# A Cause for Our Times: Oxfam the First 50 Years

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/books/a-cause-for-our-times-oxfam-the-first-50-years/
- Published: 1998-03-07T07:54:00+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**Oxfam is one of the best-known and most successful charities in Britain. It is
also one of the most controversial.**

This book, published to coincide with Oxfam’s 50th anniversary in 1992, describes
how a small, local, wartime charity evolved into Britain’s largest overseas aid 
agency, in a period of rapid social and international change.

From its initial mission to help starving civilians in Greece during the darkest
days of the Second World War, to the recent Charity Commission investigation into
its campaigning activities, Oxfam has frequently been in the news.

Its humanitarian mission has never been safe, whether in Africa or Vietnam, Central
America or the Middle East; whether in hard-hitting fundraising or educational activity,
in nagging governments into helping famine victims or responding to needs in the
midst of armed conflict.

Maggie Black gives a wide-ranging, sometimes critical, account of Oxfam’s first 
50 years. In doing so, she projects Oxfam’s own development against a backcloth 
of changing ideas in international affairs and charitable giving, of which its growth
is both an inspiration and an expression.[](https://fundraising.co.uk/books/a-cause-for-our-times-oxfam-the-first-50-years/void(0))