Chickens' Lib Archive

A substantial collection of letters and campaigning material gathered over fifty years, dating from the early 1970s to 2017, and representing the active years of a small voluntary pressure group co-founded by Clare Druce and her mother Violet Spalding.

The letters, fact sheets, leaflets, posters, videos and press cuttings highlight the gradual development in society towards a recognition that so-called 'food animals' are sentient beings and as such deserve to be given what the late Professor Christopher Wathes described as 'a life worth living'. In the post WW2 drive for cheap and plentiful food, after the years of austerity, the convenient assumption by food advisors and the commercial world of food production was that animals could be treated like machines. There had been no regard for their inherent needs to exhibit natural behaviour patterns, still intact within their ancestral memory.

Another grave error, was made when the repeated warnings from enlightened members of the medical profession and others, were ignored: don't worry! was the message. Diseases (mostly caused by deprivation and gross overcrowding) would be treatable with the routine administration of antibiotics – usually the very same ones used in human medicine. This gross error of judgement has contributed significantly to the widespread antibiotic-resistance that poses such a real threat to human health today.

This collection is currently awaiting detailed listing, please contact Heritage Quay via archives@hud.ac.uk for further assistance.

'In the late 1960s I read Ruth Harrison's 1963 book Animal Machines. Shocked, I lent it to my mother Violet Spalding. The result was that, together, we decided we must take action against the appalling treatment of intensively (or 'factory') farmed animals. After several false starts (which all-but destroyed our belief in 'the power of the pen') we realized that direct action was required; somehow, we must challenge officialdom's complacency, and at the same time show the public what was really going on, down on the farm.

By the 1970s 95% all of Britain's laying hens were incarcerated in battery cages, living for their entire lives on sloping wire floors, unable to spread their wings and with scarcely room to turn around, let alone walk. They had in fact been turned into egg laying machines, while, as we were to learn, retaining all their natural instincts. The scale of this terrible and widespread cruelty seemed quite enough for two women to take on, and there began several years' campaigning, solely on behalf of the battery hen.

Our first really bold move came when, armed with four 'spent' hens we'd bought, alive, from a butcher's shop in London's East End, Violet and I went, uninvited, to the Ministry of Agriculture's Animal Welfare Department in Surrey, taking with us a reporter and photographer from the Surrey Comet and our four pitiful ex-battery hens. This 'invasion' as the press called it won us front page coverage in the Surrey Comet, and was the start of a tiny pressure group, later to be called Chickens' Lib.

Another landmark, and the one which gained us our first national support, came in 1975 in the shape of a programme called Open Door, an initiative of BBC 2's, whereby a number of lucky individuals or groups were chosen to make their own short programme, having been supplied with a professional producer and a studio in Television Centre. Along with Vivien Jenkins, an invaluable contact for re-homing our abused battery hens, Violet and I wrote our scripts and made our programme, which came out live, at peak viewing time. We received more than 500 letters of support from viewers all over Britain, many of whom remained supporters for many years.

Over the years, our numbers grew steadily and many well-known people in the arts, the sciences and the Church lent their names to our campaigns. When Violet and I and our families moved to Yorkshire, we were lucky enough to meet Irene Williams, a great campaigner against all cruelty to animals. One day, Irene offered to help us in what had become a very busy office, and from then she became our all-round rock and helper for many years to come.

For a decade, the battery hen had taken all our time and attention, but one day the chance find of a pathetic broiler chicken by the roadside changed all that. She had dropped from a transport wagon and lay dying. (Broilers are chickens genetically selected for fast growth for the chicken meat trade, and ready for slaughter when around six weeks of age). At a stroke, this pathetic bird changed the scope of our campaign, and it didn't stop there: eventually, we were to take all factory-farmed birds, from quail to ostriches, under our wings. To a lesser extent we did campaign for sheep and the dairy cow. Mercifully, by then many organisations were speaking up for the terribly abused pigs.

From being decidedly unwelcome on the premises of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff, now Defra) our careful and in-depth research, coupled with a continuing and strict adherence to non-violence, meant that officialdom finally treated us as experts in our field. For years to come we were invited to official meetings where farmed animal welfare was discussed. Most of these meetings were deeply frustrating, but at least, by being there, we could have our say.

One of the most valued areas of our campaign involved the occasions when we could help people in other parts of the world, about to set up their own pressure groups. We were contacted from the USA, South Africa and Australia, as well as from several smaller countries, with requests for help. We were always more than pleased to send these emerging organisations informative material that helped them in their early stages of their campaigning. True friends were made, and many of these contacts have been maintained to this day.

In 1999 Violet died, aged 91, and had by then withdrawn from active campaigning for three or four years. Around this time Chickens' Lib made a new friend, Penny Perkins, found when we were looking for someone with a duck pond on which to launch the ducks we'd bought as day-olds, in order to study their behavioural needs. Happily, Penny offered to come to help out in the still-busy office, on a regular basis. Then, due to family pressures Irene could no longer work with us, and a few years later Penny's circumstances changed too. It was time for Chickens' Lib (now known as Farm Animal Welfare Network) to bow out. Since our beginnings many excellent and much bigger pressure groups than ours had emerged.

I feel confident that, although Chickens' Lib remained a small organisation, operating with no official constitution and no rules beyond non-violence, we did a lot of valuable spadework, unearthing some of the worst aspects of abuse meted out to millions of helpless animals. Of course the work is nowhere near done. But, worldwide, progress has been made, and more and more people are becoming aware of the sentient nature of all living creatures, and questioning the morality of eating them.' By Clare Druce.