Selective morality
From Mr Roger Scruton
Sir: I complained (Letters, 14 April) that the RSPCA is selective in its targets, and Peter Davies (Letters, 12 May) refers me to the fact that the RSPCA has literature about several of the problems I mention. I concede that I do not study the RSPCA literature as assiduously as I should; but my point was not about the RSPCA's literature, or its behindthe-scenes work, but about its public campaigns. In the case of hunting, the RSPCA has devoted vast resources to supporting private members' Bills, to lobbying Parliament, to publishing mendacious advertisements, and generally pressing for a substantial minority to be made into criminals. And all this without any proof that a single animal would benefit. Yet what does the RSPCA propose to do about angling, shooting or falconry? Where is the private member's Bill to protect rats from poisoning, or to liberate pet rabbits? And if the RSPCA has been campaigning on these issues, why have we heard so little about it?
I am interested to learn that officials of the RSPCA have spoken to the Jewish community about ritual slaughter, and hope that they were told to mind their own business. But I cannot help concluding that an organisation that combines gentle, unpublicised persuasion towards one minority with public, unscrupulous and no-holds-barred war against another, is not in a position to lecture us about morality. That the charity commissioners permit such antics is, to me and many others, astonishing.
Roger Scruton
Brinlovorth, Wiltshire
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