When reports of Tim Parker, chair of the National Trust, stepping down hit the papers on 26th May, they widely recycled the idea he was forced out for being ‘too woke’. The reality is more bureaucratic. As the Guardian explained, Parker is stepping down because he’s already completed two three-year terms as chair and stayed on to oversee the charity during the Covid-19 pandemic.
While some may view Parker as a ‘woke hero’ for overseeing the National Trust’s embrace of Black and LGBTQIA+ struggles, there’s one area where he appeared to remain firmly conservative.
Too much power
On 21st October 2017, National Trust member Helen Beynon brought a motion to the charity’s AGM to end all hunting including trail hunting on its land. Hunting ultimately won out, but the margin for winning was fine. There were just 299 votes in it. And it was who cast the winning votes that raised some controversy.
As The Citro’s Glen Black reported at the time:
Votes cast directly by National Trust members at the AGM supported banning trail hunting from its land by 28,629 to 27,525. But 3,460 discretionary votes were cast in favour of continuing the practice compared to 2,057 against. And combined, this meant votes against the ban won by just 299 votes.
Those in favour of the ban are questioning these discretionary votes. Many of these votes are made [paywall] by the organisation’s trustees. And the National Trust has said that most of these votes were cast by its chair, Tim Parker
The National Trust’s website, describing discretionary votes, says they allow the proxy voter to “vote as he/she thinks fit”. Parker appears to have been the sole reason that hunting was allowed to continue on National Trust land after the 2017 AGM. Anti-hunting campaigners highlighted how problematic this system was. Beynon said it left members’ votes “open to such abuse and bias”.
Stop Hunting on the Nation’s Land, which grew out of pressure group National Dis-Trust, agrees. It told The Citro that “the chairs have too much power”.
Attack on heritage
What motivated Parker’s decision isn’t known. It would be easy to point the finger at individual bias, but recent history has shown the issue extends beyond Parker.
A couple of weeks before the 2017 AGM, a Guardian article quoted National Trust board member Orna NiChionna on the issue. She said hunting:
is a polarised subject, one in which we can’t afford to be driven by emotion… I have seen the pressure that rural communities are under and the role hunting has played in supporting them
A few months previous, the Daily Mail reported on Cumbrian fell packs reacting to measures on hunting that the National trust had at the time just introduced. The 26th August 2017 article quoted Roger Westmoreland, at the time huntsman for the Coniston Foxhounds, saying hunting is “a community thing which binds people together”. The Daily Mail went on to write that:
the Westmorelands are not the only National Trust tenants outraged by what they see as its attack on their heritage.
A group of their Cumbrian peers this week sent a forthright letter to the Trust expressing shock and concern at the 'completely inappropriate' new policy.
The angry document accuses the charity of having shown 'no duty of care whatsoever' to its tenants and their families.
The hunting industry has aggressively pushed a discourse of its activity as integral to rural communities since at least the late 1990s, when hunting first started seriously facing a ban. This idea undergirded the Liberty & Livelihood march in 2004. Though, as one protester told BBC News at the time:
Some of the rural issues we agree with but we are against hunting, this is a political movement, these people are not poor farm labourers they are wealthy people who want to protect a cruel sport
It may be better to describe hunting as integral to a subset of the rural community; a subset that retains political power.
Pro-hunting group Friends of the National Trust (FONT) has pressured the charity for many years. It was first set up following the 1997 banning of stag hunting on National Trust land. The group’s aim was to overturn the ban. In 1998, FONT supported several notable people for election into the Trust’s council while agitating for an overturn of the ban at that year’s AGM. Once again, a discourse of hunting as integral to a rural way of life was deployed. However, overwhelming support for the ban scuppered FONT’s aims.
Vulnerable
The National Trust’s wavering position on hunting shows it up as trying hard to appease two sides without leaving the centre. While its chairs can make impactful decisions, what ultimately matters is systemic change within the charity. That’s why the Countryside Alliance is allegedly attempting to get the ‘right people in key positions’ of the Trust.
Nevertheless, Stop Hunting on the Nation’s Land told The Citro that Parker’s departure may not have a big impact either way on hunting. What matters is:
who gets to replace him - it's a voluntary unpaid post and we can't imagine any bloodsports bigwigs doing anything out of the goodness of their hearts.
And the group emphasised that the charity has come a long way in its stance on hunting:
It would be completely regressive if the next chair was pro-bloodsports. We can't imagine the NT council voting in anyone with that kind of outlook after the progress that has been made towards a total ban on hunting on NT land.
At the time of publishing, National Trust has suspended all hunting on its land until further notice. The decision came following webinars leaked by the Hunt Saboteurs Association showing alleged high-level co-operation to break the Hunting Act. Mark Hankinson, head of the Master of Foxhounds Association, will go to trial in September 2021 following charges related to the webinars.
This trial, and a new chair for the National Trust, could spell an end for hunting on nearly 250,000 hectares of land.
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Hounds Off