by Clare Druce
‘I’m phoning from the Press Room!’ replied Violet. ‘And our patience is exhausted.’
But Mrs Fenner wasn’t giving in, not that easily. Another long wait ensued, no doubt calculated to break our spirit, before a civil servant was sent down, a Mr Sparks. He was not the first official to claim the need for specific expertise before he could risk a comment on the condition of our hens.
Once out of the building, Vivienne insisted on taking Mr Sparks lightly, claiming that he blushed every time he set eyes on Violet. We liked Vivienne’s interpretation of his red face but it’s just as likely it was fury that brought the roses to his cheeks.
Sadly, MAFF couldn’t afford to be seen as a permanent sitting target for lunatic-fringe invasions. Simply trying to wear us down by leaving us in the Press Room for hours on end was no longer enough. All too soon the barricades went up; no more could we get past the reception desk uninvited, let alone into the very bosom of MAFF.
Those were the good old days, at least in some respects. Visit Ministry of Agriculture’s premises in London now, and you’ll need a pass to get inside the building, while a colour coded warning in the foyer will let you know which degree of alert from a terrorist attack is in operation on that particular day.
In Yorkshire, MAFF was, initially at least, blissfully unprepared for our attentions. Soon, though, we were attracting the media with sit-ins and demonstrations all around that county and beyond.
At the same time, our workload was threatening to overwhelm us.
The campaign escalates
By the late 1970s, Chickens’ Lib had hundreds of members, and we contacted them all at least three times a year. Between us, Violet and I still addressed the envelopes for mail-outs by hand, always managing to get into an alarming muddle.
‘Have we done the Ns?’ Violet might ask.
‘God! I don’t know! They’ll be here somewhere. Behind the sofa, maybe?’
And one of us would hunt through a collapsing pile of envelopes behind the sofa. Neither of us was made of the right stuff for the ‘office’ side of things, yet somehow, miraculously almost, things did get done, and properly.
But with the campaign expanding by the week, we desperately needed help. Just where to look for it was the problem. The spectre of the wrong help hung over us. We’d far prefer to go on dithering around forever, just the two of us, than link up with someone we couldn’t work happily with. And there was no question of offering payment: everything connected with Chickens’ Lib was done on a voluntary basis.
*
Not long after we’d all settled in Yorkshire, word reached us of a woman living in South Yorkshire. Apparently Irene Williams was the person to contact if we wanted to meet someone totally dedicated to the cause. We phoned Irene and an arrangement was made to go to her house one afternoon. Just to say hello, you understand…
*
Irene lived in a neat bungalow with her husband Eric, two dogs and three cats. Much later, she told us she and Eric had met while they were children. Romance flourished in their teens, when, as members of Barnsley’s RSPCA Committee, they would cycle round the countryside, authorized to empty the all-important collecting boxes.
An air of orderliness struck us the moment we walked through Irene’s door; here was a competent lady, with a bookcase packed with important books on animal rights. Over a cup of tea Irene revealed that she’d recently addressed six thousand delegates in London’s Albert Hall, those six thousand representing the quarter of a million members of the Townswomen’s Guild. Irene’s theme had been the evils of factory farming, and the support she’d received had been overwhelming.
Through Irene, we were introduced to a network of people in Yorkshire and beyond, many of them CIWF supporters (later, Irene was to become a trustee of CIWF). In all weathers they’d be out on the streets manning stalls, spreading the word about abused factory farmed animals.
By the time we moved house yet again we knew Irene well and were nearer to her, separated now only by a beautiful twenty-minute drive over the moors. It was a red-letter day when Irene made her suggestion: would we like her to help Chickens’ Lib in the office, on a regular basis? With absolutely no doubt that she was the person we most wanted to work with, we took up her generous offer.
For the next sixteen years Irene would spend two long working days every week at my house, her sole reward the knowledge that she was helping in the fight against factory farming. My only problem was in persuading her to take a break for lunch: Irene would willingly have survived all day on cups of coffee. When mail-outs were under way she recruited friends to help, often half a dozen at a time.
On those occasions our spacious Victorian house came into its own as office, packing room and staff canteen. Quite early on we’d given the large dining room over to office use, reasoning that we used it only a few times a year for family get-togethers. Almost overnight, its former elegance was camouflaged by a miscellany of second-hand office furniture, soon to be submerged beneath signs of frantic activity. In 1994 our home suffered a serious burglary, with many musical instruments stolen, and an antique grandfather clock. When the police officers put their heads round the office door one of them let out a low whistle, commenting that the burglars had done this room over in a big way. I can’t now remember whether I admitted that I didn’t think the burglars had set foot in there. The chaos was all mine.
Without our many helpers we’d have foundered. Not content with more than a thousand members, we’d taken to sending our detailed fact sheets to around two thousand non-supporters. These recipients (many no doubt more annoyed than grateful) ranged from poultry researchers, poultry industry chiefs, environmental health officers, schools and colleges, to MPs and MEPs. Mail-out days were long and exhausting, accompanied by the thud of the franking machine and ending with trips to the post office, two or three of us staggering under bulging mail bags, a significant proportion of the contents going overseas.
We’d established Penny Perkins as a perfect person for re-homing needy ex-battery hens. Deeply concerned about the welfare of animals, she lived in a former farmhouse set amongst acres of fields, perfect for two horses and a donkey, as well as ducks and assorted rescued hens. Her husband Ken, a Manchester solicitor, was as dedicated as Penny to all their animals.
For a while we knew Penny only in the capacity of a trusted re-homer: she would arrive to collect the latest consignment of sad specimens or we’d take them to her home. One day, just as Penny was leaving our house, complete with her latest batch of hens, she asked if we’d like help in the office.
Gladly, we accepted her offer, and from then on Penny, always the best of company, was part of the team.
*
Some years ago Philip Lymbery, who’d recently joined the staff at Compassion in World Farming, was on a fact-finding tour. His quest was to get acquainted with experts in the field of farm animal welfare research. At Roslin, the Scottish research institute (of Dolly the Sheep fame), he was feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information flying at him and asked a well-known poultry researcher if he could recommend a good way of keeping up to date with that side of things. The researcher paused for a moment and then came out with his advice:
“Well, Chickens’ Lib’s fact sheets are very good.”
Philip had been astounded and amused, in about equal proportions. We were too, when told about it, but it set us thinking – for whom were we working so hard, producing detailed fact sheets? Though confident that some of our members read them, many might have found them daunting in their detail. Were we in fact spoon-feeding the wrong people, those researchers making a living out of the suffering of poultry, spending their time studying problems that only needed compassion and common sense to solve?
I do know one eminent poultry scientist, but only one, who gave up working in that area. No longer could he stomach carrying out research into what was essentially factory-farming-induced suffering, and which earned him his pay cheque,
Ethics, as we w
ere to realize more and more, were in short supply in many places, some of them surprising.
Take the shelves of the Co-op supermarkets…
Customer choice
Few of our battles were easily won, and ours with the Co-op wasn’t one of them. In 1979 we began a campaign aimed at persuading the Cooperative Wholesale Society (CWS) to stop stocking battery eggs in its Co-op stores. Despite its claim to be ethically driven, the CWS was slow to respond. And I’m talking in decades. Customers must be given ‘choice’, came the repeated cry. Year after year we pointed out that the hens have no choice.
Letters from Customer Services painted emotional pictures of shoppers driven by poverty to set morals aside and buy eggs from caged hens. We responded by telling them we’d seen many a Co-op customer drive out of the car park, their cruelly produced eggs stowed away in smart cars, 4x4s even. To strengthen our case further, we worked out that the price difference between a dozen free range eggs and the same number of battery eggs equated to the cost of a packet and a half of crisps or less than two and a half cigarettes, and we suggested that the average family probably bought no more than one dozen eggs a week. We urged our supporters to write to the CWS headquarters in Manchester. But for years, the Co-op was to stand firm, its ‘ethics’ in tatters, as far as Chickens’ Lib was concerned.
*
In 2003 we’d asked supporters to send postcards (yes, twenty-four years after we’d first accused the Co-op of hypocrisy in its ethics). Now we mocked their current slogan, “IT’S HOW IT SHOULD BE”, boldly displayed in their supermarkets. We had the slogan printed on a postcard, applying the words to a hen’s life on free range, as opposed to the miseries of caged existence.
*
But to return to the late 1970s: anxiety was brewing within the battery egg industry, especially, it seemed, in Scotland. Who, or what, producers were asking themselves, lay behind these welfarists’ most unwelcome progress?
Who is Mr Big?
1979: At the AGM of the Scottish Egg Producer Retailers Association it was reported in Poultry World that ‘…the threat of a ban on battery cages dominated the evening. “Producers have been sitting back, while welfare groups have been lobbying MPs – now we must fight,” said Denis Surgenor, SEPRA’s secretary. “The welfare groups have been too successful for my liking,” he warned. “Now the industry must present a unified front.” ’ (1)
Mr Surgenor said egg producers were suspicious about welfare groups with sufficient funds to support the publicity material they were distributing. ‘Many believe there is a “Mr Big” in the background, perhaps a foreign country intending to market eggs in the UK.’
Immodestly perhaps, we thought that maybe, just maybe, Mr Big was none other than Chickens’ Lib.
Granny agents
December 1979: Peter Roberts telephoned from Compassion in World Farming. Could Chickens’ Lib get hold of a few ex-battery hens, for an important event in London? CIWF’s petition for the abolition of the battery cage, signed by 191,000 people, was to be handed in at Number 10 Downing Street on December 11th. Afterwards, there’d be a press conference in an upstairs room at The Clarence, a pub in Whitehall. Celebrities including Spike Milligan would be supporting the event, and live ex-battery hens were a must.
Our reputation for ‘getting hens’ was now well established; how could we let CIWF down?
*
Generally, we operated at a safe distance from home, to avoid possible recriminations from local farmers. Since the problem was a national one, it seemed foolish to stir up trouble on our own doorsteps. But on this occasion there wasn’t time to meander around the countryside hoping for a lucky break – CIWF needed the hens in a few days’ time. We knew of a likely place just outside Wakefield, far too close for comfort. Still, just this once, we’d risk it.
And, we agreed, there’d be no reporting of this farm to MAFF or the RSPCA. This time, Chickens’ Lib would definitely keep its head down.
*
The egg production side of things turned out to be small, with around thirty thousand hens in all, divided between three sheds; near the farmhouse, in an old stone barn, was a farm shop.
The woman serving in the shop had a substantial bunch of keys hanging from her belt; perhaps she was the farmer’s wife, with authority to sell hens. Posing as normal customers, we bought one or two items from a selection of vegetables, taking particular note of the ‘Farm Fresh’ eggs nestling in hay-lined baskets. Then, as if an afterthought, we trotted out our piece. Would it be possible to buy a few old hens, just four or so, for the garden? To our relief she was happy to oblige.
I rushed to the car and grabbed the cat baskets. A minute later the door to the nearest unit was unlocked and Violet and I were following the woman into the shed’s gloomy depths.
*
Many of the cages at the end nearest the door were empty of live hens. We were told the shed was being gradually de-populated, and guessed that smallish numbers of birds were being bought for local restaurants. But why had nobody bothered to remove the dead ones? In many a cage lay a corpse and most of the hens, dead or alive, were almost featherless. Appalled, we followed the woman along the dusty, dimly lit central aisle between the banks of cages.
And now we were at the far end, peering into a cage on the bottom tier. We’ll have those, we said, and the woman yanked the hens out. We stowed them away, paid, and were soon backing out of the yard, realising that in no way could we not report this ‘farm’.
*
Back at my house, we settled the four in the garage, aware now that one little hen was badly crippled. With one leg sticking out at an unnatural angle, she crouched awkwardly. We spent a minute or two watching the others move around gingerly in the straw, then went indoors to phone a vet. We had to know what was wrong with the crippled bird, and stressed to the receptionist that we’d need a written report. An appointment was made for the following day.
*
The vet issued a certificate: ‘This hen has arthritic changes of right hock joint, possibly caused by previous dislocation.’ Clearly, her suffering had lasted for weeks, months maybe, her ‘farm fresh’ eggs laid with painful difficulty in the discomfort of the cage. We imagined her trying vainly to grip the wire floor with the dislocated leg.
Gullible ‘farm shop’ customers had been buying her eggs, prettily displayed in hay-lined baskets. We wondered once more why so many people fail to put two and two together: the absence of visible hens, those windowless buildings, silent except for the hum of extractor fans, the sickening musty smell.
*
We phoned MAFF and the RSPCA. RSPCA inspectors attempted to investigate but, having no powers of entry, were turned away. MAFF visited a day or two later, by appointment.
Yet again, we pointed out to MAFF the uselessness of their inspections. Police raids of suspected criminals aren’t made by prior appointment: ‘We’re just phoning to say we’ve had a report of illegal firearms on your premises, would it be convenient if we called round, perhaps somewhere around the beginning of next week?’ That doesn’t happen, we reminded MAFF.
It was obvious to us: MAFF, with its policy of giving prior warnings, wasn’t motivated to catch anyone out. Clearly the bother and expense, and the embarrassment of convictions (remember, MAFF actively encouraged farmers to set up in intensive systems), these were the last things the Ministry of Agriculture wanted.
No doubt all dead hens in this unit had been removed and incinerated before this latest ‘inspection’. But there’s no way the remaining inmates could have been ‘upgraded’. So MAFF saw most of what we saw, but through very different eyes.
Eventually, there came more irritable twaddle from the pen of MAFF’s Divisional Veterinary Officer at Leeds, claiming he would investigate any ‘genuine’ case of cruelty brought to his notice. (This from the same official who’d insisted that the almost naked hens in photos we’d sent him previously were in a natural moult.)
Apparently this latest case didn’t rank as
‘genuine’.
*
The day of the press conference: We met up with Peter Roberts and CIWF staff in Whitehall, where Vivienne was waiting, ready to help with the hens.
Spike Milligan arrived, and we proceeded along Downing Street to Number 10 where, under the scrutiny of two duty police officers, the petition was handed in. This offered a good photo opportunity, with Spike and we three Chickens’ Libbers each supporting one corner of the cage.
Then it was on to the press conference, where speeches were made and more photos taken, including ones of Spike, author Brigid Brophy and other celebrity ‘prisoners’ staring out despondently between the bars of a cage for humans. The little crippled hen was photographed too; later CIWF produced a post card featuring her.
At one point I said something (heaven knows what) that raised a laugh. Quick as a flash, Spike came back: “Hey, I’m meant to be the funny one round here!” So, a little light relief and something to remember.
It had been an interesting day, if tiring, but at least we could return to Yorkshire with an empty cage. Vivienne took the three uninjured hens home with her, and the little crippled one went off with animal rights campaigner and author John Bryant, to be lovingly cared for at his sanctuary in the West Country.
*
January 3rd 1980: Poultry World panics: ‘Under cover “rescuers” of old hens. Farm gate egg producers have been warned to beware of old ladies pleading poverty and who want to eke out their pensions by buying a few old hens for their garden. They could be undercover animal welfare agents seeking birds for anti-battery propaganda purposes, it is claimed… Two ladies persuaded the producer’s wife that they could not afford point-of-lay birds but wanted some cut-price end of term birds that they could take on for a second year. A bargain was struck, and they went away with the birds. Within 24 hours the birds had been photographed and prints rushed round to the nearest RSPCA office, which then sent an inspector to the farm. Permission to inspect the birds immediately was refused, and the RSPCA called in ADAS* who made an appointment before coming to see how the unit complied with the welfare codes. The Ministry found that stocking densities, feed, water and general management were well within the requirements of the codes and went away satisfied.’