by Clare Druce
Chickens’ Lib
The story of a campaign
by Clare Druce
Copyright © Clare Druce
First published in 2013 by
Bluemoose Books Ltd
25 Sackville Street
Hebden Bridge
West Yorkshire
HX7 7DJ
www.bluemoosebooks.com
All rights reserved
Unauthorised duplication contravenes existing laws
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Hardback ISBN 13: 978 0 9575497 2 2
Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with
reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologise for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.
Photographs courtesy of the author and Chickens’ Lib, unless otherwise stated.
To Duncan,
With my love, and thanks for unfailing support.
Prologue
It’s 1977, the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, and Great Britain celebrates. There’s been nothing like it since the coronation. The Sunday Times Magazine (January 30th) publishes four pages of Hellos and Goodbyes, a selection of significant comings and goings since 1952.
There’s ‘Hello’ to Dr Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine, and ‘Goodbye’ to Ceylon (but ‘Hello Sri Lanka’). ‘Goodbye’ to freedom, after Hungary’s 1956 failed uprising, and ‘Hello’ to the world’s first heart transplant. And it’s ‘Hello’ to Chickens’ Lib.
The caption below a photo of hens crammed into battery cages reads: ‘Hens lost out and found themselves trapped in batteries. Chickens’ Lib was founded in 1973.’
In fact, this tiny pressure group, with no proper structure let alone a constitution, had emerged a few years earlier, but it wasn’t until 1973 that we came up with a cracking good name.
Oh how the media loved Chickens’ Lib!
LONDON DAYS
Parliament Square
June 27th 1971: Rain is falling, a steady, cold summer rain.
The Press Association’s been alerted. We’ve told them about our protest, said the two of us would be here at 11 o’clock, next to the Canning statue in Parliament Square, with a mock battery cage complete with four live ex-battery hens.
I bend down and tweak the plastic shrouding the cage. The birds mustn’t get wet. They’re pathetic enough, without the rain adding to their troubles. Pale combs, scant feathers, the flesh around all four vents an angry red.
We desperately need the media’s help, but a full hour has passed. We’re losing hope.
“What if we’re in the wrong place?” I say.
My mother fishes out our press release and checks. Thank God! We’ve not done anything stupid.
“They’re just not interested,” she says. “Nobody cares.”
“Give it another half hour,” I say.
*
Five minutes later two figures appear through the gloom and rain, one shouldering a serious-looking camera. Oh, thank goodness we didn’t pack the hens back into the van and head for home.
If we had, we’d have missed the Guardian.
*
That same afternoon: The rain had cleared and London basked in hot sunshine. Still in Parliament Square, we’d erected our cage for people, six feet high and constructed of wood and wire netting. Placards on all four sides challenged Agriculture Minister Jim Prior to take action to end the birds’ suffering.
Five human prisoners stood quietly inside. There was Dr Alan Long, tireless campaigner for a vegan diet, Yvonne Anderson from the Farm and Food Society, Violet and me – and our star guest the writer Ernest Raymond, whose 1920s novel Tell England had been a runaway best seller. Perhaps the most powerful among his later books is We the Accused, a dark compassionate story about capital punishment. Violet and I felt honoured to share a cage with Ernest Raymond.
Parliament Square was buzzing now and bemused Londoners and tourists stopped to stare, many of them supportive. On a fold-up table we gathered hundreds of signatures for our petition to Prime Minister Ted Heath. Best of all, a reporter and photographer from the Press Association turned up.
The next day we buy the Guardian, feverishly turn the pages. And we’re in! Reporter Martin Adeney’s article is excellent: ‘A chicken with wings stripped of feathers gave powerful support in Parliament Square yesterday to the campaign against factory farming, which is demanding a meeting with Mr Heath to present its case for more humane treatment of farm animals. The chicken, its neck rubbed apparently by bars so that it looked like a victim of alopecia, was one of four bought the previous day from a battery farm and lodged together in a cage 20x17x18 inches…When [the caged hens] tried to change about, one at least got squashed and pecked…usually the one with wings without feathers…A leaflet handed out said: “Many battery hens suffer from respiratory diseases or cancer. The eggs they lay in these fetid conditions probably come to you labelled ‘farm fresh’ or ‘new laid’. After slaughter, the spent layers, so often diseased, still have their uses. They may become your baby’s tinned dinner, chicken paste, or just a tin of soup.”’ There’s a good big picture of the hens too, peering out through the cage bars.
Bars? In fact they’re knitting needles, not even all of the same gauge, my father’s inventive substitute for the real thing. Eccentric our homemade cage may be, but it’s correct in all the important features, including floor slope. (Years later the Guardian ran a general article on factory farming, illustrated with a photo of caged hens. We studied it: something wasn’t quite right with the bars. Ah! The knitting needles again.)
The Press Association has done its good work too. The image of five caged humans receives wide media coverage even, we discover later, in a German newspaper.
How it all began
So how did my mother and I come to be there, just the two of us standing beside the Canning statue, on that wet June morning in 1971?
It was like this:
Three or four years previously, I’d come upon Ruth Harrison’s 1964 book Animal Machines, a disturbing exposé of how the post-war quest for cheap food had led to ‘factory farming’, that cocktail of cruelty to animals and danger to human health.
Shocked, I lent the book to my mother, Violet Spalding. She’d always had a gut feeling for sustainability, long before it was fashionable, lamenting the loss of topsoil, aware of the role of the earthworm. On reading Animal Machines she was as appalled as I’d been. We wondered what, if anything, we could do.
We contacted Ruth Harrison, who told us about The Farm and Food Society (FAFS), a small but influential organisation well known for valuable research into all aspects of farming, its moving force Joanne Bower.
At that time our two daughters were small and my husband was working as a BBC music producer. By now he was increasingly involved in the London contemporary music scene and it was hard for me to get out in the evenings. So Violet attended FAFS meetings on behalf of us both and was soon invited onto its committee, where she made long-lasting friendships, especially with Joanne.
But before long Violet’s impatient nature got the better of her. I was feeling frustrated too, and we wondered about a change of tactics. Could we perhaps ‘go it alone’ in some way, and so add a new dimension to present-day campaigning? After some discussion, we decided on our way forward.
*
For fact finding, we’d already put our faith in the power of the pen. Here are two examples of responses to some of our early letters:
September 10th 1969: Ernest Shippam, Managing Director of Shippam’s pastes, wrote to say he would have no problem in taking
the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ round his factory, there to discuss the pros and cons of how the company obtained its raw materials.
September 29th 1969: A spokesman for H.J. Heinz Company Limited confirmed that ‘spent’ battery hens were included in its chicken baby foods, that the meat wasn’t tested for residues of antibiotics and that no checks were made for the presence of Marek’s disease, a form of cancer.
There’s no proof that Marek’s can be transferred to humans, but who’d want to risk feeding their baby chicken meat possibly contaminated with chicken cancer?
*
Already, we’d made an important decision: we’d limit our campaign to the plight of battery hens. Being obtainable and transportable, their extreme deprivation would be the easiest to highlight: hens trapped for life in metal cages, forced to stand on sloping wire, living in semi-darkness, unable to take a normal step ever. Surely these images would resonate with the public?
I dislike the term ‘battery hen’. It seems to suggest a breed of hen ideally suited to imprisonment, while nothing could be further from the truth. But I’ll use the term throughout as a form of shorthand.
*
When Animal Machines was published in 1964, around 80% of UK hens were incarcerated in cages, with their numbers increasing. By early 1969 our protest letters were landing on the desks of civil servants and Government officials, fired off from Violet’s home in Croydon and mine in West London. Back came the replies, re-assuring, bland and misleading:
July 15th 1969: The Minister’s Private Secretary wrote, in response to our complaints: ‘I am sure that it would be true to say that this country holds a place second to none in the wealth of legislation to protect the welfare of animals.’ We reflected that fine words butter no parsnips, legislation being useless if millions of animals continued to suffer.
Worse was to follow: ‘It is true that a valuable export trade in live poultry and hatching eggs has been developed in the last few years. The poultry and eggs that we export are valuable breeding stock and it is greatly in the interest of those who import them that they should be kept in excellent condition in the importing countries.’ No mention here of the likelihood of lower standards in those countries, or, worse still, a complete lack of welfare laws.
Months passed, merging into years. Names became depressingly familiar, as the same civil servants were instructed to fend us off. Eventually, our patience snapped. There was only one thing for it! We’d beard the pen pushers in their hitherto safe hide-out, the Department of Obfuscation aka the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), Government Offices, Block E, Leatherhead Road, Chessington, in Surrey.
But first we needed the evidence.
To the East End
May 6th 1973: Violet and I, with my children in tow, set out for the Petticoat Lane area in London’s East End. We’d been told that on pavements in certain streets we’d find filthy black plastic crates stacked high, crammed with skinny, often semi-naked end-of-lay battery hens, stinking of the sheds from which they’d recently been wrenched. Here they awaited ritual slaughter in the back rooms of butchers’ premises.
It was Sunday and we’d expected the City to be quiet, but soon ran into crowds of football fans. Hanging on tight to the children we pressed on, following our noses. Soon we spotted the teetering crates and smelled the hens at close quarters. Alison, my elder daughter, turned pale and threatened to throw up in the gutter.
Feisty Violet offered to go into the shop alone. She hardly looked a typical customer but her presence could be commanding. If anyone was going to brazen this one out, it was my mother.
Five minutes later she emerged, lugging a bloodstained paper sack stuffed with four hens. We felt guilty. Would the hens be all right? Our overriding thought had been to act casually before making a quick getaway. Suitable containers would have aroused suspicion. But thank God the sack was sturdy, and somehow the hens found their own level. Once out of sight of the shop we made sure they had enough air.
The sack was surprisingly heavy, and we decided to take a taxi back to where we’d left the van, near the Bank of England.
Alison was worried. “But what will you say, Mamma, if the taxi driver asks what’s that awful smell?”
“I shall say it is me,” Violet replied regally.
In the event, the cabby took the situation in his stride, no questions asked.
*
Back in Barnes, the outside lavatory in Elm Bank Gardens awaited our four little hens. They ate hungrily (it’s commonplace to starve poultry for twelve hours or more, prior to slaughter) and drank deeply. Then, with many peaceful clucking sounds, they sank down on a thick layer of straw to enjoy the most comfortable night’s sleep they’d ever known.
The invasion
Early next morning I opened the door to the back garden full of trepidation. Would our hens have survived?
To my huge relief they seemed fine, bright-eyed and eager for breakfast. Just before Violet was due I packed them carefully into the mock cage, feeling again the warmth of their bodies, the roughness of exposed skin, the spikiness of broken feathers. Putting them back in the cage seemed like the worst betrayal. If only I could explain that it was in their own interest – or at least in the interest of millions of others like them.
Violet arrived and we set off under a forget-me-not blue sky. Once into rural Surrey, the hedges were snowy with blackthorn. We felt well prepared for our mission, excited even: we’d alerted the Press Association, and the twice-weekly Surrey Comet had shown interest, agreeing to send along a reporter and photographer. The arrangement was for us to meet them at the entrance to the Government Offices.
We parked the van near a range of dull red brick buildings, shared by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food’s Animal Health HQ and the Ministry of Defence. Before lifting the cage out, we draped it with a clean white cloth (in fact an old sheet). If challenged, we’d say we were bringing specimens for – and here we’d mention a particular civil servant, her name by now all too familiar to us. The deception just might waft us past Reception.
The Surrey Comet Two were ready and waiting, a young female reporter and an older male photographer, his state-of-the-art camera surely shouting PRESS! Together, the four of us (eight, including the hens) entered the building, only to find the reception desk unmanned. In fact there was nobody in sight. Not a living soul.
We spotted notices pointing the way to MAFF, so we made our way briskly along corridors, past offices labelled Ministry of Defence, past open doors revealing unattended desks. Thoughts of abstracting one or two files marked Top Secret flitted through my mind as, with the Surrey Comet Two hot on our heels, Violet and I staggered on. A cage containing four hens weighs heavy.
Once sure we were well into MAFF territory we stopped the first person we saw, saying we had specimens to deliver to our civil servant.
“Just wait here,” the young man said, and very soon the woman in question appeared. Now for our coup de théâtre. With a flourish we whipped away the cloth, revealing our four featherless ‘specimens’.
Instantly, the woman tumbled to the horrible truth. A demonstration! Within MAFF itself! Actual livestock defiling Animal Health. Was nowhere safe? This was a situation calling for swift action!
Promising that someone would be sent to see us, our pen pusher beat a hasty retreat.
*
A few moments later Mr Foreman appeared and showed us into his office. We knew him to be a senior civil servant and Chair of the Farm Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (FAWAC). As backup, Mr Jackson, a Veterinary Officer, was quickly drafted in.
Since our numbers were so small, the Surrey Comet Two were assumed to be fellow demonstrators, a misunderstanding that suited us very well.
Carefully we lowered the hens’ cage onto the floor, setting it down next to a tall grey filing cabinet. On Mr Foreman’s spacious desk there was a coffee cup, suggestive of more relaxed times when no rude interruptions disturbed a serious morning’s wo
rk.
Irritably, the hens pecked at each other, while Violet and I went over well-worn ground, the difference being that now we were here in person, with the degraded, living proof of our complaints before all our eyes. Surely, we argued, to keep hens, known for being busy from dawn to dusk, caged up, each allotted an area of floor space a good deal smaller than a sheet of A4 paper… surely this was cruel? And, if cruel, then illegal?
The Men from the Ministry wheeled out their predictable platitudes, though Violet and I agreed later that we’d detected a faint wave of sympathy from Mr Jackson. Perhaps he disliked the system as much as we did, but was hardly at liberty to speak his mind. Not if he wanted to keep his job.
Some way into the proceedings, the photographer prepared for action, squinting down his camera, struggling to get everything into the frame– the MAFF men, Violet and me and the hens – no easy feat.
Alarmed, Mr Foreman spoke sharply. “I insist that no photographs are taken in my office!”
With a vague, reassuring gesture the photographer indicated that he wouldn’t dream of doing anything so underhand, yet he snapped away just the same. Mr Foreman’s courage seemed to desert him and he let it all happen.
Suddenly, and without a word, our young reporter sidled out of the room. We all ignored this strange behaviour.
Desperate for something positive to say, Mr Foreman addressed Mr Jackson in low tones: would it perhaps be in order, we heard him mutter, to show us the prototype of an alternative to the battery cage, namely the Getaway Cage? Mr Jackson thought this a good idea and, once the proposal had been formally put to us, we said yes, we’d be interested to see it. Inwardly, we thought the name ridiculous and had low expectations of anything with the word ‘cage’ in its description.
The Getaway Cage turned out to be a larger version of the battery cage, but with a lot more height, and perches added at various levels. We studied it for a few moments.