From the Charity Commission’s website:
The ‘benefit aspect’
To satisfy this aspect:
•a purpose must be beneficial – this must be in a way that is identifiable and capable of being proved by evidence where necessary and which is not based on personal views
•any detriment or harm that results from the purpose (to people, property or the environment) must not outweigh the benefit – this is also based on evidence and not on personal views
The ‘public aspect’
To satisfy this aspect the purpose must:
•benefit the public in general, or a sufficient section of the public – what is a ‘sufficient section of the public’ varies from purpose to purpose
•not give rise to more than incidental personal benefit – personal benefit is ‘incidental’ where (having regard both to its nature and to its amount) it is a necessary result or by-product of carrying out the purpose
Summary of evidence
- The following information will prove beyond any reasonable doubt the League Against Cruel Sports are of no public benefit and should have their charity status removed immediately.
- The information will show they do not even have a cause and rely on personal views, opinions and carefully written propaganda to fool the public into believing their campaigns are justified. To further pull the wool over the eyes of the public they have used manipulated science from a professor they nicknamed the ‘chosen one’.
- Hunt monitors serve no purpose other to inflame situations, provoke confrontation and then capture the aftermath on film or carefully shoot footage that can be made to look like someone is breaking the law.
- The use of monitors also puts people’s lives in grave danger.
- Registered charities are bullied by the League into making controversial public decisions.
- Some of the information I will provide the Commission may pre-date their charity status, but the mischief sowed the seeds of resentment, discontent and hatred that is very much evident today and thus cannot be discounted. Douglas Batchelor, the CEO who steered the League to charity status, publicly inferred twice fox hunters were child abusers, this set the tone for the social media vitriol we see today directed at hunters and now recorded by the Countryside Alliance – http://www.countryside-alliance.org/two-thirds-of-country-sports-supporters-are-bullied-online-for-their-beliefs/
Douglas Batchelor ex-CEO of the League Against Cruel Sports recorded in Hansard:
“In much the same way as while paedophiles may feel that they enjoy abusing children and are therefore justified, a civilised society condemns their pleasures and regards them as socially unacceptable”.
Douglas Batchelor again around 2011:
“In my blog post last week I referred to the grooming of children to kill for fun. It evoked a storm of protest from the hunters and shooters. They really did not like being labelled with the language more commonly used for other perversions”
- Baroness Angela Smith of Basildon, ignored counter evidence and use her parliamentary position to promote false propaganda, the counter-evidence from the circuses has only just come to the public’s attention and needs airing.
- Baroness Angela Smith of Basildon, Vice President of the charity the League Against Cruel Sports ignored honest citizen’s cries for help. While they were being threatened with violence and sent a letter bomb she was busy promoting false propaganda.
- Animal rights groups rely on discovering the one bad apple which they then use to generalise i.e. everyone else is doing it. However the evidence shown below suggests unless a prosecution has arisen from that bad apple’s activities then it’s just as probable someone innocent has been set up with mischievous and deceptive intent.
No valid cause for the League
At the heart of the League’s activities was one Dr Stephen Harris, a one-time Professor at Bristol University. The League have for decades insisted on his independence and used him at every available opportunity in court to prosecute hunts from 2006 – 2018. He is photographed here in the League’s 97/98 winter edition of the Wildlife Guardian alongside a key summary he wrote in an IFAW funded report called ‘How will a hunting ban affect the fox population’.
Fig1
Only now, 20 years later, have we discovered Dr Harris was far from independent or impartial as Janet George Ex-CEO of the Countryside Alliance went public saying she witnessed documents from around 1997 showing Dr Harris was receiving money from the League through a third party conservation organisation for ‘drummed up’ research.
Fig2
It’s worth noting at this juncture how staunchly the League argued Dr Harris’ independence and impartiality even after the Lamerton hunt trial in 2015 where his links to them were revealed and the trial halted.
https://www.league.org.uk/News/league-withdraws-from-private-prosecution-of-hunt
However the defence solicitor told a somewhat different story the same year to Lord Bonomy for the Scottish review into the wild mammals act (2002)
This bias and pretence of Dr Harris as an ‘impartial independent witness’ came to a head when the world-renowned animal behavioural expert Dr Ted Friend was so angered at how his data had been manipulated by Dr Harris, he wrote a letter to the Italian Senate publicly accusing Dr Harris of spinning his data 180 degrees.
“I am concerned that very few people have actually read my scientific publications and discovered that Harris’s spin is 180 degrees from what we found”
Dr Ted Friend also wrote a harsh critique of the Welsh circus animal review to Bristol University in December 2016 that resulted in an unprecedented forced mid-term retirement without ceremony after 40 years’ service in Feb 2017 for Dr Harris. Reliable sources from within Bristol University confirmed his departure was for taking money from animal welfare/rights groups and pretending his work for them was disinterested, this fits in with League payments for ‘drummed’ up research revealed by Janet George. However, the official line from Bristol University is they can’t confirm or deny his departure because of the Data Protection Act. The giveaway though is a petition by students requesting his return in some capacity and this was met by a refusal.
Rather than slip away quietly and unnoticed, as could have been the case, Dr Harris showed his sheer fanaticism and hatred of hunting folk, hid behind the Data Protection Act and returned to court as an independent expert just one month later in March 2017. A guilty verdict was obtained, with his help, of the Grove & Rufford huntsmen and it was at this point I was alerted to Harris’ return. I was frustrated, especially after the Lamerton trial, and from then on provided a steady stream of information into the CPS over Dr Harris’ bias as I was concerned he was attempting to fix up hunt folk in the same way he has fixed countless reports for animal rights groups. In March 2018 the Huntsmen were acquitted with CPS withholding the reason why the pulled out just as Dr Harris was due for cross examination.
The full brief sent to the CPS is attached Harris-Final.pdf. The news story finally broke here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/11/foxhunting-prosecution-professor-misrepresented-science/
Why is Dr Harris so important to the League?
First we have to accept the three animals the League most want to afford protection are the deer, fox and hare. All three animals can be considered pests and are controlled by other charities. For example, the RSPB shoot foxes and deer, as do the National Trust. Government bodies also control these animals and this puts the League in direct conflict with much greater authority in terms of public recognition and knowledge. The League’s only fall-back is an abhorrence of killing for sport, but as you will see the evidence does not support even this claim.
Dr Harris was credited with research that found vixens can have fewer cubs if their numbers get too high and food is scarce, equally they will have bigger litters if there are fewer competing foxes and food availability is plentiful. This was sold by the League to the public and politicians as foxes controlling their own numbers, a quaint, rather simplistic ideal for urbanites that won’t know any better, but very unhelpful to those at the business end knowing the claim is pure nonsense and bereft of reality for very obvious reasons. What happens when farmers provide a whole field of new born lambs? If left uncontrolled the vixens would naturally increase their litter sizes to feed on this newly available food source. Hence why for generations foxes have never controlled their own number and farmers have culled them all year around using a variety of available methods best suited for the terrain as can be seen in historical Parish Records from Weem, Perthshire –
‘the foxes before the year 1760 made great havoc among the sheep, goat and poultry stocks but from that time on it was recorded that regular fox hunters have been employed at fixed salaries, by whose diligence and skill, vast numbers of foxes have been accounted for so that the inflated population is now greatly reduced.’
“However, in Golspie, Kirkpatrick and Lochlee Forfarshire upwards of £100.00 sterling is expended yearly for the purpose of extirpating the noxious animal.”
The methods in place by farmers and landowners are so successful lamb losses to fox predation run at less than 1% per annum. To overcome this inconvenience Dr Harris took the 1% and said this proves foxes are not a pest and they only kill 1% of lambs thus the argument can be forwarded that foxes are being killed for sport. Although clearly wrong it fits the narrative the League Against Cruel Sports can promote and has the backing of an academic. Now we can see the accuracy of Dr Ted Friend accusation against Dr Harris of spinning information 180 degrees.
This narrative of accusing hunters of killing for sport, giving the public the impression this is the sole motive, is ruthlessly promoted and can be found on thousands of online articles, tweets and Facebook posts by the League. (See Appendix A)
The only study researching sport as a possible motive for killing foxes formed the backbone of the Burns Inquiry in 2000. In the vast majority of cases where ‘sport’ was cited, another reason was also given i.e. pest control, while solely sport was cited by only 6% of farmers, this again has to be divided between just shooting and hunting. That’s 3% of farmers using hunts saying they kill for sport but the ‘sport’ in hunting is from Nov-Feb and is about giving the fox a sporting chance, hence where this happens fewer are dugout and many foxes allowed to escape, its true to say only a handful of foxes are actually killed for sport by hunts throughout the UK.
Burns Inquiry:
“5.11 The majority of farmers and landowners who do control foxes give several reasons for doing so.”
There is absolutely nothing wrong or immoral in having a ‘sport’ motive attached to legitimate pest control or fox management. What that means is the farmer or landowner gets the control for free and doesn’t have to spend long cold nights in a ditch waiting for the fox. That’s good economic sense and use of one’s own time and certainly not an excuse for a charitable cause.
Thus it’s disingenuous and dishonest of the League Against Cruel Sports to continually single out just ‘sport’ on its own and present that as the sole motive for killing foxes, nonetheless they have been doing that for decades to attract support and donations.
The fallacy of hunt monitors
It’s very apparent the League view themselves not as a charity but as a law enforcement agency and want to appear as such to the public.
Fig3
Even if they were genuine in their aims and looked to prevent illegal ‘sport’ hunting with dogs then their efforts would be solely concentrated at the illegal coursers, long-dog men and poachers that make landowner’s lives a misery. With over 700 prosecutions of the aforementioned since the ban was introduced and the likelihood this is the tip of the iceberg, that’s where the law is being broken not the registered hunts and the 25 prosecutions on technicalities of the law.
This proves beyond reasonable doubt they want to target a section of society they despise and has nothing whatsoever to do with perceived animal cruelty or upholding the law.
To further prove that point we find director of the League, Robbie Marshland, in the Scottish southern reporter 8th Oct 2018 claiming to have deployed monitors up in Scotland in a bid to capture footage of law-breaking by hunts in an attempt to persuade the Scottish government to strengthen the ban still further.
This ploy appeared to work as a prosecution trial was started in Oct 2018 against the Duke of Buccleuchs huntsmen with the League’s number one hunt monitor Terry Hill. He passed all the COPFS checks and was the League’s chief witness in this trial.
Interesting the COPFS were warned about Terry Hill in 2017 over his diehard fanaticism after two Jedforest huntsmen were convicted on his evidence. The COPFS chose to ignore that advice only to find it was in fact correct. It turns out that in the late nineties Terry Hill went under the pseudonym of ‘Spike Stocker’ and set up the circuses by mixing up animals that should have been apart so they would fight. As the handlers rushed in with sticks to split them up that’s when Hill’s camera started rolling. The full story can be found here:
https://countrysquire.co.uk/2018/10/12/the-compromising-of-terry-hill/
This information was passed to the COPFS who acted accordingly by notifying the defence solicitors of this new-found unreliability.
It would be foolhardy to think Terry Hill was a one off, the fact is the League’s manufactured cause will attract diehard fanatics like him, including ex-policemen. Carbon-copies of Terry Hill all desperate to get a prosecution, all willing to play fast and loose with the rules and truth in court because in their mind it doesn’t matter, the huntsman is guilty anyway.
This is no different to the situation experienced by Gemma Cowell as reported in the online Daily Mail 22nd June 2018. She went online with the good intentions of trapping online perverts but looked on in horror as her group appeared to treat their activities as a sick game.
“They mocked innocent people, sometimes obviously mentally ill, egged each other on and openly admitted they were desperate for a result.”
There is an obvious difference, it’s very easy to sit at a computer on line at home in a warm room when the kids have gone to bed. It’s a different matter to trudge through mud and hide in bushes for hours on end year after year without a result that in itself shows real fanaticism. The trouble is these fanatics are desperate and put themselves and others in grave danger to get their result. This is very evident from two pictures taken in Scotland a few years ago. The hounds are legally flushing a fox, the monitors have just wasted police time by reporting illegal hunting, hence the police car, and the gun is positioned on the edge of the wood to take care of the flushed fox.
Fig4
And while hounds are in full cry flushing the fox, in front of the gun position appears three camouflaged monitors.
Fig5
Hunts throughout England and Wales provide this service and Welsh gun packs are an essential part of fox control in Wales. We can’t have charitable causes putting people’s lives in danger. The blood will be on the hands of the Charity Commission for allowing the League to continue as a charity.
The bullying and harassment of the National Trust
The bullying and harassment of the National Trust by the League Against Cruel Sports under the veil of a right to protest is a disgrace. They hope to achieve their aims of a ban on hunting on Trust property by slowly bleeding them out with hundreds of fake news stories. Soon you won’t be able to search for the National Trust on-line without getting the impression through a fake news story they happily facilitate bTB ravaged hounds killing foxes for sport illegally while a pack of toffs look on in laughter.
Animal rights tactics is all about continued and sustained pressure through press, magazine and now social media, first documented 67 years ago in the first ever fox hunting government enquiry.
“There are, on the other hand, some organisations which have been formed solely for the purpose of securing the prohibition of a particular sport or all field sports. In the main such organisations seek to convert public opinion to their point of view by pamphlet, advertisements and press propaganda, and by Parliamentary action instigated by pressure on Members of Parliament which is both direct and indirect, through letters which constituents are invited to send to their representatives. Such organisations do not as a rule themselves investigate the facts of the practices to which they object, and the evidence they placed before us was for the most part based on reports appearing in the Press or other publications.”
We will examine the latest media blitz and see how extremists then prevent the National Trust from carrying out one of its core conservation principles – The League’s Chris Luffingham wrote to estates owned by the Trust just as they were about to hand out licences for access to their land by the hunts. He also wrote to the left wing Trinity Mirror newspaper group, hunt stories are good click bait, a selection here:
https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/anger-over-national-trust-decision-2161335
By writing to the group you can ensure nationwide coverage in many local papers that carry unflattering headlines.
“National Trust slammed by animal welfare charity over new hunting licence for Mottistone Estate”
Of course, next year Luffingham will write a similar letter and so the tsunami of fake news builds, but one has to question the content he is putting out and see how that fits the Charity Commission’s rules:
“Allowing a hunt to trample across the land, taking part in an activity which many people believe involves the killing of animals, completely goes against that philosophy.”
“Many people believe involves the killing of animals” Just who are ‘many’ people? How about many people know for a fact, as laid down by the Commission’s rules? In fact they won’t know because not one hunt has ever been prosecuted on National Trust land. A clear break in Commission rules that has gone nationwide.
“The benefit aspect from the Charity Commission – Any detriment or harm that results from the purpose (to people, property or the environment) must not outweigh the benefit – this is also based on evidence and not on personal views”
Fortunately the National Trust have not bled out enough and have yet to become tired and wearisome from the constant harassment and abuse meted out by the League and other groups, they stood firm and issued the licenses. That was all bar one, the Ashridge estate in Hertfordshire. They were about to issue trail hunting licences to the South Herts and Trinity foot Beagles when the letter arrived from League. This put National Trust Ashridge in a very awkward position because they were also in the middle of a large conservation exercise culling deer and issuing the licenses worried the National Trust they might attract the sort of people shown in fig4. On top of that extremists, a week previously, had put themselves at risk by preventing a perfectly legitimate and legal conservation exercise in culling foxes on land shared with the RSPB.
Fig6
*Note the RSPB are misguided according to the Sheffield Hunt Sabs because they have taken in Dr Harris’ flawed theory of foxes controlling their own number.
The Trinity Foot and South Herts Beagles have had use of the National Trust land for well over 40 years and once had their hounds kennelled down the road in Ivinghoe Aston. They have never been prosecuted for illegal hunting and yet the National Trust were forced to take the decision to suspend the license as a direct result of extremist action and in doing so broke one of their own Conservation principles:
“Principle 4: Access and engagement – we will conserve natural and cultural heritage to enable sustainable access and engagement for the benefit of society, gaining the support of the widest range of people by promoting understanding, enjoyment and participation in our work”
Just why is the Charity Commission allowing one charity to bully and harass another forcing them to forgo their own principles?
Baroness Angela Smith Vice President of the charity the League Against Cruel Sports
It’s sometimes the case people achieve a position of status from doing great harm to others. Baroness Angela Smith of Basildon, a Vice President of the League, is a prime example. She worked for the League in 1994 when the then CEO James Barrington announced publicly a shift towards trying to capture rule breaking by fox Hunters, he stated in the paper just as “Terry Hill” did at Shamrock Farm in the early nineties.* When Angela Smith became MP she showed the footage of claimed beatings of circus animals to Parliament and single handily destroyed a perfectly legitimate industry. We now know Terry Hill had set them up under a different name but more worryingly the evidence of the setup was being passed to the home office and Angela Smith but they ignored the cries for help from honest British citizens. The abuse and threats of violence directed at the circus folk peaked when a letter bomb was sent to the brother of Anne Chipperfield. This is was as direct result of Angela Smith’s actions and is captured in a letter sent to her by Anne Chipperfield. The full story here.
https://countrysquire.co.uk/2018/10/20/animal-rights-criminality-part-i/
Fig7
*A reason given by James Barrington for leaving the League was after that was reported they did obtain footage and got it shown nationwide on television, apparently a stag having fallen was savaged by hounds. Unbeknown to Barrington it had been doctored to look that way, to add to the humiliation it was Janet George the CEO of the Countryside Alliance that showed him the real footage. This episode again proves dishonesty will be applied in desperation to get a result.
Conclusion – We have a charity inventing causes, bullying other charities, using people with a history of fixing videos to obtain prosecutions, a Vice President that destroys lives and businesses, there is no public benefit, please take away this dysfunctional group’s charity status immediately.
Appendix A
A google search of the League shows how much they mislead the public into believing foxes and other animals are killed for sport, giving the impression this is the sole motive.
Fig8
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