Family, Action, Information, Rescue (FAIR) was founded by MP Paul Rose in 1976 to address enquiries from constituents and complaints from parents about their adult children joining NRMs. However, NRM scholar
George D. Chryssides pointed out at the time that "[a]lthough FAIR officials [rejected] the term '
anti-cult', FAIR's main strategy seems designed to hamper the progress of NRMs in a variety of ways." It also publicly disapproved of activities like "
Moonie bashing". Yet Elisabeth Arweck adds that FAIR's "commitment to raise cult awareness was tempered by repeated warnings against witchhunts". The organization renamed itself as "Family, Action, Information, Resource" in 1994 in order to denote a concern "more with the place of these cults in public life and governments than with the issues of recruitment and
brainwashing, although these remain[ed] important." FAIR was initially perceived as supporting "
deprogramming", but then publicly distanced itself from it, FAIR's applications for government funding were not successful; such funding instead gone to
INFORM (Information Network Focus on Religious Movements), set up in 1988 by the
sociologist Eileen Barker, with the support of Britain's mainstream churches. Relations between FAIR and INFORM have at times been strained, with FAIR accusing INFORM of being too soft on cults. FAIR chairman
Tom Sackville as MP and
Home Office minister abolished government funding for the INFORM in 1997 but funds was reinstated in 2000. In 1987, an ex-FAIR committee member,
Cyril Vosper, was convicted in
Munich on charges of kidnapping and causing bodily harm to German
Scientologist Barbara Schwarz in the course of a deprogramming attempt.
Cultists Anonymous In 1985 ex-members of FAIR who believed that the group had become too moderate created a splinter group called
Cultists Anonymous. ==Activities==