No mutual-defence compact for UK civil society under attack

UK civic organisations face legal attacks (SLAPPs beyond the economic-crime carve-out), financial attacks (debanking, funder withdrawal), and information attacks (cyber intrusion, harassment campaigns, AI-amplified smears), and they face these individually, on sub-£2m budgets, with no standing mutual-defence arrangement. There is no shared security baseline or pooled incident response for civil society (the NCSC's charity guidance is advisory), no coordinated vulnerability disclosure among organisations sharing infrastructure, no rapid solidarity fund for organisations under attack, and no pre-agreed collective-response protocol. Each attack is survived (or not) alone.

'No community under unjust attack should stand alone.' Isolation is the attacker's force multiplier: one lawsuit, one account closure or one breach can end an organisation that a compact would have carried. The sector's accountability functions (the map's own oversight-outsourced-to-charities archetype) are only as resilient as their weakest, loneliest member.

A civil-society mutual-defence compact, convened by an existing network (NCVO/Bond-class) with foundation seed funding: shared security baseline and pooled incident response, a rapid-response defence fund (legal, financial, communications), coordinated disclosure among members, and a public solidarity protocol.

// Build now: First artefact: signed compact with pooled rapid-response defence fund, convened by an NCVO/Bond-class network.

Isolated civic organisations face rising legal, financial and cyber attacks with no standing mutual-defence arrangement, but a compact is a novel collective-action build with no single dated trigger.