An INTENDED ULTIMATE ACT of GOODNESS: Donating $750 000 to Women S Groups

COUNCIL for PARITY DEMOCRACY

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19 Mulready House Herrick Street Westminster London England SW1P 4JL

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Honorary Secretary

Raymond Lloyd

An ULTIMATE ACT of GOODNESS: Donating $775 000 to Women’s Groups

3 August 2003 @ Raymond Lloyd

On Tuesday 29 July I received a letter (see overleaf) from the ElGordo National Lottery in Madrid informing me that I had won $815 960. I was one of 17 winners selected through a computer ballot system drawn from 25 000 names from Europe and USA.

For about ten minutes I thought how I could use part or all of this money for myself, but could come up with nothing more than the £1000 which, some ten years ago, I had spent at a nature cure hydro, or health farm, using the opportunity of peer pressure, to diet and exercise and reduce my growing overweight. Then I remembered I had only to rent out my central London flat for the two or three weeks while I was away. That is, once I had cleaned up or cleared out all the documents lying around my flat in forlorn expectation of greater filing space.

After those ten minutes I decided to put into action a long-held dream, with which I had rationalized my holding on for ten years to £100 worth of lottery-type Premium Bonds. If ever I won the monthly million pound prize, I would donate every penny to women’s groups. In the past twenty-five years I had donated nearly $100 000 to over fifty such groups, details of which are listed on my Shequality website. And for the previous twenty years, I had learned to temper spontaneity with discipline, to share whatever I could with bodies working for relief, development, democracy and women’s advancement.

My left hand has now forgotten much of what was done by my right hand, except on occasions when I had to go public, as in 1959, when I converted a Rolex watch prize, won in a newspaper history quiz, into 15 sewing machines for Algerian refugee women in Tunisia. But by the late 1970s, I had concluded that anonymity was not so important as publicizing the work of the women’s groups to which I was making donations.

On Tuesday 29 July therefore I emailed Mildred Robbins Leet, a longtime New York friend and co-founder in 1979 of the Trickle Up micro-finance development program ( that I planned to give Trickle Up $250 000 in anticipation of its 25th anniversary in 2004, and asked her to accept the full $815 960 dollars, for Trickle Up to gain interest on the deposit, while I allocated the rest of the money to other women’s groups. I said it would be nice to target the contribution at girl entrepreneurs, between 10 and 20 years old, orphaned or otherwise, who had been left with major family responsibilities. Trickle Up replied that, among the young girls already receiving business training and starting their own micro-businesses, were former prostitutes in Ethiopia.

Meanwhile I had emailed another New York friend, Kay Fraleigh-Potts, Honorary Vice-President of the suffrage-promoting International Alliance of Women ( offering $100 000 in anticipation of the Alliance’s 100th birthday in June 2004, as matching contributions to members who plan enfranchisement or empowerment campaigns to celebrate the centenary. This was in admiration for the decades-long voluntary work undertaken by Kay and, behind the scenes, by her late brother James Fraleigh who, before his death in early 2002, would come and stay with me most years in London (and help clear out my papers).

Meanwhile too I had phoned and faxed to the claims agent in Madrid a photocopy of my passport and other information requested. I also phoned the Lottery vice-president himself to query why I had to forfeit 5% of the prize money, or $40 798, when so little work was needed to transfer the money. Was there not a maximum commission? I was somewhat reassured on being told that this was a legal requirement, and the commission had previously been 10%, until winners had protested.

I also checked with my local branch of Barclays, with which I had banked for fifty years, only to find out that it was still somewhat cumbersome and time-consuming to open a dollar account, which in any case received no interest payments. When therefore, on 31 July, I received from Madrid a fax requesting a wire transfer of 1,450 Euros, as a processing / registration fee, I sent this on to New York. This was partly because it would have used up nearly half my remaining savings, but more important because it would have been easier to subtract the fee from the total amount sent to Trickle Up.

Meanwhile I had allocated the other $425 000 among some twenty women’s groups or distinguished women. Some ten of the fifty women or women’s groups to which I had contributed since 1977 were still in existence or had kept in touch with me, and I planned various anniversary allocations to those among them who were still active. Also, some ten of the seventy friends who, over the past twenty years, had contributed nearly $50 000 to my fulltime voluntary work for parity democracy and political integrity, were still making small but regular and encouraging donations to my work, and I planned further allocations to be made in their names to the women’s group or other body of their choice.

But as usual, still wanting to make the world a little more beautiful or less harrowing, I planned other allocations to help meet new challenges, for women’s empowerment in Kosova and Rwanda, and among the Iraqi Marsh Arabs; for those still living under brutal dictatorships, in Burma and North Korea; for street children in Colombia and abandoned widows generally; for the upcoming bicentenary of Britain abolishing the slave trade in 1807; and for the foundations of distinguished individuals whom I portrayed on UN Ceres medals in the 1970s, or whom, after I had resigned on principle from the UN, I would have liked subsequently to portray. One of these, because the money was from Spain, was Queen Sofia who, like Farah in Iran and Sirikit in Thailand, has worked hard for rural women’s advancement.

I also contacted a third person, a distinguished journalist and magazine editor, inviting her to do features on the important work of the various women’s groups I was about to help. I would set aside $50 000 to be used on projects decided by her readers.

Information on the wire transfer from New York was taking a day to come through, so I had more time to think of the psychodynamics and potential impugning of ulterior motives to my action. There would be bewilderment, as there is now disbelief that I have worked since 1980 for women’s advancement, on virtually no income, living first on savings, and now the Minimum Income Guarantee. There would be destructive envy or, at best, aggressive indifference, somewhat as my resignation from the UN made senior officials, better equipped than I to speak out against the UN’s democratic degeneration, feel threatened by my courage and integrity. I could no longer be sent to the staff psychiatrist, but even friends might think I had taken leave of my senses, as I had with a mental breakdown in 1966.

Could it be explained by my background? Possibly. From 1939, at the age of four, until 1950, I had been abandoned to an orphanage by my parents, or rather, by my father’s family, who were, or became, well enough off to avoid this. During this period I was brought up by the Plymouth Brethren, as abstemious and fundamentalist a Christian sect as can be imagined, except for cream cakes on Sundays. But other orphans have not been as generous, while some non-orphans have. In any case, I was bright enough to pass exams first to a grammar school and then to Oxford, where I learned that there were other ways to goodness, as in a vegetarian’s respect for animal life, which went beyond even the Sermon on the Mount.

Rather, after forty-five years of practice, I had planned the donation as an ultimate act of goodness. Not the ultimate act, which presumably would involve giving up one’s life. Nor as ultimate as non-life-surrendering acts undertaken by others. But the act which was most available to me. That is, it was much as I could now do, with no foreseeable benefit to me, just as previous giving and campaigning have brought neither material happiness nor recognition, which might have made my work easier. They have, however, brought serenity, fragile though that is, as targets increase, and life grows shorter.

* * *

On Friday 1 August New York called to say that the lottery win was a scam. They had checked on the potential recipient of the transfer fee, and he had been unwilling to confirm his credentials. They had previously given an empty account number, so he could not make a reverse transfer. They and I then gave full details of the scammers to the real ElGordo lottery.

No one lost anything, except the cost of a few fax and phone calls. Certainly, in being prepared to give every penny away, I had not lost the 1450 Euros. Also, I was saved the effort of writing some twenty further letters or emails.

Two final thoughts. Gandhi, toward the end of his life, was reputedly asked whether he regretted trusting so many people. No, he said, it is trust which makes the world go round.

In 1945 the playwright J B Priestley wrote the ever popular “An Inspector Calls”, when a phoney inspector calls to investigate an apparent suicide. The play closes with the arrival of a genuine inspector. Now you know what I will do if (ever!) I win the Premium Bond million. Except that the win would be in pounds, not dollars.