Daily Mail, Tuesday~ October 22,2002
THE RSPCA Is in turmoil after a failed politician with no business experience was handed its top job on Sunday.
Although originally rejected for the post, Jackie Ballard, 49, was appointed director-general, with a salary of £90,000, after a selection procedure that has been branded 'shambolic'.
One senior member of the charity's ruling council has resigned and written the charity out of her will in protest. More are expected to follow.
Mrs Ballard, a former Liberal Democrat MP, is known for her strong views on hunting but not for her business nous. Here, EDWARD HEATHCOAT AMORY profiles the feminist firebrand and asks: Why has this once-proud charity put an amateur in charge of its 1,800 staff and £8Omillion budget?
You are Britain's foremost animal welfare charity, struggling with a £l6million hole in your accounts after stock market losses and ongoing controversy over your increasing politicisation. So who do you appoint as your new chief executive? The answer, if you are the RSPCA, is a failed former Liberal Democrat MP with an interest in Iran and feminism who can't begin to read a balance sheet and has never run an organisation in her life.
Jackie Ballard, who lost her seat in 2001 after five years as MP for Taunton, will run one of Britain's largest charities, with 193 branches, a staff of 1,780 and an annual budget of £80million. Her principal qualification for the post, however, is quite clear. She is one of Britain's leading anti-hunting campaigners and her appointment marks the success of the movement's long campaign to seize control of the RSPCA.
After being ejected by her Tory challenger in Taunton last year, she explained: 'Across the constituency, the high turnout came from areas where they hated their MP (me) and hated her views on a particular issue - hunting.'
She lost her seat by only 235 votes, but this exercise of democracy in action did not impress Mrs Ballard, who argued:
'The public expect too much of politicians... Blame the politicians? It's time somebody blamed the voters.'
Now she will have an opportunity for revenge on those errant constituents, as she swings the RSPCA even more firmly behind the anti-hunting lobby. But does she have what it takes to sort out an organisation in crisis?
The RSPCA has had to cut back its spending by £2miion a year, but recently splurged £l6mihion on a new headquarters.
Last year it spent £4.5mllhion on political campaigns, and nearly £16 million lobbying politicians. This is not how most donors expect their money to be used.
JACKIE Ballard was born in Scotland, the daughter of a woodcutter. The family moved to Wales when she was ten and she won a scholarship to the private Monmouth School for Girls. The contrast between the privileged education she could now enjoy and her modest background turned her into a political firebrand.
Rejecting a place at Oxford, she went to t he London School of Economics to do a degree in psychology and became involved in every radical student movement, from protesting against Vietnam to picketing the Miss World contest.
On leaving the LSE, she went to work as a social worker in the London borough of Waltham Forest. Tiring of that, she moved to the West Country with her new husband, Michael Ballard, and became a gardening housewife.
She remained in obscurity until her local MP~ Paddy Ashdown, encouraged her to join the Liberal Party. She went on to become deputy leader of Somerset County council.
When she became MP for Taunton in 1997, it quickly became apparent that Mrs Ballard was on the far Left of the Liberal Democrats. She was spokesman for women's issues, vent-big her radical feminist views.
She stood, unsuccessfully, as a candidate for the party leadership in 1999, losing three stone after opponents cited her weight as one obstacle to her becoming leader.
On losing her seat, Mrs Ballard took herself off to Iran; with her £25,000 redundancy cheque from the taxpayer, to do a PhD on the effect of the Internet on Iranian society.
She was apparently drawn to Iran after having an affair with an Iranian student at the LSE in the Sixties. O f her more recent visit, she said: 'I am reliably informed that Iranian men see it as their duty to make sure their wives are satisfied in bed -not a responsibilityIi think many British men are familiar with.' She was also favourably impressed with Iranian 'democracy', despite the regime's well-documented links with Al Qaeda and other terrorists.
She was put forward for the job at the RSPCA by an old friend from the West Country, Richard Ryder, a former chairman of the charity and now deputy treasurer, who has led the campaign to use the orgamsation as an anti-hunting platform.
Mr Ryder used to run the Political Animal Lobby, which attempted to influence policy on animal welfare by donating large sums to political parties (it gave Labour £1million before the 1997 election).
No doubt he is very pleased at securing the job for his candidate but others are less impressed. Jacq Denham, a council member involved in the selection process who has since resigned in protest at the result, said: 'Mrs Ballard was asked the difference between cash flow forecasts and management accounts and said she had never eveir heard the terms.
'It beggars belief that she was offered the job.' The decision is even more extraordinary, because the RSPCA had several other candidates to choose from, including Steve Marshall, the former chief executive of Railtrack.
While there may be those - particularly on the RSPCA's Left-leaning council - who disapprove of Railtrack on principle, they should have recognised the advantage of having a front-rank businessman to overhaul its creaking bureaucracy. Instead, the charity has chosen to make a cheap political gesture, a decision which will not be lost on those thinking of giving it money in the future.