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CAMPAIGNERS ACCUSE DIRECTOR GENERAL OF COVERING UP LINKS WITH BLOOD SPORT
(Cutting Sunday Expresss July 15th 2001 by Tim Shipman)
(also mentioned in The Countryman's Weekly)
THE RSPCA BOSS WHOSE WIFE RODE OUT HUNTING FOXES
THE Director General of the RSPCA was accused of hypocrisy and double standards yesterday for allegedly failing to reveal his family's past involvement with fox hunting.
Major-General Peter Davies last month gave an interview insisting that "my wife and I have long been committed supporters of the campaign to ban hunting".
But the Sunday Express can reveal Julia Davies rode with two hunts in the West Country and Wales before her husband took on his current role in 1992. And friends recall Peter Davies attending a hunt function during his time as the Army's senior officer in Wales.
Mr and Mrs Davies say they are both now committed to a ban on hunting, but countryside campaigners are outraged by what they see as their failure to come clean about their previous connections.
. Adrian Yalland, of the Countryside Alliance, said: "If I were a member of the RSPCA I would be very concerned by the apparent double standards and hypocrisy of its director general."
John Adams, Master of the Sennybridge hunt in Powys, told the Sunday Express: "Mrs Davies came with us a few times and they both came to our hunt ball. He was a guest of the hunt at the officers' mess in Brecon."
Mr Adams stressed that his hunt is primarily for culling foxes rather than having a social function. "We're a farmers' pack of hounds, " he said. "We were set up to cull the foxes which kill the lambs."
Simon Clarke, master of the South and West Wilts hunt between 1979 and 1990, recalls Mrs Davies joining his hunt "several times" in the countryside around their home near Salisbury.
He said: "She definitely came out three or four times over a period of two or three years. I remember she rode a mile or two to join the meet rather than put the horse in a horsebox."
But Mr Davies told the Sunday Express: "I've never hunted in my life, I'm not a good enough rider and I've never felt like hunting.
I went to one hunt dinner when I was in Wales in 1990 before I became involved with the RSPCA. "The object of my going there was to thank the farmers for letting my soldiers exercise on their land. "My wife went hunting three times before I joined the RSPCA and never saw a fox killed.
She went out because she had horses and it was a good way of exercising them. "The day I joined the RSPCA she gave up hunting. She is now totally against hunting and a great advocate of drag hunting." /cutting ends.