Can anyone stop the We R Blighty fundraisers?

Plus: Another defection to the Greens — and Sadiq Khan compares Zohran Mamdani's election experience to his own.

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Nov 05, 2025

It’s Remembrance Sunday this weekend, which is why you’ll see Royal British Legion poppy sellers across the capital raising money for veterans. Many of London’s commuters are happy to tap their card readers or put some money in the bucket to support the cause.

But poppy sellers aren’t the only people standing outside London stations asking commuters for donations in the name of the armed forces. We R Blighty, whose banners say they support homeless veterans, is a for-profit organisation that has become infamous for its lucrative and occasionally lawbreaking fundraising on the streets of London.

This morning We R Blighty was found to have breached fundraising rules on nine occasions, with one of the British Army’s former top officers telling London Centric the organisations risks undermining Londoners’ trust in mainstream veterans’ charities.

Yet there doesn’t seem much willingness on the part of councils or the Met police to crack down on We R Blighty’s operations — and the group’s founder has told us they’ll just change tactics and use another legal loophole to reinvent themselves as newspaper sellers outside London’s stations.

Scroll down to read what is going on.

Exclusive: Another ex-Labour councillor has defected to the Greens

Southwark councillor Kath Whittam has joined Zack Polanksi’s Green Party. A former chair of the local Labour Party, Whittam became an independent this summer over claims that the central Labour party had “rigged” the south London council’s leadership election to block a leftwing candidate.

It’s all part of the drip-drip of left-wing political realignment currently underway at some of the capital’s Labour-dominated councils, with similar defections to the Greens in the likes of Lambeth, Haringey, and Barking and Dagenham. Whittam told London Centric why she had quit Labour after 42 years: “I can breathe the fresh air of the Green Party and enjoy my politics again! There are no divisive factions, no sides to take – just a shared space to talk about common goals. It’s positive, hopeful, and focused on real solutions.”

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Welcome, New York (from London)

Sadiq Khan this morning sent congratulations to the newly-elected New York Democratic mayor (and Arsenal fan) Zohran Mamdani.

“New Yorkers faced a clear choice — between hope and fear — and just like we’ve seen in London hope won,” said Khan.

Earlier, a ‘source close to’ Khan had drawn comparisons between the media treatment of the first two Muslim mayors of their respective cities: “The similarities between the attacks Mamdani has faced and what Sadiq has faced in elections, particularly in 2016 are uncanny. Weaponising Mamdani’s faith and linking him to terrorism and extremism is an old campaigning tactic, and one we’re all too familiar with here in London.”

We promised no more snails.

Kensington and Bayswater MP Joe Powell namechecked London Centric’s reporting on London’s snail farms in the House of Commons on Tuesday. The Labour politician claimed the existence of high street mollusc breeding is symptomatic of a “Tory economy” where “sluggish, brittle, and hard to swallow molluscs are taking up retail space and pushing out legitimate businesses”. He survived heckles of “shell company” from his parliamentary colleagues.

“Aggressive and unprofessional”: What do you do with a problem like We R Blighty?

We R Blighty’s fundraisers have become a familiar sight to many London workers in recent years, as they stand outside busy stations from Farringdon to Finchley and St John’s Wood to Oxford Circus. Its staff, surrounded by union flag-decorated banners, successfully convince Londoners to hand over hundreds of thousands of pounds a year on the basis it will be used to support veterans.

Although it looks like a charity, We R Blighty is really a for-profit community interest company (CIC) that has faced scrutiny over how much of the money it raises goes on veterans’ causes — and how much goes to staff and directors.

Amid mounting criticism of We R Blighty’s tactics, the Fundraising Regulator has this morning concluded:

Some of We R Blighty’s fundraisers act in “an aggressive and unprofessional way” towards potential donors.
We R Blighty has been illegally fundraising without permission across multiple sites in central London.
We R Blighty falsely claimed to have links to a well-known national veteran’s charity while trying to convince people to donate.

Gerald Oppenheim, the boss of the Fundraising Regulator said We R Blighty fundraisers have been rude to people who have said they don’t want to donate “or who have questioned where the money’s going”

He told London Centric: “If you’re fundraising in person or on the street, you need to be polite and respectful and take no for an answer. If somebody says, ‘I’m not interested, thank you,’ you should not seek to stop them. You should not lay hands on them to prevent them going on their way. You should not follow them down the street or get in their way to try and have a second go.”

“This is not what she signed up for”

We R Blighty is run by Kent-based Ben Mills, a forty-one year old veteran of the Iraq war, alongside his partner Danielle Vidler. He has a combative presence on social media, where he battles with criticism from the Walter Mitty Hunters Club, a group committed to exposing those it sees as exploiting the honour of the military.

Today’s report is not the first time they have found themselves in trouble. Back in June, Mills and Vidler pleaded guilty to illegal street trading at City of London magistrates court.

The Corporation’s licensing committee said that it had given Mills and Vidler “repeated written and in-person warnings and advice” about the risks of unauthorised fundraising but they continued to do so in the square mile. The pair were fined almost £4,000.

Given We R Blighty’s annual turnover was £264,000 last year, producing a gross profit of more than £80,000, the fine might be seen as just another cost of doing business.

Mills told London Centric that the regulator had never “produced any evidence showing us in any state of aggression” and gave his view on the City of London prosecution: “The reason why I went guilty is because they wanted to fine us £60,000. My partner was crying her eyes out. This is not what she signed up for, as you can imagine. So I went guilty because I knew it would be a lower fine.”

“Bad apples create a stink for everybody”

The concerns about We R Blighty are now reaching the upper levels of the armed forces and those who work with veterans.

Sir Nicholas Pope is a former deputy chief of the general staff, one of the most senior jobs in the British military. He now chairs the Confederation of Service Charities and told London Centric that We R Blighty is a “threat to the sector”.

He explained: “It creates a perception of doubt in the minds of the public about whether their money is actually going to be effectively used or whether it’s going to be used for nefarious causes by those who are collecting their money. That leads to a reputational risk and potentially a reduction in income stream for charities who, in the modern climate, find it difficult enough to fundraise anyway.”

Pope said the timing of this story near Remembrance Sunday is “particularly difficult” but there is a need for tough enforcement by the police and local councils: “Bad apples create a stink for everybody.”

Pope accepted that many of the fundraisers used by We R Blighty do appear to be legitimate veterans who are being employed to raise money on the streets of London: “They are harming themselves, and I think are doing damage to their comrades. That’s a bad thing.”

“We are not a scam”

The problem is that fundraising law in London is full of grey areas. As London Centric has previously reported, some similar community interest companies such as Inside Success purport to be raising money to support a particular group of people. Yet in reality their main contribution to, say, the fight against knife crime is employing those beneficiaries as fundraisers in the first place.

In We R Blighty’s case, this means paying veterans to raise money from the public — much of which is then used to pay the wages of the veterans raising money from the public. (The organisation also says it offers employment support, mental health support, and homelessness support.)

Oppenheim, the boss of the Fundraising Regulator, said there’s almost no scrutiny of We R Blighty’s finances by the entirely separate regulator of community interest companies. “They don’t check anything. They will just go, ‘Oh, yes, we’ve received the annual accounts, and oh, yes, we’ve received the community benefits statement that the law requires.’”

He urged anyone who wants We R Blighty, or similar fundraisers, removed from an area to write to their council and ask the local licensing officers to investigate whether they are complying with the law.

Asked whether he expects We R Blighty to ignore the ruling of his regulator, which is funded by major charities and has no enforcement powers, Oppenheim said: “I fear they will. But that shouldn’t stop us saying this.”

Enter the loophole

Any group that wants to fundraise on the streets of the capital needs to be licensed by the police and comply with local borough by-laws. But if an organisation claims it is really selling magazines on the street then it is governed by a completely different law, this time overseen by local council.

This ‘magazine sales’ model is used by anti-knife crime fundraisers active in London such as Inside Success. Whether or not any member of the public wants to read the magazine they are given after handing over money is largely irrelevant — there’s a legal argument that the person handing over the cash was just stopping to buy something to read.

We R Blighty founder Mills told London Centric that after being prosecuted for illegal fundraising, he is now also shifting his veteran’s organisation into the magazine sales business. This means from now on it will be up to local councils, not the police, to regulate its activities in London.

The We R Blighty founder also insisted that his main takeaway from the Fundraising Regulator’s damning investigation is that it did not conclude his whole organisation is illegitimate: “Maybe some of our practices are not great but we’re willing to work on them. That should educate everyone that we are not a scam. Does that make sense?”