‘You should be afraid’: poison pen letters reignite UK actors’ fund feud
A bitter feud that tore apart an illustrious actors’ charity has been reignited by the emergence of poison pen letters threatening former trustees.
The annual meeting of the Actors’ Benevolent Fund (ABF) takes place on Tuesday after at least three years of turmoil with little prospect that it will pass off uneventfully.
The ABF is a charity that dates back to 1892, created to help actors and stage managers experiencing hardship because of injury, illness or old age. Its patron is King Charles and its membership is a roll call of the some of the most famous names in British stage and screen.
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The fund has been riven by an acrimonious public row between long-serving trustees ousted in 2022 and “modernising” trustees who replaced them.
The ousted trustees were headed by Dame Penelope Keith, best known as Margot from The Good Life, who was president for more than 30 years, taking the position after the death of Laurence Olivier.
At the weekend, the Sunday Times reported that Keith and other former trustees, including the actors Siân Phillips and Robert Bathurst, had received a nasty poison pen letter before Tuesday’s meeting.
It warned them: “You think police make me afraid. I’m not afraid. It’s you who should be afraid.” It continued: “If you go to the AGM you’re done.”
A source at the ABF said its chief executive, Alison Wyman, who took over in July 2023, had also received a particularly unpleasant letter. It is understood all the poison pen letters have been passed on to the police.
The letters are the latest twist in a saga that, if it were a television script, a producer would probably say: “It’s too complicated.”
The civil war at the ABF, which has assets of £40m, began in 2021. It was first reported by Private Eye which has continued to chart its convoluted twists and turns.
The saga has featured allegations of there being a “coup” with the actor James Bolam, an ousted trustee, once arguing that the ABF’s West End headquarters had gone from “a place of creativity and goodwill” to being “more like Bleak House”.
Keith and her supporters argued that their removal in February 2022 breached company law and that the board that replaced them was therefore illegitimate.
Legal skirmishes and public wars of words followed while mediation failed; the ousted trustees claimed they were open to talks, but were ignored.
One trustee told the Guardian privately that reform had been necessary to inject fresh energy into the charity, make it more democratic, and refocus its resources more tightly on new services for struggling actors, such as talking therapy and cost of living grants.
The ousted trustees – several of whom are in their 80s – are angry at claims they were out of touch, saying they had developed their own modernising strategy for the ABF. They have in turn suggested that their critics have been guilty of age discrimination and accused them of acting dishonourably.
The charities regulator, the Charity Commission, intervened in what it said was a “damaging and costly dispute”.
The commission admitted in a review of its handling of the case that it had made a series of errors but it offered no apology or remedy to the ousted trustees.
In a statement, the ABF said: “The Charity Commission, in 2022, identified many governance issues within the charity dating back years, which the current trustees and ABF team have subsequently worked hard to address.
“These include trustees not having had terms of office, leading to some being in post for many years, and no policies in place for important areas of work, which is not in line with good charity governance.
“The Charity Commission closed its regulatory compliance case into the ABF in May 2024 after the work by the new board and team. The charity is now in a positive place, focused on its beneficiaries, and by the end of 2024 we project we will have directly helped over 40% more people than in 2023.”
A spokesperson for Penelope Keith said the actor did not wish to comment.
