When Campaigners Turn Court Jesters: What’s Happened to the League Against Cruel Sports?

Ah, the League Against Cruel Sports. Once the bastion of righteous fury against animal cruelty, now more of a middling improv troupe fumbling through an extended farce. At the centre of its latest performance is Emma Smith, the former Acting Deputy and Director of Operations, who has made a seamless transition from anti-hunt crusader to staffer at the Shaftesbury Group UK.

Three days into her shiny new job, Smith treated her LinkedIn followers to a photo of herself bowing to HRH The Princess Royal, patron of her new organisation and, incidentally, an outspoken advocate of fox hunting. The same Princess Royal who has twice presided over the Peterborough Royal Foxhound Show Society, cheerfully endorsing the Festival of Hunting—the very event the League has spent years campaigning against. One can only admire Smith’s ability to pivot. Forget animals; this is gymnastics.

Naturally, the photo attracted a slew of supportive LinkedIn likes, including some eyebrow-raising ones from Kelly Hack, a League Director, and Emily Lawrence, the League’s Campaigns Manager. This would be the same Emily Lawrence who spearheaded protests against the Cheltenham Festival earlier this year—a festival supported and attended by none other than the Princess Royal herself.  With ethics this elastic, it’s hard to tell who’s hunting whom.

But it’s not just hunting where the League’s principles have gone walkabout. Lawrence’s protest credentials include being photographed holding an anti-vivisection placard at another event, a bold move for someone whose League pension was exposed as funding vivisection. Yes, you read that correctly. The League Against Cruel Sports—a name that screams ethical purity—was caught funnelling pension money into companies profiting from animal testing. When this scandal came to light, thanks to whistleblower Jordi Casamitjana, the League rallied to protect… its funding streams, naturally.

Casamitjana, who dared to expose this grim irony, was unceremoniously sacked for his trouble, prompting a legal battle that cemented ethical veganism as a protected belief under UK law. And where was Lawrence, champion of animal rights, in all this? Firmly on the side of the League, holding placards with one hand and signing away her moral high ground with the other.

Then there’s Emma Smith, another League loyalist, who honed her skills not just in bowing to royalty but in purging dissenting voices. Among her proudest achievements was the expulsion of long-time animal welfare advocate Peter Egan. His crime? Apparently wanting the League to focus on, well, animal welfare. Egan, who continues to fight the good fight in a voluntary capacity, could hardly be expected to compete with Smith’s more flexible ethos: oppose the hunt on Tuesday, applaud its champions by Friday.

And what of the League’s “Lifting the Smokescreen” campaign, that proud moment of high-stakes booing outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court? This pantomime of hissing and jeering at former Masters of Foxhounds Association director Mark Hankinson is now etched in the annals of activist theatre. Smith, Hack, and Lawrence were all in attendance, channelling their inner panto villains as Hankinson faced trial for his role in the infamous Hunt Webinars. Yet here we are, just a few years later, watching these same crusaders cheerfully endorse their ideological opposites on LinkedIn.

The League’s guiding ethos now seems to be “flexibility above all.” Principles are like a good coat: essential for appearances but easily shed when the weather—or the patron—changes. For an organisation that once prided itself on unflinching moral clarity, it’s all gone a bit… foggy.

Perhaps the League should embrace its new identity and rebrand as the League for Opportunistic Careers. Its updated slogan? “Saving animals… except when it’s inconvenient.” Meanwhile, genuine advocates like Peter Egan and Jordi Casamitjana carry on the real work, unburdened by LinkedIn algorithms or pension hypocrisy.

In the end, one must stand in awe of the League’s sheer audacity. The foxes may be evading the hounds in the countryside, but inside the League, the chase is for professional self-promotion. And when it comes to that hunt, no one’s pausing to consider the collateral damage—whether it’s animals, principles, or the truth itself.