The festive period is traditionally a jolly and busy time for hunts across the UK, bringing people together throughout the countryside and lifting community spirits.
In keeping with traditional values, the Dungarvan Foxhounds Supporters Club in Ireland was hoping to raise money for charity, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) in particular, through a New Year’s Eve fundraiser.
The RNLI, whose volunteers work to ensure the safety of all sailors, travellers, and bathers in UK waters, issued an appeal to raise funds only earlier this year, to support the continuation of their deeply important work.
To honour the RNLI’s ongoing success, the Dungarvan-based group had organised for local members of the RNLI to “hold a bucket collection boosted by a cap donation from the club” at its annual Christmas charity event, as announced on their Facebook page.
The group further encouraged supporters to “come early or bring a friend on foot or mounted.” Local RNLI representatives were keen to raise the necessary funds for lifeboat volunteers who patrol the dangerous coastline off Waterford, Ireland.
Regrettably, however, ideological feuds unrelated to the RNLI’s cause derailed this kind-hearted and ethical gesture.
Word of the countryside charity event in Ireland somehow spread all the way to the RNLI’s head office in Poole, Dorset. Here, management felt it necessary to reject the RNLI’s involvement in the event and inform the Dungarvan group that the charity would only accept donations from organisations “in keeping with the values of the institution”, refusing any donations from the community-based group.
This vague statement was surprising in the face of Dungarvan’s supportive, charitable gesture. What RNLI values had been broken? Surely none relating to saving lives at sea? Dungarvan hunt was then forced to give the following statement: “Regrettably the RNLI HQ have declined our fundraising efforts on New Year’s Eve. So, new plan to be decided in coming days.”
So how did this bizarre decision come about? The RNLI seems in a state of internal disagreement. Despite the go-ahead from local Irish members of the lifeboat charity, someone sat 575 kilometres away in Dorset, likely unknowledgeable and inexperienced of the perfectly legal practice of fox hunting in Ireland, decided to block funding for their Irish colleagues. Probably for the sake of so-called ‘optics’, rather than any meaningful moral dilemma.
This kind of value judgement from a charity which indiscriminately works to save anyone is deeply worrying. Should we now also expect RNLI lifeboats to refuse to rescue a hunt supporter stranded in the Irish sea?
Following the RNLI’s statement, it emerged that the Irish Council Against Blood Sports (ICABS) had aggressively lobbied the charity to reject the Dunvargan Hunt’s donation. In a letter to the RNLI, the ICABS group, forcefully attempting to play on the charity’s guilt, said: “we hope you will consider disassociating from a group which causes suffering and death in the countryside”.
ICABS also stated that the RNLI is not the first charitable group to succumb to their ideological strongarming. Pieta House in 2016 and the Hope Foundation also refused donations from a Cork hunt after lobbying by the group.
There is some irony in the fact that this Irish anti blood sports group models itself as a charity, requesting external donations to function. A charity preventing charity!
Worse still, these extremist “charities” typically spend their donors’ money on supporting known criminals or thugs in the hunt saboteur community, such as Paul Allman or Gemma Barnes.
Unfortunately, these attempts to block charity are becoming a common hunt saboteur tactic. Jenny MacRae, a Hertfordshire hunt sab, has repeatedly tried to employ this disreputable strategy, publicly attempting to prevent deserving organisations, like Bromyard Foodbank and Birmingham Children’s Hospital, from accepting hunt-offered donations.
It is lamentable that in modern society extremists, who are hell-bent on destroying community-driven, charitable activities, can influence otherwise upstanding, politically neutral institutions, like the RNLI. This kind of guilt-tripping forces charities that have nothing to do with animal rights to make rash calls on behalf of their donors and volunteers.