Parliamentary receptions are interesting beasts. Ostensibly after months of planning, honing messages, rallying supporters, contacting MPs, organising catering, you/your charity are at the heart of decision-making in the UK watching the door anxiously wondering who will walk straight past, who will come inside, who will pick up your folder with its sheaves of A4 and pin badge, rehearsing lines for your five-minute speech – and then an hour or two later it’s all over. The MPs have gone, your influencers have been thanked, the uneaten sandwiches are being packed away, and your media teams are picking over Twitter and checking photographs for the press-release.
If that sounds negative (or overly facetious), then my apologies. It takes a lot of hard work to put on a parliamentary reception. They might (if enough MPs can be persuaded) lead to major decisions being made or legislation being tabled. Working relationships are built in meetings like this. Ideas pitched. Contacts renewed. But they are over very quickly. I’ve never planned one or sat in on the discussions afterwards about what was achieved, but I do wonder where exactly they lie in the overall strategy. How important are they in the larger scheme of events?
It would be interesting to know whether a spreadsheet exists somewhere that details costs vs results, or if there is a metric kicking about that can pinpoint the statistical relevance of a parliamentary reception. I doubt they do. Campaigns are so multi-faceted and involve so many actions and reactions over such a long period it must be nigh on impossible to say with any certainty just when the ‘change’ you’re seeking took place. Unless, you know, the Prime Minister him/herself walks in, gathers any assembled press, and states on the record, “You are absolutely right. This cannot continue and I and my cabinet fully support the change you’re asking for. I will make sure this happens…”
I have no idea whether that scenario ever occurs. I do know that it didn’t occur yesterday, which is a bloody shame and a wasted opportunity for the powers that be to steal a quick win amidst a storm of recent ‘Partygate-based’ bad publicity.
So, preamble over, and back to yesterday, where I was at the House of Commons for a PETA UK reception, where to quote PETA, “MPs had the opportunity to see and feel the world’s first faux bear fur, a fabric that has been expertly created by luxury faux furrier ECOPEL to replace the bearskins used to make the Queen’s Guard’s caps”
I was on-site to record Dominic, who’d been invited to give a quick speech which is available below (and for anyone wondering I used a Rode Wireless mic and a Zoom H6, and, yes, if you invite me to an event I will bring my kit with me!).
Dominic and I have discussed this issue in numerous podcasts before (eg Shortcast #53 Dominic Dyer | Bear Hats and Ben Wallace), but essentially – exactly as that quote from PETA explains – the Ministry of Defence has been asked to replace the bearskin ‘caps’ made from Canadian-slaughtered Black Bears worn by the Queen’s Guards with faux-fur.The MoD came up with five ‘conditions’ that needed to be met before they would even discuss replacing ‘tradition’ with an animal-rights sourced faux-fur no matter how environmentally sound it is. ECOPEL have met each one of them.
Ben Wallace MP, the current Secretary of State for Defence (who admittedly has a lot on his mind right now), has been refusing to budge though. It may be that (as Dominic has claimed many times) he sees replacing dead animals with recycled polyester and plant-based material as overstepping some sort of red line, but given that ECOPEL have also offered to supply the army at no cost for the next decade (the military can afford hats, of course, given what they spend annually on weapons systems, but it’s a grand gesture from a small faux-fur manufacturer) and that the UK government is apparently committed to ending the fur trade, it is surely a win-win situation?
Or to put it more succinctly, as PETA did yesterday, "It is absurd that the MOD are subsidising this cruelty when an alternative exists."
And it is cruel, despite what a few pro-hunt trolls on social media claim about quick kills and necessary management and if we didn’t buy them the animals would still be shot anyway. Perhaps if they could be bothered to do more than link to a press-release from the Canadian fur industry and bother themselves with the facts about how long these animals can take to die and that ‘culling’ is a pisspoor response to humans encroaching ever more deeply and often into the habitat of Black Bears their comments would be more valid, but – well, they evidently haven’t so I won’t bother with them beyond this point.
Anyway, Ben Wallace did not stop by the PETA UK reception yesterday. A number of MPs did attend though, including animal welfare champion Labour MP Kerry McCarthy (the first vegan MP for the record), the SNP’s Kirsten Oswald and Patrick Grady, Lord Goldsmith, Bath’s Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse, and (and without being disrespectful in any way) seeing the diminutive Shadow Attorney-general Emily Thornberry almost disappearing under the prototype cap that ECOPEL had brought along to the event made for a striking photo-op.
It was a reasonable turnout, and it matters because it’s only MPs that can change laws of course. We can pressure them. We can line up to suggest better ways of doing things, but it’s MPs that pass legislation.
Having said that, events like this do raise interesting questions about the nature of ‘influence’. One of the invited guests was a striking young woman who was clearly a ‘somebody’ even if I had no idea who she was. I learned later that she was Faye Winter from ‘Love Island’. I didn’t speak to her because as a male non-entity (I’m under no illusions) I felt very uncomfortable wandering up to someone I didn’t know and attempting to strike up a conversation. I actually wish I had, and that is on me. Because while my knee-jerk reaction was to be snobbish and dismissive (again, I’m under no illusions) Ms Winter probably had a very interesting story to tell (see below). Whether she’d have told it to me is a moot point, and I’ll never find out now, but while I didn’t know who she was, Faye Winter has a staggering 1.2m followers on Instagram.
Now, of course, there will be a sizeable number of those people who follow her vicariously, who ‘got to know her’ through watching her on TV and have never actually listened to what she has to say from the moment the series ended, but what if she can persuade 25k of those followers to sign a petition or never wear fur? I’m not sure for all my campaigning and podcasting I’ll have ever managed that when I finally give up.
PETA UK clearly values an association with her and has worked with Love Islanders in the past. Having said that, the petition to replace the bearskin hats with ECOPEL’s faux fur has stalled lately and as of today sits at 71k. That’s with the combined weight of PETA UK, Born Free, Dominic Dyer, various MPs, and Faye Winter behind it. These campaigns are tough and all the influencers and receptions you can muster and still not getting it over the line (yet) highlights just how tough.
Perhaps, and which leads me onto a blog I intend to write tomorrow about what happened in a debate about two petitions that did reach 100k, many of us have just given up when it comes to believing that this government – and this government especially – gives a stuff about animal rights, animal welfare, wildlife, or the environment…which would be a hell of a shame and would also perhaps lead me to think that the greatest (malign) influence in the UK is actually a self-absorbed, tone-deaf, apathetic government so hell-bent on its own survival that it really isn’t interested in anything else? Yes, they can be influenced as scandal after scandal (Owen Paterson or PPE purchases anyone?) proves, but not if there’s no money in it for them.
So ‘How important are they in the larger scheme of events?’ That probably depends on the government you’re talking to and unfortunately probably not very important at all when you’re talking to this one...