The Noel Buxton Trust was founded in 1919 by Noel Edward Noel-Buxton, 1st Baron Noel-Buxton (1869–1948)

Who was Noel-Buxton?

Noel-Buxton was the second of ten children. His father, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, was a director of the brewery company Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co., and his mother Lady Victoria Buxton was daughter of the Earl of Gainsborough. He was born in London and brought up in Essex.   

He was a family man. He and his wife Lucy Edith Burn married in 1914 and had six children. He met Lucy while campaigning for election.  She had been canvassing for his opponent!

He was a businessman. From 1889 to 1904 he worked at the family brewing company in East London. While there, he became involved in the new Settlement Movement of progressive activists who lived and worked alongside working-class people with the aim of providing practical help while also campaigning for reforms to raise poor people out of hardship.

He was a traveller. He visited Japan and the Far East (1892) where his encounter with Buddhism led him to forswear bloodsports; Australia (1896) where he assisted his father, the then Governor of South Australia; and, most importantly, the Balkans (1899, 1903, 1912, 1914) where he was acutely affected by the plight of oppressed ethnic minority communities and victims of war and famine.

He was a politician. Initially, as a member of the Liberal Party, he was MP for Whitby (1905-1906) then North Norfolk (1910-1918).  Disillusioned with the Liberals, he switched to Labour and again served as MP for North Norfolk (1922-1930) and as Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries (1923-24 and 1929-1930).

He was an activist for social causes.

• His support for victims of famine and war in the Balkans led to him co-founding and chairing the Balkan Committee. He was no stranger to the horrors of war. He and his brother Charles had survived an assassination attempt during their time in Bucharest in 1914, as part of an unsuccessful mission to secure the neutrality of Bulgaria during the First World War.
• His support for the rights of enslaved people to win their freedom was a theme dear to his heart and led to an invitation from the emperor of Abyssinia in 1932, to advise on a programme to end slavery there. His activism for this cause was profoundly influenced by the example of his great-grandfather, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton the abolitionist.
• His support for the rights of workers in England bore fruit when, as Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, he steered the landmark Agricultural Wages (Regulation) Act 1924 through Parliament, establishing minimum wages for farm workers. He also chaired the Miners’ Welfare Committee in the early 1930s.
• He supported family welfare. He helped to finance his sister-in-law Dorothy Buxton and her sister Eglantyne Jebb when they set up the Fight the Famine Council in 1919. This became Save the Children, and Lord Noel-Buxton was its president from 1930 until 1948.

He was a philanthropist.  The many causes he supported throughout his life are reflected in the history of the Noel Buxton Charitable Trust.  His commitment to the rights of oppressed people and minorities, to survivors of war and famine, to the welfare of those in poverty at home and abroad, and to family welfare, are all themes that we have funded over the years.  Despite Noel-Buxton’s unstinting work on many fronts, he was aware that much remained to be done; in his papers, he left a list headed My lost causes.  We hope that in partnering with other charities in the UK and Africa we can carry his ethos and mission forward, informed by the values, insights and expertise of the current board of trustees.

Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2008)

What did his great-grandfather Thomas Fowell Buxton do?

Noel-Buxton was profoundly influenced by his great-grandfather’s activism. Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet Buxton of Belfield and Runton (1786 –1845), was an English Member of Parliament, brewer, and social activist, with a keen interest in prison reform and the condition of workers forced into poverty by the industrial revolution.  However, he is remembered chiefly for his work on the abolition of slavery. The slave trade in Britain had been abolished in 1807 thanks to 20 years of campaigning led by William Wilberforce. Yet slavery persisted throughout the British Empire. In 1825 Thomas Fowell Buxton succeeded Wilberforce as leader of the abolition movement in Parliament.  The long-running campaign continued as Thomas Fowell Buxton and his colleagues collected petitions from communities throughout Great Britain pressing for abolition.  Their efforts succeeded when the Slavery Abolition Act passed into law in 1833. 

Where does our Trust’s funding come from?

Our funding originated from a private donation in 1919 by Noel-Buxton of 200 ordinary shares from Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co.  Over the years, our investments have diversified and have been held in the stock market. We use the income, and occasionally some capital gains, to fund our grant making. Recently, we received a generous legacy from Dr. John Basil Ponsonby, a member of the Buxton family, to support our charitable work. We don’t actively fundraise from the public or corporate donors, and we don’t have any government grants or contracts.  Avoiding asking  for funding enables the trustees to make independent decisions about how we fulfil our charitable objectives. We believe that this is important as it allows the trustees to support unpopular causes and marginalised people.

What have we funded since we were set up in 1919?

At the first meeting of the Noel Buxton Trust, the trustees made grants to The Fight the Famine Council, the Armenia Relief Fund, and a Bibliography on War and Peace. All were clearly connected to the interests of the founder and his fellow trustees, who were close family members: his wife Lucy, his brother Charles, and his sister Victoria. In the early days, the trustees settled on five themes for their philanthropy: family welfare; race relations, minorities and refugees; development in Africa; International peace and disarmament; and penal reform and prisoner welfare in Britain.

As a small family charity, in recent decades  trustees have focused more narrowly on three themes, funding work with charities in Africa, and with family charities and prisoners’ charities in the UK.

You can read a fuller account of our history here in our One Hundred Years of Grant Making publication.