# Live Aid The Band Aid single, the Live Aid concerts, and the model of celebrity humanitarian response they established — the West's answer to the [[Ethiopian Famine of 1983-1985]], and the reason most people over forty carry a picture of that famine that the historical record does not support. ## The broadcast that started it **23 October 1984**, BBC *Nine O'Clock News*. Correspondent **Michael Buerk**, cameraman **Mohamed Amin**, filming at the Korem and Mekele feeding camps in Tigray. The opening line: **"a biblical famine, now, in the twentieth century."** It was rebroadcast by NBC and several hundred stations worldwide, and reached roughly **one-third of the UK adult population** within days. Bob Geldof saw it that night. ## What was raised - **"Do They Know It's Christmas?"** recorded 25–26 November 1984 at Sarm West Studios; **released 3 December 1984** (the Official Charts date; Wikipedia gives 7 December). **UK number one for five weeks**, over **a million copies in the first week** — the fastest-selling UK single until 1997 — **11.7 million worldwide by 1989**, and **£8 million for Ethiopia within a year**. - **Live Aid, 13 July 1985**, Wembley Stadium (72,000) and JFK Stadium, Philadelphia (89,484). Viewership is given as **1.5 billion** (Britannica) or **1.9 billion** across 150 nations (Wikipedia). - **Money raised is contested**: contemporary reports of **£40–50 million**, current estimates of roughly **£150 million** in famine relief attributable to the concerts, and a commonly repeated US figure of "more than $100 million." Britannica declines to give a number at all. - Parallel efforts: "We Are the World" (20 million copies), the French *SOS Éthiopie* (~$1.2m), a Yugoslav benefit ($426,000), an LDS Church fast on 27 January 1985 ($6 million). ## The critique This is the substance of the page, and it is not a fringe position. **Tehila Sasson** (2015) argues the coverage "depoliticized the conflict rather than discussing its political and economic causes," presenting as a transcendent natural tragedy a famine that resulted from a civil war and from policies including forced villagization. Her load-bearing figure: **by 1985 roughly 90% of aid went to the government and allied agencies**, reaching only a minority of those affected. She cites [[Alex de Waal]]'s conclusion that international assistance **"undoubtedly prolonged the Mengistu government's life"** by underwriting the counterinsurgency described at [[Ethiopian Famine of 1983-1985]]. **Suzanne Franks**, *Reporting Disasters*: "the media perception of the famine in Ethiopia was far from accurate," involving "major misunderstandings and misconceptions." **Andy Kershaw**, who co-hosted the BBC coverage on the day, called Live Aid "irritating, shallow, sanctimonious and self-satisfied" for failing to address causes and for the near-total absence of African performers. De Waal's book-length version of the argument is *Famine Crimes* (1997). Even the participants were uneasy about the text. **Bono** said he "really, really loathed" the line "tonight thank God it's them instead of you." **Midge Ure**: "it was all about generating money… The song didn't matter: the song was secondary, almost irrelevant." **Geldof**, in 2010, said he was "responsible for two of the worst songs in history." The journalist **Peter Gill** supplies the sharpest single objection: **"As Ethiopians have pointed out ever since, they did of course know it was Christmas because the starving were mainly Christian"** — Ethiopia holds one of the oldest Christian traditions on earth, as [[Oriental Orthodoxy]] and Kingdom of Aksum record. ## The 2024 argument A version combining the 1984, 2004 and 2014 recordings was released **25 November 2024**. **Ed Sheeran**, who sang on the 2014 version, said he would have refused permission for his vocals to be reused, endorsing the criticism that the song "perpetuated damaging stereotypes that stifle Africa's economic growth." The British-Ghanaian artist **Fuse ODG** called it colonialism and white saviourism. **Geldof** replied that the criticisms are not "colonial tropes" but "empirical facts," and that the song "has kept hundreds of thousands if not millions of people alive." Both halves of that exchange are defensible, which is why the argument does not resolve. ## The diversion allegation, and its retraction > [!warning] Get this sequence right — it is routinely told wrong in both directions > **4 March 2010**: BBC World Service *Assignment* broadcast "Aid for Arms in Ethiopia" by **Martin Plaut**, alleging that aid reaching rebel-held Tigray in 1985 was used to buy weapons. Sources included former TPLF commander **Aregawi Berhe**, who said roughly **$100m** passed through TPLF hands and **"some 95% of it was allocated to buying weapons"**, and a **1985 CIA assessment** stating that insurgent-raised funds "are almost certainly being diverted for military purposes." > > **4 November 2010**: the BBC **Editorial Complaints Unit** found "there was **no evidence relating to money raised by Band Aid or Live Aid**, and statements alluding to the fact should not have been broadcast," that the coverage gave a "misleading and unfair impression," and apologised unreservedly to the Band Aid Trust across BBC One, News 24, World Service, Radio 4 and online. > > **What was not retracted**: the BBC's own statement added that the ruling "validates the main thrust of the programme's journalism; that there was evidence from a number of sources that the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front had diverted money intended for famine relief and some of this was spent on weapons." **Paul Vallely's** rebuttal is the detailed one: both key sources were purged TPLF members with grievances against Meles Zenawi; Aregawi claimed a $2 million handover where Christian Aid had allocated $500,000 for the entire mission and the participant said the photographed transaction was $60,000; and the cited CIA document was dated **April 1985, three months before Live Aid**, while a July 1985 CIA document made no mention of military diversion. Former British ambassador **Myles Wickstead** allowed that a 10% loss expectation is standard but gave "no credibility whatsoever" to the 95% claim. **Where the evidence stands**: some diversion by both the Derg and the rebel-side relief societies is uncontroversial in principle; the 95% figure is rejected; and the far larger, better-evidenced political problem was on the **government** side, where aid channelled through the Derg underwrote resettlement and counterinsurgency. > [!important] ⭐ The scandal that got investigated was the small one > Seven months of BBC process went into the question of whether rebels skimmed relief money. The question of whether the aid architecture as a whole extended the life of the government that engineered the famine got no equivalent inquiry, no apology and no retraction — because no one had made a specific, falsifiable, litigable claim about it. **Accountability attaches to claims that are precise enough to be wrong.** A structural critique that cannot be reduced to a checkable assertion generates no institutional response at all, however well evidenced. ## Why it matters here Live Aid created the template for celebrity-fronted emergency humanitarianism, and with it the durable Western picture of Africa as a place where disasters happen rather than a place where governments make decisions. That framing has direct political consequences in this vault: it is the ancestor of the aid-scepticism argument on the American right — which reaches the correct conclusion that aid can prop up bad governments by an entirely different route, and rarely cites de Waal, who got there first and stayed to argue about what should replace it. ## See also [[Ethiopian History Hub]] · [[Ethiopian Famine of 1983-1985]] · [[Alex de Waal]] · [[Derg]] · [[Mengistu Haile Mariam]] · [[Tigray People's Liberation Front]]