Francis Ingham at 50: A Legacy Misremembered

C.S. Lewis once wrote this famous line, on the topic of bereavement:

“I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief.”

For about three years now, I’ve sat with my grief long enough to know its real name is anger.

It’s December 22, 2025.

The late Francis Ingham – arguably the most impactful leader in the history of the PR industry’s global association world – would have turned 50 years old today.

For 15 years, Francis led the London-based Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA). He concurrently served as chief executive of the allied International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO), for about a decade.

Fifty years is quite a milestone. And Francis was quite a human being. At age 47, Francis’ life was cut cruelly short, in mid-March 2023. Emphasis on “cruel.”

As such, I feel compelled to address a poorly aging score… one that will always remain lopsided and unsettled. After all, a life was lost. In the years since, it’s been exceptionally painful to see Francis misremembered – often times, it seems, for the express benefit of other people and their career or political agendas. It’s difficult for any soul to rest in peace, when their very name is little more than a pawn.

I’ve struggled in recent months, knowing this milestone date was coming but unsure what to say or how to say it, given the impact Francis made on my own life and others’ lives, too. Plus, to be candid, there is a tremendous degree of resentment I feel from the many inhumane ways I saw Francis treated, when he was at such a low ebb.

Just over a week ago, a painfully accurate metaphor to the PR industry’s treatment of Francis Ingham burst onto my LinkedIn feed.

The PRCA re-posted on LinkedIn on December 11, 2025, the Taylor Bennett Foundation’s “2025 Impact Report.” 

As many in the U.K. PR industry know, the Taylor Bennett Foundation’s core mission focuses on promoting diversity / equity / inclusion (DEI) in the PR industry.

Curious, I opened the Taylor Bennett Foundation’s “Year in Review” document, looking for information on how the “Professional Development Francis Ingham Fund” was faring.

The PRCA quite loudly announced creation of this “fund” with great fanfare, back at the one-year mark of Francis’ death, on March 15, 2024:

I was puzzled, however, to find no mention about this PRCA fund in Francis’ name in Taylor Bennett Foundation’s “Impact Report” (which also included no financials at all).

That seemed strange, since this “fund” reportedly was set up more than 20 months ago. PRWeek’s own publicity of the PRCA’s announcement even had reported this assurance: “Details of the fund amount and applications will be announced in due course on the TBF and PRCA websites.” 

Yet no such information is locatable there, either.

Confused, I ventured back to the PRCA’s LinkedIn post.

I typed a question into the PRCA’s LinkedIn feed, asking both the PRCA and Taylor Bennett Foundation if there was an update on the status of the fund. I presumed data about the “Professional Development Francis Ingham Fund” giving total raised to date were simply aggregated elsewhere within the report.

I tagged Taylor Bennett Foundation’s CEO, Koray Camgöz.

It requires mention, of course, that Koray actually formerly worked for Francis as head of comms for the PRCA, until early 2023.

Koray kindly and quickly responded to me on my LinkedIn query as to the status, which I appreciated.

Our brief public-facing comments thread went like this, with Koray’s revelation:

“I can confirm the fund does not exist…”

I was stunned. I also felt an immediate, fresh wave of anger, on a variety of fronts:

• …That the PRCA had launched a so-called “fund” in Francis’ name in March 2024, but apparently without placing a single penny in it… even to help get it started, in seeming good faith. (No “funding” in the “fund” strongly suggests that announcing it in the first place was performative and insincere).

• …That Francis’ name was, and continues to be in my view, misappropriated by his former employer, into a constant stream of DEI political stagecraft. Francis wanted all people to have open, equal access to opportunities in our industry. But anyone and everyone who authentically knew Francis Ingham knew that Francis resented for years the accusatory finger-pointing he endured by much of the pro-DEI contingency of the industry, in the years leading up to his death. A lifelong member of the U.K. Conservative Party, Francis faced hyper-politicized, false claims that he was “privileged,” simply on the basis of how he looked / spoke. There was and continues to be total ignorance and arrogance about Francis’ actual life story, even though Francis went to great pains to try to share some of it. The hijacking of Francis’ name and likeness – after he was already dead and had no say in it – in such politicized issues is therefore a slap in the face, not only to Francis’ memory and to what his wishes would have been, but also, to those who actually cared about Francis and have been repeatedly hurt, in seeing this disrespect to his own “lived experience.” I recognize these are strong words, but that’s what I’ve directly observed.

• …That the PRCA’s fake (?) fund at Taylor Bennett with Francis’ name affixed to it was heavily promoted and publicized by certain PR trade media in March 2024 at the expense of a separate, authentic charity fund to help at-risk children in Francis’ childhood hometown of Manchester… the Francis Ingham Legacy Fund at St. Bede’s College. (Note: a few publications like Strategic did carry both announcements, but not PRWeek or PRovoke, which appeared to boycott it along with the PRCA). St. Bede’s had helped save Francis’ life in his early teens, as a victim of childhood trauma. This St. Bede’s fund in Francis’ memory, announced one day prior to the non-existent Taylor Bennett fund being announced, currently has raised more than £8,000.

When I discovered this news of the falsified fund at Taylor Bennett, I immediately relayed my feelings about it some 10 days ago, in writing, to PRCA leadership (Kirsty Leighton and Sarah Waddington), with courtesy copy to Mr. Camgöz. Both women were on the PRCA’s then-new, “fit for purpose” governance board in March 2024, when this “fund” announcement was made.

To that point, I rather doubt that the PRCA’s then-CEO and then-comms director on paid staff (two men who both have since left the PRCA) decided themselves to announce an empty account on behalf of the PRCA and then left it twisting in the wind. Perhaps Ms. Leighton and Mrs. Waddington knew nothing of it. But either way…

I think some answers are in order, and I don’t think such an expectation is unreasonable.

Among other things, however, I asked Ms. Leighton and Mrs. Waddington to issue an apology to the PR industry, for having announced a “fund” in Francis Ingham’s name, on what appear to have been false pretenses.

Ms. Leighton kindly messaged back the following week (on 18 Dec), but only to acknowledge receipt of my e-mail and that it would be dealt with in 2026 (so, I will need to wait about two to three weeks, I presume, before expecting anything further).

Leading up to today’s date of 22 Dec. – what would have been Francis’ 50^th birthday – I keep reflecting on this latest PRCA episode, through the far more symbolic lens of Francis’ overall life.

It all seems a poetically tragic metaphor of how the PR industry ended up treating Francis, and now, apparently, can’t seem to kick old habits.

Francis Ingham did everything for us in our industry, at horrific expense to his own health and wellbeing.

I remember Francis telling a colleague of mine and me, on a podcast recording in 2019 very shortly after I first joined the PRCA, of how he and his young children had their lives threatened in the wake of Bell Pottinger:

AUDIO CLIP: 

I remember the utter chaos and distress of the pandemic, and how Francis pulled his organization and so much of our global industry through, by being a leader of courage, realistic positivity, and inspirational resolve.

I remember his angst following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when he began facing a whole new set of conflicted situations, over which he had little control… such as unreasonable demands made of him by certain PR agency members with for-profit Russian offices and interests.

I remember the wave of seemingly pre-coordinated, online bullying of Francis, that tore Francis down in autumn of 2022… with throngs of Francis-haters unleashing a merciless, grossly public, online defamation campaign against Francis – accusing, insulting, mocking, belittling, and condemning him, by name (with some of the tweets and posts later quietly deleted after he died).

I well-remember the announcements in trade media, that Francis was under “investigation,” but no one – not even Francis – was allowed to know what he was being officially accused of, on what evidence, or by whom.

I remember seeing his decline into catastrophic depression from an ocean away in those final months.

I remember the horror of Francis’ circumstances, arriving in hospital in a medical emergency. And then people in London denying for days that he was even there.

I remember the perfunctory announcement of his death by the PRCA on Twitter, proclaiming he died after only a mere “short illness” (he had been slipping down the slope of terminal illness for at least two years while trying to do his job in service to the industry).

I remember how a columnist at PRovoke positioned a so-called “obituary” of Francis, in a write-up that brutally insulted Francis by claiming he wove “tall tales” about matters of his health, and that he was “insufferable,” after Francis had been, by then, reduced to a pile of cremated ashes.

I remember two PRCA board members sitting down with me in London in July 2023, telling me a PR trade reporter (by name) had been testifying against Francis as a “witness” during the earlier “investigation,” while simultaneously reporting about it, as if she were a completely unbiased and disinterested “journalist.”

I remember time after time after time after time in recent years – including just last month – seeing the very individuals who harmed and undermined Francis the most, rewarded… with everything from plaques and trophies to “Hall of Fame” honors and more.

I remember a lot of things. I see everything, it seems. Yet I’ve seen such precious little from the industry, devoted to authentic care for who Francis was as a person and his unique life story… and the real values in life that mattered to him. In fact, I’ve seen utter rejection and cruel censorship of efforts that have tried to accomplish precisely that.

How sad.

I’ve sat with my grief long enough to know its real name is anger.

It’s December 22, 2025.

What’s more, it’s three days until Christmas. Christmas is, after all, Christmas.

At Francis’ 50^th during this special season, I take some degree of otherwise highly elusive comfort that Francis today exists in a joyous, abundant place, unknown to the rest of us down here on the terra firma, but through faith alone.

My faith tells me that if Francis saw any of the people who purposely did and said things to undermine and harm and humiliate him and to undercut what little was left of his hope in 2022-23, and then grotesquely benefited personally from it later, he would tell those individuals now:

“It’s fine. It’s all good. Go… be happy.”

On that proposition, I’m forced to crack a smile at everyone’s befuddlement, who actually knew Francis, I’m sure. I mean, let’s face it:

Such a statement of calm absolution is not something the earthly version of Francis Ingham would have ever offered up to his most bitter enemies, nor to his throngs of decidedly fair-weather “friends”…

Particularly the version of Francis pre-terminal-illness, who, from what I understand from those who really knew him back then as I did not, lived most days at the top of his formidable game by forgiving little and forgetting precisely nothing.

But that’s not who – or what – Francis Ingham is anymore. He is not of this earth. Francis’ enemies no doubt have been blasé to the fact that truly indomitable spirits can be far more powerful in death than they ever were in life.

Amid all of it, I also recall Francis’ intellectual brilliance and wit.

I recall his resolve and courage, in the face of some very scary things in life.

I valued so much his bold advocacy for those written off and discarded unfairly by others.

I remember in those final months of his life that he was constantly keen to share – sometimes quite out of the blue – a photo of his children, with words of adoration for all of them. He loved them above everything else in the world, and he felt crushing regret that the chaotic, unspeakable nature of his very early life completely undercut and paralyzed what he wanted to be for them.

I see Francis now, in this photo, taken along the banks of the Thames in 2022.

It was pre-Operation Smear. And it was post-lunch, where the legendary Francis Ingham had held a small court with people who genuinely cared about him. Not for what he could do for their careers, or for their profit-making businesses, or for this or for that. But simply him, as a human being, who was valued.

He was struggling with his health tremendously at that time and often very ill. But he could still have sunny moments like this.

There is a certain quality to this picture that speaks to me.

I believe that if Francis’ spirit were sitting near us today, glancing over at any one of us – and I do mean any of us – I imagine he would have a similar expression on his face as the one shown here.

“It’s fine. It’s all good. Go… be happy.”

Merry Christmas, Francis. And Happy Birthday.

Anyone who wishes to support the Francis Ingham Legacy Fund at St. Bede’s College to help children from Francis’ childhood school who suffer, as he did, from Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) may donate, via this link:

Francis Ingham Legacy Fund for students with adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)