Private security firm ‘Country Watch’ protect a hunt from saboteurs. Picture by Andrew Testa.

Countryside Movement

In typical PR fashion, many landowner and business pressure groups adopt names which suggest thay have the rural idyll at heart. The recently established Countryside Movement clearly demonstrate that their real agendas lie elsewhere. Andy Johnson investigates.

Squall 12, Spring 1996, pp. 28-29.

In November last year a number of full page advertisements began appearing in national newspapers for a new organisation called the Countryside Movement.

Its main principle is to address a perceived lack of understanding between people living in towns and the countryside. For a more harmonious relationship, the Movement wants to correct this misunderstanding through education.

One of the advertisements, which were the work of the country’s top advertising agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, featured a large photograph of a slaughterman. Beneath ran the caption: “George Roberts, Head slaughterman and animal lover.”

The blurb reads: “The process by which a pig goes trotting around the farm, to being freshly wrapped as a pound of sausages is not one that overly concerns us. It does however concern George Roberts. His concern is that the animals brought to him for slaughter are despatched with as little stress as possible. In doing so he could be rightly described as someone promoting animal welfare. ”

George is apparently one of the five million people living and working in the countryside whose primary concern is of ensuring the countryside’s overall welfare: “from ensuring that footpaths remain accessible, to preserving hedges and woodland specifically for wildlife.”

Other advertisements featured a picture of a chicken and egg, with the caption: “Never mind which came first, many children can’t even see the connection.” Another has a picture of a field with a signpost in the foreground marked ‘Footpath’, with the caption: “It goes right across Farmer Stockdale’s land, no-one’s defending your right to use it more than him.”

In 1990 Andrew Tyler, currently head of the animal rights group Animal Aid, wrote an article for the Independent which detailed his visit to an abattoir. He was then a freelance journalist. Within the “stress free” process of “despatching” pigs he noted how bored slaughtermen would often throw a live pig into a vat of boiling water - intended to remove the animal’s skin once it had been “despatched”.

This difference between the two accounts of pig slaughter illuminates what the real objectives of the Countryside Movement could be.

“The undeniable logic of the animal rights movement was the inevitable and disturbingly powerful image of empty fields.”

SQUALL has obtained minutes, marked “strictly private and confidential” of the first two meetings of the embryonic Movement. These seem to suggest that, far from having the laudable aim of educating children about the countryside at heart, the real reason for the Movement’s formation was to counter the increasingly effective animal rights lobby, particularly in relation to blood sports.

Sir David Steel, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, is Executive Chairman of the group. The backgrounds of the other members are also interesting (see box below).

The first meeting was held at the offices of the Duchy of Cornwall (Prince Charles) at Buckingham Gate in London. The heir to the throne had allowed the Countryside Movement use of his offices free of charge.

During the first meeting, media pundit Max Hastings stressed that the “Countryside Movement should be classless and not perceived as being run by ‘toffs’,” a point minuted as being “understood fully by all present”.

The Earl Peel, who opened the meeting said that its “goal would be to influence public opinion and thus to influence politicians”.

The Movement has not been set up as a membership organisation. Instead it will build up a database of supporters, who would not be asked for a membership fee.

Because the Movement is not a membership organisation no joining fee is required. So where, then, does it get its money? (£3.5 million for the initial advertising blitz.) The public manifesto for the Movement states that “the initial financial support to launch the Countryside Movement and to underwrite its early development is being provided by a number of private and commercial donors.”

The largest of these, as the minutes of the first meeting reveal, is the Countryside Business Group (CBG). Mr Van Cutsem, the head of this group, told the meeting that the CBG had already raised £170,000 and “hoped to raise £1 million by September (95)”. He is reported as saying: “The CBG’s most important task was to raise money to fund the creation of the Countryside Movement.”

The second meeting of the Countryside Movement, on August 2, was attended by Chris Rodgers of accountants KPMG - the accountants for the Countryside Movement and the Countryside Business Group. He said that the CBG “proposed to raise money through a national levy on countryside business”. It was hoped that the major cartridge and gun manufacturers would be committed to the concept of the levy.

He added that the scheme could generate £5 million a year, and it had committed itself to providing start up money for the Countryside Movement until the Movement became self-financing.

Ken Ball then said that “he believed the angling trades were open to approaches for money”.

There was then talk of the concern about the “confidentiality” of the Countryside Movement’s fundraising activities. It was felt that the CBG was “hampered in that it could not effectively achieve funding for the Countryside movement if it were unable to discuss it”.

The second meeting also discussed bringing in someone from the Jockey club or Horse Racing Board (suggested by David Steel). It was noted that should the CBG be unable to deliver the necessary funds the “Countryside Movement could launch and continue, but perhaps at a slower pace”.

Labour’s Charter for Angling was also mentioned. The Charter, published by the Labour Party last year, is designed to reassure anglers that a Labour government would protect their interests.

Sir David Steel said that he “has been sounding out some senior members of the Labour Party”. He noted in particular that they were well aware of the dangers of entryism and of IFAW’s (International Fund for Animal Welfare) sponsorship of Elliot Morley (Labour MP for Glanford and Scunthorpe with strong wildlife and environmental concerns).

All this seems to suggest that the founders of the Countryside Movement are quite concerned with country issues that pertain to blood sports. There is more.

At the first meeting Max Hastings, on the subject of money, said that the Movement would have to “think big” because the “challenge was formidable”.

“Given the enormous wealth in some parts of the countryside”, he had always believed that it was “extraordinary that countryside organisations were not better funded”. This was “in stark contrast to the enormous funds available to the animal rights movement”.

Michael Sissons outlined “the threat of the animal rights movement to many of the traditional activities of the countryside” and emphasised “the seamless nature of the animal rights philosophy”.

Sir David Naish voiced “some concern about any perception that the database might be used simply to promote hunting interests”, and suggested that “these and other sensitivities had to be most carefully addressed in the manifesto”. Earl Peel said that the Movement would of course need to identify the type of issues on which it would campaign, but that he personally thought that helping the defence of hunting would be among them.

To this Max Hastings remarked that “it is dangerous to compromise on any issue. One part of the countryside could not be bought off without the possibility of a ‘domino effect’. The undeniable logic of the animal rights movement was the inevitable and disturbingly powerful image of empty fields”.

Ken Ball said that “the angling bodies would live very easily with the Countryside Movement. Hunting, shooting and fishing would always be linked.”

This seems to suggest that the animal rights movement is one of the key threats to the “misunderstanding” of the countryside that the Countryside Movement intends to counter.

When discussing the way the Countryside Movement is to be presented to the public, there are suggestions that public opinion should be manipulated.

Max Hastings, media pundit, stressed that there was a “fundamental need to generate images which would work on television and which would create a sympathetic reaction from the public.” He also “considered that alliances with environmental groups should be sought”.

John Rennie expressed concern that the Movement “could become confrontational”. So Max Hastings suggested that “the Movement might also campaign on some non-controversial issues which would receive the widest support”.

The Duke of Westminster suggested real rural problems - such as unemployment, crime, infrastructure and housing. “Everything else would flow from this”.

Bearing all this in mind, the Countryside Movement’s assertion in it’s launch press release that “the countryside is inadequately understood by the majority of the population” and that “the Countryside Movement seeks to build greater awareness and understanding through a sustained programme of campaigning and education” and that it “will strive to represent countryside interests overall, providing a more comprehensive and more powerful voice in Government and demonstrating to the the media and to the public that the countryside is a force to be reckoned with”, suddenly seems a lot clearer.