by Clare Druce
The following year there was more to come. On September 16th 1984 the Sunday Express Magazine ran a feature entitled ‘Life Inside the Royal Nursery’ and apparently Chickens’ Lib had a foot in the door there, too: ‘Farmyard hens lay the nursery eggs. Since the Queen cut the royal order for battery-laid eggs following a protest from Chickens’ Lib (an organisation of housewives campaigning to ban battery eggs), all the royal households have followed her example.’
Well, that was excellent news, and good publicity for Chickens’ Lib too.
Funding the campaign
Scottish battery egg producers were still worrying away about that Mr Big, the shadowy figure plotting their downfall from some ‘foreign country’. Three years after the Scottish Egg Producers’ Retail Association had first voiced its fears, it finally got down to an investigation, but what it revealed was to leave them bemused.
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Poultry World, July 1st 1982: ‘Where do these welfare fanatics get the money to mount their campaigns, chairman of the Scottish Egg Producer Retailers Association [SEPRA] Jim Steel asked his secretary Denis Surgenor? First to be investigated was Chickens’ Lib and to their surprise they found that the organisation spent only about £2,000 a year. Mr Surgenor reported that their balance sheet for the two years ending 31st December 1981 showed an income of £4,279 and expenditure of £4,058. Among the costs were £36.50 for maintenance of hens and £17.90 for demonstration effects. He concluded that they got a lot of attention for very little money. In fact a lot of their expenditure must go on postage, writing letters for publication, like that on page 23. As long as we have a free press this will remain a cost effective way of being heard.’
We were flattered by this attention, though a little concerned to realize we had a spy in the camp; our financial reports, duly audited, were for the eyes of supporters only – or so we’d believed.
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Around the time of SEPRA’s investigation into our finances something wonderful happened. In his capacity of Chairman of the RSPCA Council, our friend and patron Richard Ryder arranged for a short feature about Chickens’ Lib to appear in the Society’s magazine. In it was included an appeal for donations toward our work.
The publication went out to the many thousands of RSPCA members, and secretly Violet and I calculated that if a decent proportion of them sent just £1 each, our present dire financial problems would be solved at a stroke. We’d be able to forget the looming prospect of jumble sales and street collections, and the need to find people to help run them. Many of our local supporters were already committed to other organisations; it would be wrong to ask them to give up more of their precious time.
The keenly anticipated magazine appeared. Eagerly we awaited the arrival of those thousands of donations.
And nothing happened. Nothing at all, until…
There was one response, and one only, but it made a dramatic and lasting difference to the scope of our campaign. A letter arrived written in pale blue ink in beautiful copper-plate handwriting, and inside it was folded a cheque for £3,000. This gentleman (let us call him James) had read about our work in the RSPCA magazine and he wanted to help.
I remember bursting into tears when I opened James’ letter. I was so moved by his generosity, so relieved at this sudden release from mounting anxieties and frustrations about finances. While he was there to help, James said, we must never lack for funds. He considered the battery system an abomination.
For the next two decades, James continued to send us very generous donations, insisting we must let him know if ever we were in difficulties (only once did we appeal to him, not wishing to take advantage of his kindness). When his work moved him from London to the North, we arranged for him to visit us. Duncan and I collected Irene, then met James at a nearby station, and took him to our house for tea, where Violet and my father joined us. It was a beautiful summer’s day and we sat out on the lawn against a backdrop of our rescued hens wandering contentedly in the orchard.
Our benefactor was just as we’d imagined him – charmingly old-fashioned, and a little reserved. His handwriting, by then so familiar to us, seemed to mirror his personality to perfection.
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Another delightful gentleman stands out in my memory. I’ll call him Albert. By the time Albert made contact with us he was a widower in his eighties, and living in sheltered housing in the Lake District. He began to send us regular donations, accompanied by long letters detailing his concerns about animals. While on holiday Duncan and I decided to visit him, so I could thank him personally for his support.
He seemed delighted to see us. Over a cup of tea he described how he economised at every turn, saving whatever money he could to help animals in distress. The little flat was attractive and comfortable enough, but Albert told us he lived very frugally, eating the simplest of vegan food and buying all his clothes, shoes included, from charity shops.
When we left, Albert came outside to see us off and it was then that another side of him came to light. A sudden glint came into his eye, as with clenched fist he thumped the roof of our very ordinary car. “I’m wild with envy!” he exclaimed. Apparently he’d been a rep in his working life and still hankered after life on the open road.
For years we kept up a correspondence, and Albert remembered us generously in his Will.
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A happy arrangement began when I received a phone call from Tony Thrush. He introduced himself as one of the directors of the National Society Against Factory Farming (NSAFF). This society had been founded and run by Lucy Newman, who had continued to campaign tirelessly into her nineties.
After Lucy Newman’s death, NSAFF still had funds in reserve and wanted to put the money to good use, while keeping NSAFF’s name alive. The directors were seeking another organisation to produce and distribute their material, to do the work, in effect, and that’s where we came in. I was invited to meet all four directors in a London hotel, near Buckingham Palace. Tony didn’t approve of spending NSAFF money on lunches in plush hotels, so he and I met up outside, before joining the others inside for coffee. The purpose of the meeting seemed to be to vet me, and apparently I passed the test.
After that first meeting, Tony became our main link with NSAFF. He would phone me, and, with me holding the receiver at a safe distance (Tony did shout down the phone), we’d arrange to produce leaflets, booklets, and eventually videos, the deal being that assuming NSAFF approved of the texts, and as long as its name was prominently on all the shared materials, we’d go halves with the costs, including postage.
Thanks to this arrangement, we were able to mail booklets, leaflets and videos out to hundreds of secondary schools throughout the UK, and to meet the expense of translating our booklet Today’s Poultry Industry, and some of our videos, into French and Spanish. ADDA, a Spanish organisation, then produced a booklet based on ours but adapted to that country’s needs.
Tony was probably in his sixties when we first met, and very active. He swam regularly and went on walking holidays – once he called in on us at the end of one of these, so Violet and he could meet. He and his wife were great dog lovers too, and rescued many. Often, there was a spectacular cacophony of barking in the background when I phoned him, once accompanied by a deafening crash of breaking china.
Sadly, Tony suffered from a rare disease that meant he could die at any moment with no warning. In the time that we knew him he did collapse when in the swimming baths, but he was resuscitated. We all knew his life was on a knife-edge, a fact he seemed to face philosophically, even cheerfully.
In February 1999 I was staying in Harrogate, where my mother now lived in a residential home near to my sister, Helen. Violet was very ill and the feeling of gloom deepened when I received a call from Tony’s daughter. Tony had died, suddenly.
With his death, our mutually beneficial arrangement came to an end. For a long time I missed hearing his voice, missed holding the telephone receiver at arm’s length while planning our next activities. Tony was total
ly committed to the cause and it had been a pleasure to co-operate with him.
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The St Andrew’s Fund in Edinburgh was supportive of our work, too, and we were grateful for their help.
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I’ve listed just a few of the striking ways in which we got by without funding worries. In addition to the grand sums, a steady stream of donations continued to come in, ranging from the substantial to the odd coin Sellotaped to a scrappy piece of card. And once in a while a very welcome legacy would come our way.
Every single donation was received with real gratitude. People cared deeply about animals on factory farms and we were touched that they trusted us to spend their money wisely.
No worse than any other battery…
May 1983: We wrote to Chief Superintendent Frank Milner, head of the RSPCA’s Special Investigations and Operations Department, describing a dump of a battery unit I passed on my way to work. I’d noticed that the only source of lighting in the daytime seemed to be via one open door per shed, and a few dusty windows. Lights were on after dark, to make up the seventeen hours of dim ‘daylight’ that battery hens must have to induce egg laying. We were worried too by the presence of windows in this ramshackle set-up. Battery sheds are designed to be windowless for a good reason – shafts of bright light encourage aggressive pecking, and, to make matters worse, the hens may suffer from extremes of temperature.
While Violet distracted a member of staff, I wandered over to one of the sheds and witnessed a disturbing sight: a hen repeatedly and frantically attempting to escape from her cage. From her well-feathered condition, I guessed her to be newly caged. On this farm, pullets (young birds not yet in lay) could be seen in outdoor coops, destined to be incarcerated in cages at point-of-lay, when around eighteen weeks. Little could the bird I saw have guessed that this harsh rectangle of metal, its floor sloping uncomfortably, with four other hens crammed into it, was to be her ‘home’ for life.
Writing about this has reminded me how the driver of a vehicle loaded with point-of-lay hens once stopped to ask me directions to a nearby battery farm. With the heaviest heart I told him where to go – for what else could I have done?
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A local RSPCA inspector did visit the shabby premises with windows, but there was no good outcome. Dissatisfied, we then wrote again to the RSPCA’s HQ, urging the Society to consider a prosecution. I ended my letter: ‘You will find from your records that this unit was entered at the instruction of Superintendent Marshall after we alerted him. He stated that nothing was more wrong there than in any other battery, so no action was possible. We are not prepared to accept this, since if domestic animals were treated in this way their owners would be prosecuted for cruelty.’
No action followed our complaint and the only visible change was a motley selection of old plastic sheeting nailed over the windows.
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The RSPCA’s Superintendent Marshall’s response highlighted once again the problem of cruelty enshrined in law. As usual, what we longed for was a bold leap of the imagination from RSPCA Headquarters. We wanted the law to be taken at face value – for what other value does it have?
Goldenlay hens make the Guardian
One day an animal rights activist sent us a range of photographs featuring a farm in Essex, one of Goldenlay’s suppliers. One photo showed escaped hens surviving in the deep pit area beneath the cages. In another, the photographer had somehow managed to snap hens from beneath their cages. A weird pattern emerged of the underside of many feet, claws gripped around the grid of the sloping cage floors.
Later, in March 1985, author and food writer Colin Spencer wrote a full page article for the Guardian, illustrating it with this remarkable photograph. His opening read: ‘Easter may seem the best time to look at the egg. But I don’t mean the chocolate one. That innocent looking breakfast egg, if it is not free range, hides a tumult of unnecessary suffering for the hen that laid it. If it needs a day in the calendar, Passion Sunday might suit it.’ The article itself was passionate, and at the end Colin included Chickens’ Lib’s address for further information. Over five hundred readers wrote to us, many of them becoming dedicated and long-term supporters.
We produced a postcard showing three hens from the Essex farm, staring out between the cage bars. We added a question mark to Goldenlay’s by now (in)famous slogan The Taste of the Country. The photo was in black and white, its impact bleak, and our question mark neatly transformed the sense of the slogan.
Our next venture provided proof, if any were needed, that the battery system is better suited to nuts and bolts, or to any other inanimate object you care to name, rather than to living, feeling beings.
A strange incident
On May 6th 1983, Violet and I paid a return visit to a battery we’d come upon, on the outskirts of Leeds. A few days previously a lad working there had been happy to show us around but, being an honest lad, or at least a cautious one, he’d refused to sell hens in the absence of his boss. On our next visit, we managed to track down the owner.
We said our standard piece and he agreed to sell, so we followed him into one of the units, not mentioning that we’d been there before, so knew our way around pretty well.
The hens were just as we’d remembered them, very thin, with what looked like small tumours the length of their near-featherless necks. We knew we’d want to report this place, and desperately tried to take everything in: the condition of the birds, the state of the cages, the number of hens to a cage… Then, from among the many thousands, I noticed one particular hen, caged on the uppermost tier.
She was poking her head and neck through the bars and I could sense her anxiety: although her comb was a healthy red and she seemed well feathered, I knew there was something terribly wrong. Pointing her out, I suggested she’d be a nice hen to have. The farmer, a stocky little man, looked irritated. Only by treading on the feed trough of the lowest tier could he reach her cage, but he made the attempt. Having taken a closer look, he changed his mind.
“You’ll not be wanting that one,” he said, stepping back down to floor level.
And now I wanted that particular hen even more. We had to have her. Desperate, I resorted to absurd behaviour, nudging him in the ribs. “Oh, go on,” I urged.
“There’s summat wrong with it,” he snapped. “You’ll not be wanting it!”
“Oh, but I like her face!” I pleaded.
And at that he gave in. Probably he was feeling desperate now, desperate to get rid of these nutty women.
He clambered up again, dragged the hen out of her cage and threw her to the floor. She looked abnormal but in the dimly lit surroundings we weren’t sure why. We said we’ll have three more please, and in no time had paid our money and were away.
At a safe distance, we stopped the car to check on the hens. And oh my God! I hadn’t mistaken the distress in the eyes of the one from the topmost tier – her abdominal area was grossly distended.
Instinctively we realized there was no hope for her, and drove straight to the MAFF Veterinary Investigation Centre in Leeds where, in those days, for just £10 it was possible to have a bird euthanased and examined post mortem. A PM certificate would tell us exactly what was wrong.
While the vet prepared the lethal injection I held her gently, glad she could know a few moments of kindness before her grim life was over. I wondered if she’d been reared on deep litter before being caged for egg production, or if she’d known nothing but a ‘Day-old to Death’ cage, as the other popular rearing system is officially called.
And what would be worse? To enjoy a degree of freedom, only to have it snatched away at eighteen weeks of age, or to be a prisoner from the very start?
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That night I lay in bed feeling gutted. Amazingly, this was the first battery hen we’d ever bought and not been able to rehabilitate ourselves, or pass on to a trusted carer. I was thinking how infinitely sad are the lives of battery hens. I longed to believe they would all have a second chance
, a time to walk on cool grass, to search for their own food, to follow their instincts. In my mind’s eye I saw a vast sunlit meadow, where hundreds, no, thousands of hens roamed contentedly on the greenest grass… and, although I was lost in a kind of dream world, I was wide awake. A fanlight in the bedroom was open, and suddenly I heard a flapping of wings, as of a large bird alighting on the window ledge.
That I heard the sound of wings, there is no doubt. And yes, it could have been an owl. Yet I’d never been aware of an owl near the window before, nor did anything similar ever occur again. Posthumously, we named our hen Angela.
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A few days later, the post-mortem certificate arrived in the mail: ‘The chief abnormality noted was in the body cavity which contained a massive quantity of egg material in various stages of inspissation*. There was a solid formed egg in the oviduct and some normal eggs developing in the ovary…At some later date this would almost certainly have developed into an egg peritonitis.’
(*Inspissation : The plugging, in this case of the oviduct, with a thickened viscid material having a decreased fluid content.)
So our hen was suffering, probably acutely, her blocked oviduct preventing the passage of other eggs. Nothing of her distress had been apparent to our farmer, glancing casually up at the top tier. Nothing had seemed amiss to him until he’d climbed up at our request. The distension must have been getting worse for days, weeks maybe, and who knows for how much longer Angela would have survived?