Sitting in the library of Kinfauns Castle in Perthshire, with its opulent
furnishings and walls lined with leather tomes, Ann Gloag looks as if she
belongs. The silver Aston Martin outside is just one of four cars with
personalised number plates in the drive.
It's true that, at a smidge under 5ft, she is dwarfed by her surroundings, but
then you could lose the Scottish rugby team in this room. Gloag, who with
her brother Brian Souter founded the Stagecoach transport group and built a
£720m fortune, is sometimes portrayed as an arriviste - more bling than
Ming - and as tough as the cherry-sized diamonds that adorn her hands.
In reality, she is a relaxed and elegant hostess in a tailored mushroom
trouser suit and 4in heels. It's 9am on a sunny day, but I pass three log
fires blazing in grates as I walk through various antechambers to meet her.
The castle's grounds are immaculate. Even the hyacinths look polished.
Despite the grandeur, Gloag, 65, who in 1995 bought a second castle, Beaufort,
near Beauly, has remained close to her working-class roots. If she needed a
reminder of where she has come from, she received it in the most poignant
fashion two years ago.
Her mother, Catherine, had just died aged 94 and the richest woman in Scotland
was engaged in that most intimate of tasks - sorting through her mother's
possessions, chief among them a large suitcase full of receipts.
“We were a mix of tears and laughter when we opened it,” says Gloag. “My
father was a bus driver and we lived in a council house, but we suddenly
understood why we never had enough of this or that. My mother was sending
£30 to missionaries in Africa in 1952. That was an awful lot of money.
I remember Brian saying: 'Look at this. No wonder we only had one pint of
milk.'“
Gloag is one of Scotland's biggest charitable donors, with projects ranging
from a £150,000 horticultural centre in Perth to the £4m Mercy Ship,
equipped with six operating theatres, 95 beds and 20 Land Rovers, which
tours the coast of Africa bringing aid to some of the world's poorest
people. But even as a trainee nurse at Glasgow's Royal Hospital for Sick
Children in Yorkhill, she tithed her salary. Her parents raised their
children - she has another brother, David - in the Church of the Nazarene, a
strict Wesleyan Methodist sect.
“We were taught to give, even when we had nothing,” says Gloag. “It was how we
were brought up. My mother had a great awareness.”
Although still a non-executive director of Stagecoach, Gloag now spends 70% of
her time on charitable projects. Property businesses run on behalf of
herself and Souter take up the rest of her working week. But while the money
is vital to the organisations she supports, Gloag believes she can give her
charities something far more valuable - the acumen that has given her a
reputation as Britain's toughest businesswomen.
Having worked her way up from the basement - she did everything from driving
buses to making sandwiches for the passengers - Gloag and Souter gained a
reputation for ruthlessness, despite their religious beliefs. Gloag's
estranged husband, Robin, who helped found Stagecoach and who died in a car
accident last year, was bought out in the 1980s on poor financial terms.
When he set up his own small bus company nearby, his relatives kept up the
pressure on his business until he quit.
Nobody could accuse Stagecoach of highway robbery, but their methods attracted
official criticism. In one of several investigations into the company, the
Monopolies and Mergers Commission branded their practices “predatory,
deplorable and against the public interest”. Now Gloag is using these
hyper-competitive instincts to save lives in Africa.
“More than money, people in business can give their business acumen,” she
says. “That is by far the greatest contribution you can make.”
Her philosophy of marrying charity and capitalism can be seen in her orphanage
in Nairobi. “From that day that I took it over, my aim was to make it
sustainable in the long term,” she says. When she discovered that the
children were being bullied and doing badly in school, she built her own
school, the Jonathan Gloag Academy, named after her son, who committed
suicide in 1999 aged 28.
“I built a school that the middle-class Kenyans would want their kids to go
to,” she says. “Last year we came fourth out of 3,000 schools in Nairobi. We
have 686 kids in the school now and there is a waiting list. Our orphans
attend free and the other 70% of the children pay fees. The school now
covers the orphanage's running costs for six months of the year. In two
years' time, I reckon I will have it up to 10 months. It is a good model and
one which could be rolled out in other countries in Africa.”
One of her orphans recently graduated as a doctor from St Andrews University.
Eight more are studying at Perth College. But her orphans' material needs
are not her only concern. At prize-giving, Gloag implored the parents of the
fee-paying children to take an orphan home for the holidays.
“Our biggest need is to provide our orphans with role-model families,” she
says. “At Christmas there was not a child left in that orphanage apart from
the babies.”
In a move that would be considered bizarre by anybody lacking Gloag's eye for
vertical integration, the orphanage has now expanded into weddings. It hosts
more weddings in its tranquil grounds than any hotel in Nairobi. Marquees
are erected in the gardens and Gloag's car is used for the bridal party. The
orphans are taught to arrange the flowers and set the tables.
“The weddings paid 2=BD months of the running costs of the orphanage and our
orphans learn a skill,” she says proudly. “We run it like a business. They
can't spend a penny over budget without calling me. But if I were to be run
down by a bus tomorrow, it would continue with very little additional
funding.”
Gloag travels to Africa every six to eight weeks. Her most recent visits to
Kenya horrified her. “It's much worse than is being made out,” she says of
the fallout from December's contested election. “Not worse in terms of the
violence, but the damage
that has been left behind. We took 22 children into the orphanage from the
displacement camps this week and they are so badly traumatised. All of them
had seen their parents murdered. I've sent a child psychologist for six
weeks to work with these children.”
This week she launches a new charity: the Freedom from Fistula Foundation. It
is a cause that is neither fashionable nor well understood, but as a former
theatre nurse who has experience of obstetrics, Gloag hopes to do for
African women suffering the degradations of fistula what Diana, Princess of
Wales, did for Aids victims.
Fistula occurs during an obstructed labour when there is inadequate care. The
pregnant woman usually struggles until the baby dies. This long and
agonising process results in loss of circulation that causes tissue to die,
leaving large gaps between the birth canal and bladder or rectum.
Incontinence is inevitable and most women suffering with obstetric fistula
are ostracised by their families and communities.
It is a condition unheard of in the West but, in Africa, where malnutrition
and the young age of new brides means difficult labours are more common, the
United Nations estimates 2m women have the condition.
“For many years we've been doing fistula repair on the Mercy Ship,” says
Gloag. “We realised there was a massive need, so we opened a fistula
clinic in Sierra Leone with 45 beds. I've always felt passionately about it.
I think it is incredible that in 2008 there is this huge problem and most
people don't know anything about it.”
The foundation will fund operations throughout Africa. Gloag is also talking
to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine about funding it to train 250
midwives in Liberia in an effort to prevent fistula. She is calling on women
in Britain to get involved.
“A fistula operation costs roughly £100. For every £100 we get, we will
guarantee a woman gets a fistula operation,” she says. “We're asking women
to invite 10 friends to their house for coffee or cheese and wine and talk
about it. For every 10 women, we'd like to collect £1,000. Then we want the
10 guests to do the same and invite 10 more friends.
“It's about women helping women because it is not going to happen if we wait
for the men in these countries to do something. They just get another wife.
It's no big deal for them.”
She recalls visiting a hospital in Sierra Leone where 15 women were waiting in
the corridor for fistula surgery. “They were so pathetic and so
malnourished,” she says. “We had to do something because it was so awful. I
gave them each $20. The one in the front threw her arms round me, then they
were all hugging me. I will never forget it.”
It's hard to see how the Freedom from Fistula Foundation could emulate the
commercial success of the orphanage, but Gloag's compassionate capitalism
has found a way. While they are in hospital, the women are given a basic
education and taught how to sew and use a mobile phone.
“We give each of them a mobile phone and when they leave hospital, they become
the phone-booth for their village,” says Gloag. “The first $40 they make,
they pay us back for the phone and we buy the next one. Then they make a
profit. We basically give them a business.”
Gloag sees women as the key to change in Africa. Ask what would make the
biggest difference and she says: “Another half dozen female presidents.”
She has been impressed by Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, president of Liberia.
“She is unique and I think she will make a real difference,” says Gloag, who
has entertained the president in Kinfauns Castle. The friendship has led to
Gloag rebuilding two floors of the main hospital in the capital, Monrovia,
which was destroyed by rebels 14 years ago. The £500,000 refurbishment will
include a fistula clinic.
“The work started on Monday and will be finished on September 19,” says Gloag,
clearly unafraid of standing up to the builders. It's the same attitude she
has to African leaders.
“They are hammering on our door saying: 'What are you going to do?' I went to
see Kenya's new prime minister] Raila Odinga and I said: 'Raila, what are
you going to do?'
Celebrities are a trickier proposition than African leaders, it seems. Gloag
is overseeing arrangements for Friday's launch party for the Freedom from
Fistula Foundation at Kinfauns.
“There are a couple of stars who are very difficult to deal with,” she says.
“Either you're coming or you're not coming. It got to the point where I was
scared to tell them who would turn up or who wouldn't turn up. I don't know
how these people run their lives.”
Gloag's charity work in Africa arose from her business interests. Stagecoach
had buses running in a number of countries on the continent.
“We were adamant that we would never pay bribes,” she says. “In most of the
countries we were in, the government was a partner and we were inundated
with requests to give this or that backhander. My attitude was always no. I
said if they came to me with a proposal to help the village or the
community, I'd be keen to give.”
The first venture was a burns unit in Malawi in 1989 and it has mushroomed
from there.
“I think if large corporations took a joint stand and refused to pay bribes,
it could make a real difference.”
Gloag refuses to discuss her family, but they are clearly the motivation for
what she does. In the UK she has given £1m to an initiative to help bring
compassion back into nursing. She was motivated, in part, by watching the
care her mother received years ago when she had a knee operation. “
When you are unwell the little things make a difference,” says Gloag. “Some of
the compassion has gone out of nursing in Britain. It's partly because of
the bureaucracy.”
She is equally concerned with the next generation and conscious of the effect
her wealth might have on them.
“I take all of my grandchildren to the orphanage once or twice a year,” she
says. “Some of them are really into it, feeding the babies. Others say: 'Do
we have to go today?' But it's good that they are all different.”
Her 12 grandchildren call her “Grandee”. “One of them said the other day:
'Grandee, do we have to share you with all these other children?' We don't
spend any time discussing how much money we have,” she says. “But when it's
their birthdays, they often ask their friends to give a donation to the
orphanage instead of a present.”
She is extremely worried about the effects of the global credit crunch and
rising food prices on Africa. “There is a silent tsunami coming our way,”
she says. “The farmers in Thailand are guarding their rice with machineguns.
What is going to happen to the price of rice? There is plenty of fertile
land in Africa and plenty of people to grow food, but who is going to
organise them? I'm not optimistic. There isn't a good track record.”
To find out more or make a donation see www.freedomfromfistula.org.uk
"Silent tsunami coming our way!!", Miss Gloag, what you are helping with in Africa is the devastation 'after' the tsunami. What you foresee is the pestilence that usually follows when the dead are left unburied.
The wave was/is incompetent African politicians and Africa's love of the feudal system.
Ian, London,