Many of you will remember that massive Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium back in the ’80s, when everyone was laser-focused on feeding starving kids in Africa.
Bob Geldof became the face of the UK-based “Band Aid” charity, which brought together a lineup of famous musicians to record the iconic “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Bono was front and center, not just in the song but in the mission itself. It was supposed to launch his big “philanthropy” era.
But instead of feeding hungry Ethiopian children or bringing them holiday cheer, Bono and his Band Aid crew ended up arming bloodthirsty warlords.
Turns out the only people who got Christmas presents in Ethiopia that year were the bad guys, thanks to Bono and friends.
The images of starving children flickered across the screen – youngsters hardly conscious, possessing not even the energy to bat away the flies descending on their emaciated bodies.
BBC broadcaster Michael Buerk described the scene in Ethiopia 1984 as ‘the closest thing you get to hell on earth’. The famine pictures awoke the conscience of the world. A year later, Britain was host to the biggest fund-raising event of all time, Live Aid.
Who can forget it? At Wembley, and in Philadelphia, pop stars including Queen, David Bowie and George Michael were part of a dazzling line-up determined to feed the world.
And Bob Geldof demanded: ‘Don’t go to the pub tonight – please, stay in and give us the money. There are people dying NOW, so give me the money.’
Money poured in. The 16-hour rock concert on July 13, 1985 raised around £65million and was watched by a global audience estimated at 1.5 billion.
It was a moment of hope. But that was then.
Now the BBC has reported that substantial amounts of money – some of it raised by Band Aid – were siphoned away from relief efforts and went to fund guns for Ethiopian warlords during the Eighties.
Bob Geldof has responded with a vitriolic attack, dismissing the story as ‘total b******s’ and accusing the BBC of a ‘total collapse of standards’. He has branded the BBC World Service a ‘rotten old cherry’.
Geldof can scream and stomp his feet all he wants, but the people who were actually on the ground in Ethiopia are talking, and what they’re saying is very damning. A huge chunk of that Band-Aid money ended up funding the very warlords who were terrorizing the innocent. The Daily Mail piece goes on:
Today, for the first time, the Band Aid man on the ground in Ethiopia speaks out exclusively to The Daily Mail, saying he believes it is possible that up to 20 per cent of donor’s money went to fund the rebels.
Furthermore, he told me that he personally sympathised with the rebel cause he calls ‘a liberating force’, and travelled in convoys he suspected were transporting arms to them.
John James was Band Aid Field Director in Ethiopia from 1985-91 and was awarded an MBE for his charity work. He says: ‘I would be surprised if it were any less than 10-20 per cent of funds were diverted to the rebels.
‘Did I sympathise with the rebels? Yes. We would not have tolerated any direct assistance in the purchase of arms or condoned it, but just remember it was a highly complex situation.’
James, a farmer who is now 85 and living in Devon, adds: ‘I think it is ridiculous for anybody to claim that not one penny of aid money was diverted.
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