Oxfam began in wartime Oxford as a committee seeking to send relief to people facing famine in occupied Greece. Formed in October 1942, the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief brought together people concerned about civilian suffering and looking for a practical response. Its name was later shortened to Oxfam. The founding story is collective: Canon Theodore Richard Milford and businessman Cecil Jackson-Cole are among the figures associated with the early organisation, but neither acted alone.
A committee formed in Oxford
Anglican cleric Canon Theodore Richard Milford is identified with the committee’s formation. In October 1942, he and others met at the Old Library in Oxford and established the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief. Its immediate purpose was to help people suffering from hunger in occupied Greece during the Second World War. What began as a local committee was directed towards people living far beyond Oxford, in a country under wartime occupation.
Milford’s place in this history is presented as one of advocacy and organisation. Born in 1897, he was troubled by famine and civilian hardship in Greece and joined others seeking a means of relief. The founding account gives little detail about his life beyond this context or about specific tasks he undertook within the committee. It therefore points to his involvement without turning the organisation’s beginnings into the achievement of one individual.
Cecil Jackson-Cole and the practical work of charity
Cecil Jackson-Cole, a businessman, is also named among those involved in the fledgling organisation. His contribution is associated with its practical and organisational side: the account connects his business experience with fundraising and the mobilisation of resources. In a committee formed to address urgent need, raising and directing resources was part of turning concern into the possibility of aid.
Jackson-Cole is also linked with social enterprise and the development of ways to support charitable work. The account does not describe particular initiatives in detail, so his role can be stated most securely in broad terms: he was one of the people associated with building the organisation’s capacity, alongside Milford and the wider group that formed the committee. Those different contributions belong within a shared founding effort.
From famine relief to a wider remit
The committee’s initial focus was food and supplies for occupied Greece. Over time, Oxfam’s work came to encompass a wider range of humanitarian activity. The account describes emergency relief in response to conflict and natural disasters, alongside longer-term development programmes intended to address poverty. It names education, public health and sustainable livelihoods as areas of that work. These activities reach beyond the immediate delivery of supplies: they reflect an ambition to address hardships over a longer period as well as to respond to crises.
Campaigning and advocacy are also part of the organisation’s described remit. The account lists economic inequality, gender rights, climate change and education among the issues Oxfam tackles. It characterises the organisation as operating internationally, but provides no dated basis for its figures for countries, staff or volunteers. Those numbers are not necessary to understand the change in scale at the heart of the story: a committee formed in Oxford to organise relief for Greece developed into an organisation with work across several areas of poverty and humanitarian action.
Why Oxfam’s founders deserve a place in British Legacy
The founders’ place in British history rests on a specific act of collective organisation. In wartime Oxford, they formed a committee to direct relief towards civilians facing famine in occupied Greece. Milford’s clerical standing and Jackson-Cole’s business experience represent different contributions to that effort, while the wider group made the committee possible. Their story is not simply one of charitable intention. It shows people giving that intention an organisational form, working to raise and direct resources, and establishing a committee whose purpose reached beyond its city and national setting.
Oxfam’s subsequent development, as described here, carried that founding purpose into emergency response and longer-term programmes addressing poverty. Work in education, public health and sustainable livelihoods extends the focus beyond immediate relief, while campaigning and advocacy broaden the organisation’s activity further. For British Legacy, the connection is grounded in place and action: a committee established in Oxford in 1942 became the starting point for an international humanitarian organisation. Remembering its founders means recognising both the local act of formation and the wider institution that grew from it, while keeping the collective nature of the undertaking in view.