‘Grassroots’ Pressure Group Opposing Equality Act Is Bankrolled by Tufton Street-Linked Funder

A group claiming to be an independent grassroots critic of Britain’s Equality Act is actually being bankrolled by a charity spun out of Tufton Street’s right-wing Centre for Policy Studies think tank, Byline Times can reveal. 

Don’t Divide Us (DDU) claims to be a “grassroots movement” composed of “all sorts of people who first came together in the summer of 2020 to contest the idea that Britain is systematically racist”, while suggesting that it campaigns against a “racialised approach being rolled out across our institutions, and schools in particular”.

On its ‘beliefs’ page, Don’t Divide Us calls itself “the UK’s Common-Sense Voice on Race”, and claims “Today’s so-called anti-racism sees group identity before it sees a person and risks reinforcing prejudice by dividing us into a world of victims and oppressors”. 

It has been cited in over half a dozen news articles throughout the last year, and many more times during 2023 and 2024, including appearances in leading newspapers such as The Times and Telegraph, as well as in the Spectator and Spiked Online.

The group has come out against pro Diversity, Equity and Inclusion measures in workplaces, and has targeted schools for teaching about systemic racism, often landing favourable coverage in the right wing press. 

Until now, no funding to this “grassroots” organisation has been revealed, but this outlet found that a recent cash injection has come from a charitable vehicle spun out of the Conservative Party-linked Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) as a means of attracting anonymous donations.

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Funding Revealed

The most recent accounts filed by the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) – a registered charity – show a £20,000 donation for the year ending 2024 went to Don’t Divide Us. 

Companies House documents for ‘Don’t Divide Us Group Ltd’ list its net assets for the year as £21,789. The only employee is director Alka Cuthbert, a contributor to Spiked Online and former Brexit Party prospective parliamentary candidate for Eastham.

The accounts for the Institute for Policy Research also reveal the names of some of the papers it has funded over the last 12 months, including one titled ‘The Equality Act – Is It Fit for Purpose or Time for an Overhaul?’. 

In June 2025, Don’t Divide Us released a paper titled ‘The Equality Act Isn’t Working’, which was the report later cited in the right wing press. In it, DDU argues that the Act isn’t “fit for purpose”, has led to an increase in race-based discrimination claims, and is creating issues in the workplace, ultimately calling for the subjective element to be stripped from equality law tests. Ultimately the report calls for the “eventual repeal” of all protected characteristics under the EA. 

Neither DDU nor the IPR confirmed whether this was the same paper or not, or who was ultimately behind the research donation.

The IPR is a longstanding funding vehicle for several Tufton think tanks. Money is donated from the charitable trusts and foundations of Tufton’s backers, and is then distributed anonymously back out to a host of different organisations, almost all of which don’t declare who funds them. As such, the true source of the DDU donation is still kept hidden. 

What is known is that the IPR received £357,239 in 2024, and spent over £300,000 donating to ‘research projects, conferences, seminars, and publications’ delivered by the Centre for Policy Studies, Civitas, Politeia, the Taxpayers Alliance, and Don’t Divide Us. These are almost entirely organisations viewed as on the right of the political spectrum. 

Since 2005, the IPR has handed over £7.3 million to Migration Watch, ‘free market’ think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, the pro-austerity Taxpayers Alliance, the Conservative-backed Centre for Policy Studies, social policy think tank Civitas, the Thatcherite Bruges Group, right-wing Policy Exchange, Politeia, and the New Culture Forum, a group often at the forefront of pushing culture war talking points, as well as to a slew of pressure groups including Eurofacts, News-Watch, the Young Britons Foundation, Open Europe, and Commonwealth Exchange. 

As first revealed by the Good Law Project, the IPR was spun out of the Centre for Policy Studies in 1982, for the express purpose of “attracting charitable donations”. 

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Major Influence

Don’t Divide Us has previously been revealed by Byline Times to be one of a series of groups importing American-style culture war rhetoric to the UK. It is affiliated with former Revolutionary Communist Party member – turned right-wing member of the House of Lords – Claire Fox, with her Academy of Ideas listed as a partner organisation. 

The DDU website is hosted on the same server as Claire Fox’s personal one. 

Other partners include ‘debate, discussion and ideas forum’ the Equiano Project, founded by former Brexit Party (now Reform) candidate Inaya Folarin Iman, Toby Young’s Free Speech Union, and the Scottish Union of Education, chaired by Stuart Waiton, once again previously of the Revolutionary Communist Party and another Brexit Party recruit back in 2019, standing as an MEP in Scotland. Alka Cuthbert is also a former member of the RCP.  

After a period of relative inactivity, the organisation resurfaced in June 2025 in the pages of the Telegraph and The Times, both of which ran a report from the group claiming that the Equality Act ‘isn’t working’, and has led to an increase in failed racial discrimination cases.

In 2024, following the summer’s racist riots, DDU also released a report which downplayed racism as the root cause of the violence, stating that “the elephant in the room… is the disenfranchisement of great swathes of the British public.” 

The report added: “This process has been aided and abetted by the gradual institutionalisation of multiculturalism and identity politics…The British state has effectively no-platformed the most populous social group in Britain: the white working class.” 

Timi Okuwa, CEO of the leading anti-racism charity Black Equity Organisation told Byline Times that it was “disappointing to see that the position that Don’t Divide Us takes fails to acknowledge that the current lived experience of Black people and other minoritised communities is the result of generations of discriminatory laws, policies and practices, which sadly continue today.”

“Don’t Divide Us seeks to undermine the progress made by the Equality Act 2010, by using rhetoric that sows division and mistrust in our public institutions and their commitment to Equality.”

She added: “We still see Black people experiencing the worst outcomes across health, housing, economic empowerment, the justice system, education and culture.” 

“The struggle for equality is not one that seeks to diminish the rights of other groups, however there are systemic inequalities which impact the life chances of Black communities in the UK.”

Jolyon Maugham, founder and Director of the Good Law Project, told Byline Times that: “One can say with confidence of Tufton Street lobbyists that their name reflects the very opposite of what they want.” 

Maugham argues that Don’t Divide Us appears nostalgic for “white supremacy” by “attacking the Equality Act and undermining the laws that ensure the pluralistic England we presently enjoy, whatever our skin colour.”

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In Tufton We Trust

Archive documents from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, seen by this newspaper, show that the IPR wasn’t the first iteration of attracting anonymous finances by establishing innocuous sounding arms-length bodies, and that CPS was in the process of attempting to create charitable arms for fundraising activities even earlier. These historic notes also outline the benefits to donors of contributing this way. 

As far back as 1975, top CPS directors, including Sir Keith Joseph, discussed ‘the idea of [creating] a charitable trust’, giving two reasons for doing so: “Some corporations wanted to support CPS but could not do so because of the political overtones. They indicated they would however support an educational charity if one were established’.”

And secondly: “There was a possibility of legislation being put forward to limit or even prohibit political contributions which would of course affect CPS.” 

Far from CPS being an isolated case of think tanks attracting donations this way, the practice is actually much more common than assumed, and ongoing, and wealthy donors have been able to successfully mask their contributions through these vehicles over a period of decades.

Just two such entities account for nearly a third of all known UK charitable donations to Tufton St – around £10.2 million of the £29.1 million currently uncovered. 

Also of note is the ‘Politics and Economics Research Trust’ (PERT), originally called the ‘Taxpayers Alliance Research Trust’, behind some £2.9 million in donations. In 2015 PERT came under scrutiny from the charity commission, after it was revealed to have given 97% of its grants to the Taxpayers Alliance, and pressure groups favouring Brexit. 

Under law, charities are forbidden from existing for political purposes and must do so independently. They are allowed to campaign politically, but in limited ways specific to their charitable aims. The Government website states that: ‘a charity cannot exist for a political purpose, which is any purpose directed at furthering the interests of any political party, or securing or opposing a change in the law, policy or decisions either in this country or abroad.’

In the case of Don’t Divide Us’, it is not known who is ultimately backing the organisation through the IPR, or, as a result, who is financing its attacks on the Equality Act or backing its stance against diversity & anti-racism initiatives in schools, but the revelations as to its funding will raise further questions as to just how “grassroots” and independent the group really is. 

Don’t Divide Us, the Centre for Policy Studies, the Institute for Policy Research, the Politics and Economics Research Trust, and Baroness Fox did not respond to requests for comment. 

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