 2015 it joined with Demos and the Political Studies Association to develop Verto, a voter advice tool to encourage young people to vote in the General Election.
It maintained its support for electoral reform through grants to the Make Votes Count campaign and the Electoral Reform Society before the 2017 vote on the UK’s membership of the European Union. The Trust also continued to support better gender and racial balance in parliament with grants between 2007 and 2018 to the Campaign for Gender Balance, Women2Win and Operation Black Vote.
A particular concern of the Trust since 2000 had been the advance of far right parties and the likelihood of them achieving a degree of electoral success. Between 2000 and 2004 the Trust funded mainstream and anti-fascist parties in the run up to local elections and worked with the Commission for Racial Equality to set up the ‘Side by Side’ project in Oldham, Greater Manchester. Going forward they made multiple grants to the anti fascist group Searchlight between 2003 and 2008, as well as to Race Equality West Midlands in 2006, Hope Not Hate Yorkshire between 2006 and 2010 and to the Institute of Race Relations in 2012.
The Trust’s commitment to the safeguarding of personal liberties in this period has been channelled through a number of grants to organisations such as Liberty between 2003 and 2008 and the Open Rights Group between 2005 and 2017. Other grants have been made to support same sex marriage in Northern Ireland, the reform of the law on stalking, the ‘Hacked Off’ campaign against press intrusion, abortion rights, freedom of speech, medical confidentiality, and online privacy.
Funding for peace has focused on well established campaigns for nuclear disarmament and against the arms trade, with grants for Yorkshire Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the national Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Campaign Against Depleted Uranium, and Nuclear Information Services between 2005 and 2015. Other grants were made for the support of the Chagos Islanders and asylum seekers from Zimbabwe.
The Trust continued to give funding to a wide variety of single issue causes that shared its liberal and reformist values. Some of these represented long standing commitments, (although the groups themselves changed) to issues such as combating drug addiction and poverty, preserving public service broadcasting and raising housing standards. But others were new issues for a new political and cultural landscape, including campaigns against NHS privatisation and the growing influence of private corporations in the public sector, state pension inequality for women, the right to peaceful protest, child safety on the internet, and journalism in the digital age.
Trust finances and administration in the 21st century
At the time of its centenary in 2004 the Trust comprised nine directors as well as a full time secretary, project advisor and administrative secretary based at the Trust’s Garden House office in York. As of 2021 the number of directors stood at ten, in addition to a Chief Executive, Finance Manager and Company Secretary, Programme Manager (Grants), Grants and Learning Programme Manager, Head of UK Democracy Fund, and an Administrator. Before 2016 directors were appointed subject to their retirement at the age of seventy. Since that date appointments have been for three five year terms (with possible extensions to four terms) and retirement at seventy no longer applies.
The full board of directors continue to meet quarterly to approve grants by both the JRRT and the JRSST Charitable Trust (which shares both the JRRT’s directors and administrative staff) and expenditure is divided in their annual directors’ report into political and non-political purposes. The board can also approve grants via the ‘rapid response procedure’. The directors also sit on the board of the subsidiary company JRRT (Properties) Ltd which generates commercial income through its portfolio of commercial properties.
In addition to quarterly meetings directors can assess and make decisions of applications under the JRRT small grants scheme throughout the year. Three directors, including the Trust Vice Chair, also sit on the Finance Committee which meets two or three times a year. There are also Residential Review Meetings every two to three years in which directors formulate their priorities for the coming period.
Financially, it remains now the smallest of the three trusts, largely as a result of the decision to sell the Rowntree Mackintosh shares in December 1975 rather than being holders of this stock at the time of the Nestle take over in 1988. Its assets in 2014 were worth £44 million - an increase from £27 million in 2004 but in stark contrast to the JRCT assets of £160 million and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s of £300 million. In 2018 it distributed around £1.25 million a year in grants, and in 2021 this had risen to £1.85 million, with an average grant size of £70,931.
The JRRT publishes a full list of grant recipients on its website.

The archive was fully catalogued in 2023.

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Further accruals are expected.

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Final

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