COUNTRYSIDE ANIMAL WELFARE GROUP
Chairman: Richard Meade, OBE

A letter to the Director General of the RSPCA

Please reply to:
P.O. Box No. 293
Malmesbury
Wiltshire SN16 OSR
Tel/Fax: 01666 826977
e-mail: vap@ic24.net

Peter Davies Esq CB
Director General, RSPCA
Wilberforce Way
Southwater
Horsham
West Sussex RH13 7WN

21st January 2002

Dear Peter

More than six months have now passed since the RSPCA Council voted to cancel my membership of the Society. During that time, I have of course reflected on events and have continued to observe with care the uncomfortable position in which the Society too often finds itself. During that period, I have also been encouraged by very many people to continue the struggle to ensure that a sense of balance and proportion is brought to bear on the development of policy within the Society.

The vital animal welfare work of the Society has to be safeguarded, and this can only be accomplished by ensuring that debate at the highest levels of the Society is responsible, mature and balanced. If I had been in any doubt that my earlier actions, and the actions of those who share my views, were misjudged, that doubt has been dispelled completely.

I feel that I should write you an open letter to explain why it is that I intend to press on with my encouragement to country people to join the Society and play a full and active part in its work, especially those country people who share a day-to-day responsibility for animal welfare. I am circulating copies of this letter to as many of those people as I can.

I do so in the belief that the democratic process will ultimately prevail over those whose aim is to exclude views with which they do not agree, and who openly challenge the supervision of the Society by the Charity Commission. It is impossible to see how their views can be fully reconciled with the management of Britain's most important animal welfare organisation, when many of them challenge the very existence of animal husbandry itself.

As you know, I have always passionately supported the promotion of animal welfare and have devoted much of my life to the well-being of animals. That is why I agreed to join the Council of the RSPCA in the 1970s as a representative of the British Horse Society. That is also why, in recent years, I have encouraged country people to support the important welfare work of the Society by becoming members.

Country people are, of course, responsible for the welfare of nearly all farm animals, the vast majority of horses, and for countless thousands of working dogs. We have a particular and direct interest in man's relationship with the natural world. It is therefore crucial that we should playa full part in the work of the Society and contribute to the debate that will determine its policies for the future.

There is, in addition, troubling evidence of a malaise at the heart of the Society which stems from the influence of those who wish to see the RSPCA concentrate its energies and resources differently, and who are prepared to resort to unacceptable means in pursuit of their goals. I cite three recent examples.

The first concerns the publication in The Sunday Times on June 17th of an article concerning Council Member David Mawson. This article suggested that the Council of the Society had been presented with a legal opinion indicating that  Mawson:-

I am told that no one has challenged the content of this article, and I am obliged therefore to assume that all of this is true. Yet despite this, the animal rights group on the Council voted in support of Mawson, thus preventing the necessary two thirds majority to have him voted off. This exercise cost a reported £40,000. I wonder how many jumble sales and coffee mornings would be needed to meet that cost?

This is deeply disturbing. I, on the one hand, merely encourage people to join the Society, support its work and play a full part in its democratic proceedings, yet I am expelled from membership of the Society. Mr Mawson, on the other, stands accused of the catalogue of charges listed above, which no one appears to deny, and his membership of the Council is re-confirmed. To make matters worse, this man had the unmitigated gall to sit in judgement of me when my membership was terminated.

The second example concerns the reported receipt by a former Council member of a reply from the Charity Commission to a letter the former Council member never in fact sent. Enquiries apparently revealed the original letter to be a forgery, written by someone with the most malicious intent. In itself, this is disturbing, but I am also told that the forger could not have written the letter without certain confidential information gleaned from the highest levels of the work of the Society.

The third example was the attack on the Society's Freedom Food initiative by the BBC's Watchdog programme -an attack which it seems to me could not have been mounted without the assistance of the anonymous Council member whose words were included but who felt that his voice and appearance had to be disguised. It occurred to me that this individual might even have been the instigator of the piece. I thought your own implicit admission that there are members of Council who are inherently anti-farming was particularly telling.

I trust you will agree that all of this gives cause for great concern. The RSPCA is a fine organisation, which does very important work. But the Society's increasingly one-sided view of animal welfare is getting in the way, to the point where damage is being inflicted. This is why I and others intend to press on with our mission to achieve a more balanced view.

I want to make clear that I am not critical of the Council as a whole. The Council contains a number of eminent individuals, whose ability to act as Trustees and whose behaviour I would consider to be beyond reproach. This group includes a number of those whose views on animal welfare do not accord with my own. Unlike the animal rights activists, I have no wish to see my views replace those held by others. I want to see a reasoned debate, and I respect those with different views who are prepared to operate fairly within a democratic structure.

It is in this context that I receive with particular disappointment the news that the Society has refused an invitation from the BBC to participate in a television documentary within which a spectrum of views would have been aired. I have responded to those making the programme with every encouragement, and I know of a number of other country people who have done likewise.

We went out of our way to stress the importance of hearing from those who disagree with our position, and we positively welcome the chance that the programme will provide to allow viewers to make up their own mind. Your refusal to participate deprives the public of hearing both sides.

That Britain's largest animal welfare charity, which relies upon the public's generosity and which each year benefits from millions of pounds of tax relief, should consider itself above public scrutiny is, frankly, breathtaking.

What does the RSPCA have to hide? Is the Society so afraid of the truth, and does the Council have such little confidence in its beliefs that it is not prepared to put them to the test? If so, it is about time that there was a little fresh blood on the Council.

It will not be long before nominations are invited for the forthcoming Council elections, and I hope that those nominated will include a number of responsible and qualified candidates who will add greater balance to the spectrum of opinion ranged around the Council table. I will encourage people to vote for such candidates, even though I have been deprived of the honour of voting myself.

Richard Meade