The Fulfilment of a Dream - ILPH
"If all these animals could cry aloud with one voice, it would stir the world to do something about it all. One of the
most dreadful things about this traffic is that thousands of horses go to doom and agony, trudging along willingly and trustfully and in mute silence. We must be their voice."
Ada Cole, ILPH Founder Member, 1927
The ILPH (International League for the Protection of Horses) has come a long way since Ada Cole founded the charity in 1927, but it is hard to believe that 75 years later the slaughterhorse issue is still at the top of their agenda.
The fact that over 133,000 horses, ponies and donkeys still travel many thousands of miles across Europe from their country of origin to their final destination for slaughter without rest food and water, is unacceptable to the ILPH. They will continue to fight for the welfare of those horses well into the 21st century as Ada did all those years ago.
Little did she think, in the Spring of 1911, when Ada stood on the docks in Antwerp, Belgium, that what she was about to witness would lead to a movement that would continue into the next century.
In the midst of the bustle of a busy dockside she noticed old and work-worn British horses shuffling off a cargo boat on their painful journey to be pole-axed in a Belgian abattoir. What she saw that day horrified her so much that she began a campaign that was to consume her for the rest of her life.
It was while staying with her sister Effie that she saw the pitiful column of horses on the Antwerp docks and more in the Place de la Duchesse where they stood heads bowed, or collapsed on the cobbles, waiting for somebody to pay a pittance to eek out the their last working hours on Belgian soil.
At the time the trade was not illegal, and as the numbers of redundant horses increased due to the rise in urban mechanization so did the numbers that were exported for meat to foreign abattoirs. She lobbied politicians, fundraised, and worked tirelessly to heighten awareness of the callous and undignified end that these loyal creatures were having to endure.
People did not want to hear of the scenes that she had witnessed – "It is your duty to hear," she would point out angrily. "It is because people do not want to hear that nothing is done. I am going to make people listen !"
Ada’s efforts in raising public awareness to the export of horses for slaughter came to fruition in 1914 with an Act of Parliament which amended an 1898 Government Order and prohibited the export of horses unless a veterinary inspector certified the animals "to be capable of being conveyed and disembarked without cruelty". It also stated that every vessel carrying horses should carry a proper humane killer.
Born just outside Thetford, Norfolk in 1860 into a family of gentleman farmers Ada had a comfortable and scholarly upbringing which allowed her in her 20s to study to be a nurse. It was while working in this role with the allied and German wounded towards the end of the First World War she was arrested for helping allied prisoners escape. She spent three months in a German prison under sentence of death and it was only the armistice that saved her. In January 1919 at the end of war, at the age of 58, Ada left Belgium to return to Norfolk.
In her absence, not only had the 1914 Act remained unenforced, but it had failed to be enacted. It wasn’t long after her return to her home county that she noticed that shipments of horses were still leaving King’s Lynn for the continent.
She was enraged, not by the consumption of horsemeat, but the indifferent
and thoughtless treatment of the poor creatures at the end of their lives.
Knowing full well that there was little point standing on a dockside, ships
or in slaughterhouses complaining, she only went to these places to research
and gather information as evidence to strengthen her argument. What she needed
was political clout, political capital, and above all political allies.
Through the pages of the Manchester Guardian, who published her reports,
she gained the ears of influential men and woman and members of parliament.
She lobbied tirelessly for a carcass trade and sought, above all, an act of Parliament which would finally put a stop to the traffic of British horses for slaughter abroad.
She was tough, impossible to intimidate and countered every argument thrown at her with demonstrable fact. It was this determination and resilience that drew a core of influential friends to her cause.
It was by then the Roaring Twenties, and mechanisation was taking over. Cars and tractors rolled off factory production lines, and horses were shipped off to foreign abattoirs for slaughter.
During this time another society had been formed independent of the RSPCA or Ada Cole’s Old Horse Traffic Committee, as it was then known. At first it was called the National Council Against the Export of Horses for Butchery, was founded in Lady Simeon’s house in Wilton Crescent, and later became the National Council for Animal Welfare.
Ada recognized that this new society had the money and social influence that she needed and eventually, in 1927 the two societies merged becoming the International League Against the Export of Horses for Butchery.
For the next three years Ada worked tirelessly attempting to bring in her own Bill but was thwarted by the RSPCA when they supplied humane killers for the notorious Parisian slaughterhouse Vaugirard. In the light of the humane killers the Government rejected Ada’s bill on the grounds that the problems no longer existed.
On 17 July 1930 she made a speech to the RSPCA Council, on which she had sat since 1928, which was ruled out of order. She was exhausted, felt beaten by the RSPCA and on 16 October 1930 she attended her last Council meeting and the very next day, 17 October, she died in her room next to her office at the age of 70.
Sadly, in 1937 Ada’s dream became a reality and The Exportation of Horses Act came in, which establishes the principle of Minimum Values, which effectively stopped the export of horses from the UK for slaughter for meat abroad.
Today in the 21st century horses bred in ex-Soviet states and former eastern
block countries stream into Europe in their thousands each year, mainly
by road, continuing to satisfy the palates of Western Europeans. The ILPH
still
works tirelessly as did Ada, to improve equine welfare both at home and
abroad by influencing the legislative process through direct government contact
and political lobbying.
She would certainly have been surprised to know that in her wake she would be followed by men and women of real resolve, moved, like her not by sentiment but by a sense of right and decency and the acknowledgement of a moral obligation.
Through them, the officers and members who give their support, their time and their donations to its activities, millions of horses have felt the hand of the ILPH upon them.
With thanks to Debt of Honour by Jeremy James
Read about ILPH work around the world today