At Saturday’s NT AGM there was a very close vote which led to the members’ resolution to end trail hunting being rejected by 30,985 votes to 30,686 votes – my vote was in the losing category.
That’s very close – but I am getting used to being on just the wrong side of close votes.
I’ve seen some criticism of the way the voting occurs but that seems to me like being a bad loser.
The campaigners for change did achieve several revisions of the NT position but I’m sure they will be disappointed in the result – perhaps all the more so because it was so close.
Some will resign from the NT as a result of this outcome – that’s fair enough – and others will be delighted.
The NT keep trotting out the lines that trail hunting is legal and that hunting is traditional as part of their justification for allowing it on their land. This doesn’t wash with me. Many things are legal which the NT wouldn’t be keen to allow on their land (eg playing loud music, kicking a football around indoors and drinking champagne out of a bottle) so the test is clearly not whether it is legal – it is whether it is appropriate.
As far as I am concerned, I am waiting to see what the outcome of the NT decision on grouse shooting is in their land in the Dark Peak. Surely it can’t be long before this becomes public?
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A very measured post, Mark. Good to read.
Suspect NT’s tactic is to delay announcing their decision until after their AGM……I’m fearing the worst given their unabated obsession with ‘traditional/historic countryside activities’…..
I thought that any NGO had to invite its members to the AGM and had to give them a chance to vote.
Six of our friends, long time members of the NT, never received voting papers. Looking online this morning at comments on Facebook, it appears that this is the case for others.
I know nothing about the legal ins and outs of this but would have thought that if some members were not given the chance to vote, then a legal challenge would be appropriate. Anyone out there know the answer to this?
Or am I just a ‘bad loser’.
Paul – Interesting. Was it in a magazine or newsletter? That’s how it’s usually done. Come to think of it, I certainly learned about it online.
I am not a member of the NT but from what have heard it was in their magazine. Online voting was also their to be promoted on social media (well done for blogging about it!). Frustratingly it seems from the comments I have read perhaps hundreds of members against hunting failed to vote. The LACS Facebook page was full of such complaints. I find it surprising they didn’t know about the vote. How many of them didn’t vote due to apathy? Anti hunt campaigning looked good to me. I can only think this vote gives a poor reflection on the 99.4% of NT members who failed to vote for it.
I don’t think you can blame the NT for members not casting their votes but you can blame them for having no integrity on animal cruelty and wildlife crime!
A 24pp booklet announcing the Members’ Annual General Meeting, including voting forms, was included in the mailing of the The Autumn 2017 National Trust Magazine. At least it was with Dearly Beloved Mrs Cobb’s copy so I cannot imagine it was not so for all Members.
The announcement of the AGM and the voting forms – together with the Board’s advice on which way to vote – were in the 2017 autumn edition of my National Trust magazine, too. However, crises with social care for my Mother-in-Law meant I had not opened it to read, and learnt about the vote from the League online.
In my experience, most country people who express an opinion are opposed to hunting.
Long day, late back. The papers came with the mag. At least, for those of us who got it. Found another two today who hadn’t had theirs.
Have sent an email query to LACS, maybe they have a difinative answer for this.
It’s a good idea to keep a tote bin by the front door in which to put all discarded post before final disposal. It is remarkable how many important missives we have found in it among the junk that Postman Ken has lugged up here – Emma Bargewater, Celtic, Arthritis Research, Alzheimer’s Research, UK, Cotton Traders, Ocardolife, Swoon, Mahabis, Age UK, Seasalt, Boden, Bam, Hush, Costcutter, Thompson and Morgan, Hayloft, B&Q, Fife Country, Multiyork, RSPCA, Specsavers, Table Table, Stannah Stair Lift, Norovirus Winter Cruises and an unsolicited invitation to send a faecal sample to see whether I have bowel cancer or not. While things do go missing in the post, it is also possible for people to suffer from Junk Mail Indifference Syndrome.
My wife is a member and didn’t receive the magazine detailing the vote – she only knew about it because I told her. Perhaps something underhand going on, perhaps just one of those things? But the vote was lost in part because the hunting lobby has something to lose and is far more motivated to vote as a result. I know a few NT members all of which were in favour of a ban but only 3 (of 8!) bothered to vote, but all are complaining about how awful the decision is… apathy is our undoing.
Paul, people who had no notification of the vote are being asked to go to Keep the Hunting Ban. There’s an email address on the page, they are collating numbers who missed the vote.
Strange that so many NT members seem to be in favour of hunting compared to the percentage of our population that are totally against.
Daniel – not so suspicious if you think that the NT membership is fairly conservative (with a small ‘c’) and that NT advised voting against the members’ resolution.
Also, my experience of such things is that a very small proportion of members take the opportunity to have a say in events like these. It’s not restricted to the NT.
And another also – it suggests that the Countryside Alliance was rather better at mobilising its votes than those who opposed trail hunting. Kudos to them.
having said that, I was surprised that it went the way it did – but then I’m getting used to being wrong about election results.
The turn out in terms of votes was less than 1% of the total membership reported to be 5 million so very low. Irrespective of which way the vote went it seems strange that such a low vote can determine policy? Is that good governance?
I too am hearing stories of members not receiving information about the vote and also issues around the vote of proxy and how the wording used caused confusion, not good at all for the NT?
Votes:
Specified For 28,629 + Discretionary 2,057
Against 27,525 + Discretionary 3,460
Abstentions 1,925
Total: For 30,686 & Against 30,985
So, just 299 difference.
nimby – pretty much par for the course I’d say.
Quite, the CA reputedly represent the rural voice after all so yes, no surprise at all.
“Irrespective of which way the vote went it seems strange that such a low vote can determine policy? Is that good governance?”
What solution would you propose? It is hardly a possibility to make voting compulsory and determining policy without reference to the members at all doesn’t seem to be better.
Close though. And as someone once said – “there is a tide in the affairs of men…..”
Unlike Mark I am very surprised that those voting “For” did so well – next time maybe.
Remind me to ignore any of Mark’s racing tips.
I’m glad you pointed the voting system out Mark, as I’ve seen nothing but continuous moaning on the matter from other forums. It does sound like a hint of sore looser.
Did anyone actually believe it was going to any other outcome. Come on the NT are just a way of keeping the roof over the heads of mansion dwellers, ban fox hunting, ooops I mean trail hunting.
I binned my membership after a greyhound was attacked on a NT beach that a hunt uses to ‘water’ their hounds (because you drink salt water and nothing to with foxes escaping onto the beach) and the whole pack went for the greyhound with the owner having to hold his dog above his head to escape, the pack was out of control…lack of water does that and not because they’re chasing something of course.
Vote with your feet not your twitter feed, but none of you will.
Or just vote perhaps? I’m not always convinced by the mantra of vote with your feet as change comes from within – you have to be in it to win it, as the saying goes. But I do agree too many think liking something on twitter or facebook is enough but do nothing of real substance to elicit change.
Vote with your feet makes sense, in this case.
Why carry on contributing to an organisation you don’t agree with. My cancelling memberships it’s a vote that gets heard and can’t be fixed, fiddled or spun
No it really doesn’t make sense. By doing, so you loose the ability to change the organisation. If all those people who have resigned their membership of the NT over this issue had remained members, then there would be far more voices in the membership to put this back on the agenda and get the vote through next time. Instead all resigning memberships does is leave a greater proportion of the membership who either don’t give a foxes arse about the issue or who are pro hunting – and change won’t happen under that circumstance. “Voting with your feet” is a protest that can be fixed – its called membership recruitment which the NT are particularly good at given their 5million members. Your contribution has probably been replaced five times over since you resigned. Your vote however, is not. You as a force change in that organisation isn’t. It can be spun too – you could be viewed as a sore loser. “Voting with your feet” is nothing more than a short lived protest, where as sticking it out and fighting can and does result in change. The pro-hunting lobby will be laughing and loving the fact that there are a fewer and fewer anti-hunt members in the NT as now change is even less likely. But at the end of the day it’s your money.
This may look like a loss – but like the equally close Brexit vote, its actually the NT that is left with a real headache because tjis outcome does anything but give them a clear mandate either way. I’m amazed how close it was and when you bear in mind that many against votes would simply be following the NT advice rather than deep motivation, the activist element of the membership is clearly going to be more and more effective in reforming the NT’s attitudes.
NT always looks surprisingly vulnerable on this sort of issue, which is, I think, a reflection of the problem that it doesn’t really know what it is or who its for – as exemplified by Helen Ghosh’s brief brush with the idea that its really no more than a visitor attraction. The NT is considtently the most underperforming conservation organisation onEngland and has an urgent need to ‘find itself,. And, as Mark rightly says, the decision on shooting in the Peak will be critical.
Slightly off topic (not NT) but hunting-related – are people aware of and supporting this OneKind petition too? I drove over Cockbridge/ Tomintoul/ The Lecht the other night, reminiscing about doing same 30 years earlier when I was a student from Aberdeen taking a bunch of freshers kayaking. We stopped on top for snow ball fights and the place was teeming with white mt hares. Last week-end we saw NO mountain hares on the drive (there and back) apart from one squashed on the road (slightly earlier in the year than the kayaking trip but it made me realize I never see those kinds of views in Cairngorms any more). Also some very strangely worded signs going up both sides of Cairngorms Nat Park about how moorland is managed for “wildlife grazing” and shooting/ stalking – with the management funded by the sporting revenues. I didn’t see any mention of public money and subsidies for moorland management or conservation. Some of these signs in same areas which are blackest spots for illegal wildlife killing. I’ll get a photo of one and send to you Mark and ask some pals in CNPA about the wording.
https://www.onekind.scot/campaigns/stop-the-mountain-hare-slaughter/