Band Aid at 40: how the problematic Christmas hit changed the charity sector

In November 1984, BBC journalist Michael Buerk presented a series of dispatches from the small town of Korem in northern Ethiopia. He described the scenes he encountered as a famine of “biblical proportions” and that aid workers in the region had told him it was “the closest thing to hell on earth”.

The broadcasts had a profound emotional effect upon viewers in the UK, many of whom had not seen full colour images of a famine before. They inspired two popstars – The Boom Town Rats’ Bob Geldof and Ultravox’s Midge Ure – to write the charity single Do They Know It’s Christmas? It was hastily recorded by the super-group Band Aid.

But the lyrics did not paint a full picture of the famine. They recycled many of the old colonial tropes of Africa as a barren land requiring western salvation. In this case the famine was primarily the result of mass migration and destitution caused by a war involving Ethiopia and Tigre and a near total disregard for human life by the combatants.

Where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow,

Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?

These inaccuracies didn’t seem to matter to the many politicians, musicians, journalists and members of the public who got on the Band Aid wagon. Despite societal, economic and political decolonisation efforts since the 1980s, the record remains a firm Christmas favourite 40 years on. Indeed, Geldof himself told The Conversation (see full quote at the end of the story) that there is endemic hunger due to the unforgiving soil conditions and that water is scarce save for a scattering of unreliable wells, adding: “This little pop song has kept hundreds of thousands if not millions of people alive.”

Band Aid, and the subsequent Live Aid concerts in July 1985, were watershed moments for the wider charity industries.

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Afterwards, fundraising became much more of a spectacle. Donors were re-imagined and empowered as “saviours”. Celebrities began to view endorsement of charities as a key part of their star profile. Governments – rather than footing the bill for humanitarian assistance solely themselves and viewing it as a moral obligation of statehood – now encourage public donations and offer to add to the total through gift aid tax relief.

Many charities have become more entwined with corporate money despite sometimes quite obvious conflicts of interest. While there has also been excessive veneration towards the charity exploits of billionaires, despite them giving away only a microscopic amount of their total wealth.

Read more: Why billionaire philanthropy might not be as generous as you think

These developments are all highly problematic because they arguably discourage civic consciousness and may reduce the likelihood of charities offering genuine solutions to societal or ecological problems.

Changing debates on charity

The Victorian era had a far less stifled public debate about the role of charity in society. Some of the most renowned British public thinkers of the time openly discussed and disagreed upon how best charity should operate. Thomas Carlyle, Andrew Carnegie, Friedrich Engels, Samuel Smiles, Oscar Wilde and – perhaps most notably – Charles Dickens all gave treatises on the subject.

There is little criticism of the charity model itself. What critique of charity there has been post-Band Aid has personalised around obviously harmful individuals like Jimmy Savile – who used charitable exploits as a cover for his abuse – or focused upon specific examples of clear poor practice. In the past decade the most highly publicised of these in the UK have been: the story of elderly woman Olive Cooke who was hounded by charities for money before committing suicide, the Oxfam scandal where it was revealed that the organisation’s employees were using sex workers in Haiti, and the collapse of the charity Kids Club in 2015.

Being charitable has always given donors and charity workers what economist James Andreoni termed a “warm glow”. This refers to the quick and easy confirmation of righteousness that donors can receive from giving, the achievement of which may be their primary motivator for selecting the cause.

Since Band Aid, charities have intensified their focus upon warm glow within their fundraising communications, while minimising the extent to which donors should concern themselves with introspection as to how they might be contributing to the harmful circumstances others find themselves in.

The Band Aid style supergroup has inspired many other charities and campaigns. In the immediate aftermath of Band Aid, in early 1985, USA For Africa recorded We are the World. While in the UK there have been charity single releases for Children in Need, after the Grenfell tower fire and even The X Factor finalists have come together for the charity Help for Heroes.

More broadly though, since 1984 the charity industries have been less conservative around using entertainment as a form of fundraising. For example, Richard Curtis has stated that his establishing of Comic Relief was directly inspired by Band Aid and Live Aid.

Instances of so-called “poverty porn” have also become commonplace across the charity sector as organisations compete with each other for public attention. This describes videos wherein the recipients of charity – against the backdrop of sad violin or piano music – are reduced to mere “victims” rather than full humans looking for agency.

We may be much more entertained by charity now. But on account of the Band Aid format, we are now arguably less knowledgeable about why some people suffer terribly around the world – and in no better a position to put an end to it.

Geldof’s response in full

Haha … It’s a pop song ffs.

There IS endemic hunger due to the unforgiving soil conditions. Water IS scarce save for a scattering of unreliable wells. Rain IS increasingly unreliable. Climate change affects the poorest first and worst. War exacerbates these conditions. Xmas IS celebrated throughout Ethiopia according to their own calendar i.e. two weeks after our holiday. Religious and other traditional ceremonies were abandoned throughout 1984-1986 and more recently in the same areas for more or less the same awful reasons. These are not “colonial tropes” they are empirical facts. It is in fact your correspondent’s piece that is the cliched trope. The same argument has been made many times over the years and elicits the same wearisome response. Are you certain it isn’t some ChatGPT scam thing?

This little pop song has kept hundreds of thousands if not millions of people alive. In fact just today Band Aid has given hundreds of thousands of pounds to help those running from the mass slaughter in Sudan and enough cash to feed a further 8,000 children in the same affected areas of Ethiopia as 1984. Those exhausted women who weren’t raped and killed and their panicked children and any male over 10 who survived the massacres and those 8,000 Tigrayan children will sleep safer, warmer and cared for tonight because of that miraculous little record. We wish that it were other but it isn’t. “Colonial tropes” my arse.

Colin Alexander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.