When Campaigning Knowledge Leaves the Boardroom: How Trustee Recruitment Is Reshaping the League Against Cruel Sports
League Against Cruel Sports Trustee Recruitment and the Decline of Campaigning Expertise
The League Against Cruel Sports is recruiting four new trustees, presenting the exercise as part of a period of organisational “renewal and ambition”. A closer reading of the trustee application pack, however, suggests a deeper shift: a change in what the League now prioritises in its leadership, and what it no longer appears to regard as essential.
To understand why this matters, it is worth looking back.
From Campaigners to Overseers
A decade ago, the League’s board included trustees who were not only professionally accomplished but deeply embedded in the anti-bloodsports movement. They had supported local groups, monitored hunts, attended demonstrations and defended the Hunting Act through years of political hostility. Their authority as trustees rested on first-hand knowledge of the practices the League exists to challenge.
That grounding mattered. It enabled trustees to interrogate strategy, recognise when compromises weakened enforcement, and challenge senior management from an informed position. Governance was rooted in subject-matter expertise, not simply process.
The 2019 Shift in Power
This model began to change in 2019, when amendments passed at an Extraordinary General Meeting made it extremely difficult for members to nominate trustees. Board appointments are now effectively controlled by existing trustees and subsequently approved at AGMs, reducing meaningful member influence.
Since then, trustees have increasingly been appointed who were previously unknown to members and had little or no history of involvement in grassroots campaigning against bloodsports. The distance between the board and the League’s campaigning base has steadily widened.
Professional Skills, Missing Knowledge
The current recruitment drive reflects this change. Vacancies were promoted heavily on LinkedIn, often shared by individuals with no evident connection to the anti-bloodsports movement. Trusteeship is framed as a professional opportunity rather than a campaigning responsibility.
The application pack reinforces this emphasis. It prioritises strategic leadership, board-level experience and ambassadorial skills. These are legitimate attributes, but what is striking is the absence of any requirement for deep, practical understanding of bloodsports or campaigning against them.
This matters because trustees are responsible for holding the Senior Management Team to account. Without subject-matter expertise, scrutiny risks becoming procedural rather than substantive, focused on presentation and reassurance rather than effectiveness.
It is important to be clear about what this critique is not. A well-functioning board should contain a diverse range of skills, and renewal in itself is not a problem. Legal, financial and organisational expertise can strengthen governance. The concern arises when those skills are not balanced by trustees with first-hand knowledge of the charity’s core mission. Diversity of background should strengthen governance, not substitute for campaigning competence at its heart.
Image and Credibility
The application pack’s presentation reflects a broader tension. It relies heavily on polished stock imagery, including non-UK wildlife, alongside staged representations of campaigning. One image depicts an Italian fox, visually distinct from the species targeted by British hunts. The effect is attractive but detached, conveying concern without grounding it in the specific realities of British bloodsports.
Alongside these stock images are photographs of staff members in a fox costume, apparently offered as an illustration of campaigning activity. Such details matter not because of the images themselves, but because they mirror a wider organisational tendency: a preference for optics over depth.
Accountability and Culture
Recruitment materials speak of a “high-performing Board” and strong values. Yet misleading social media posts have repeatedly been allowed to stand, and serious governance errors are never acknowledged.
Trustees are also expected to exercise independent judgement under charity law, including a willingness to question prevailing assumptions and resist institutional inertia.
Where boards become culturally aligned around continuity and reassurance, that duty is weakened. Oversight becomes affirmation; challenge becomes consent.
Ambassadorship and Consistency
The application pack states that trustees are expected to “act as a League ambassador, promoting its mission and values”. This is standard language in trustee recruitment. Its credibility depends on consistent application.
Astrid Clifford remains a trustee despite a record of public social media posts made during her time as Acting Chair that sit uneasily with the League’s stated values. The board’s handling of this matter raises legitimate questions about how standards of conduct are applied, and what ambassadorship means in practice.
Why This Matters
There is a wider institutional context to this shift. During the 1980s and 1990s, the League operated with far fewer staff than it employs today, yet campaigning knowledge sat at the centre of decision-making. Over time, that expertise appears to have moved to the margins.
The result has been a visible decline in the sharpness and impact of the League’s campaigning when compared with more explicitly campaign-led organisations such as the Hunt Saboteurs Association or Protect the Wild.
Trustee appointments signal what an organisation values. If deep expertise in bloodsports is absent or undervalued at board level, it is unlikely to shape strategy elsewhere.
A Question of Purpose
Trusteeship at a campaigning charity is not a generic governance exercise. It carries a heightened duty of care precisely because the organisation exists to challenge powerful, organised and often hostile interests.
The League’s current recruitment drive raises a simple question for members, supporters and donors: does the charity want trustees who understand the fight in depth — or trustees whose skills are confined to managing structures and reputation while campaigning knowledge fades from the centre?
The answer will shape not just the board, but the future effectiveness of the League itself.
