John Bryant's Legacy
From All-Creatures.org Animal Rights/Vegan Activist Strategies Articles Archive

FROM Trevor Williams
February 2020


John will long be remembered as a legend in the animal welfare/rights movement and a man who left the world more than a few degrees better than he found it 77 years ago....

Whilst at Ferne, he became involved with the infamous 'smoking beagles' campaign and was arrested on suspicion of receiving dogs liberated from the laboratory. It would not have been appropriate for me to comment whilst John was alive as to whether or not he was involved, but all who knew him should be proud of the fact he was, and that the dogs received new identities and were relocated under what John once termed a ‘witness protection scheme’!

I first met John in 1977 at an RSPCA animal rights symposium in Cambridge. I handed him a cassette tape recording of an incident in which hunt sab Phil Barnes had his car windscreen smashed in his face by a fox hunter. Phil was part of the same hunt saboteur group as me but was still under hospital care and couldn’t be present.

John's section of a conference that covered numerous aspects of animal abuse was on the subject of hunting. When he emphasised - in his gentle West Country accent - the thuggery we were up against by playing the tape, the contrasting sound of smashing glass followed by Phil's anguished screams of, "My eyes! My eyes! I can't see!" brought the assembly to a stunned silence.

John was already well known for his work as an RSPCA council member and part of the faction that finally established the charity’s official opposition to hunting. It overturned an absurd inconsistency defended by a group of ‘country set’ trustees who’d systematically infiltrated the society over the years for the express purpose of preventing such a move.

John was also manager of Ferne Animal Sanctuary in Dorset, where he faced constant intimidation from local hunters who chain sawed the gates, hung dead animals on the fences (nothing changes - they're still doing the same to Chris Packham) and threatened life and limb of staff and volunteers. Naturally, those attacks galvanised John's opposition all the more.

Whilst at Ferne, he became involved with the infamous 'smoking beagles' campaign and was arrested on suspicion of receiving dogs liberated from the laboratory. It would not have been appropriate for me to comment whilst John was alive as to whether or not he was involved, but all who knew him should be proud of the fact he was, and that the dogs received new identities and were relocated under what John once termed a ‘witness protection scheme’!

John was also a member of the League Against Cruel Sports, which was supposed to be a political pressure group but which was so reticent about its aims that Parliament barely knew it existed. John stood for election to the national committee with others who wanted a more dynamic approach and, when they eventually became the majority, the organisation began to exert a more appropriate level of pressure on the main political parties. As was ever the case, the Conservatives (with few exceptions) supported hunting with dogs, Labour (with few exceptions) opposed it, and the Liberals (with few exceptions) took the view it was a matter for the individual conscience – a position with which any rapist would be delighted!

Having established who was for us and who was against, John and his allies recruited ex-Prime Minister Harold Wilson to spearhead a campaign that led to the first ever official commitment by a major political party to outlaw bloodsports.

The prospect of political change brought John to London, where he was recruited as a LACS staff member at the same time as myself - he, as Press Officer, and myself as Assistant Promotions Manager. We shared an office, our desks pushed together, face to face - not the most ideal arrangement, as my desk was left infuriatingly tidy at the end of each day whilst his was a pile of perpetually sliding papers, books, pens, cigarette packets and unwashed coffee mugs! When the tsunami washed over onto my territory, it would be shoved impatiently back over the border!

Despite the heap of rubbish, John always knew precisely what was in there and where it was.
John proved exceptionally able in his dealings with the media and did much to raise the League’s profile. He also worked with the political team, often drafting bills in conjunction with MPs and Peers that led to vital legislation such as the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 and Wild Mammals Act 1996. Always a free agent, he regularly stepped beyond the League’s brief to work with other welfare groups campaigning on behalf of farm, laboratory and companion animals and against whaling, fur farming, snaring and sport shooting. Wherever there was a need for action for animals, John was there.

In 1988, I married Sue. John attended our wedding party where he met Teresa (Tess), with whom Sue had previously shared a house, and he spent much of the night wandering around mumbling "I think I'm in love!" I was honoured to be John's Best Man a couple of years later when the couple married, since when the four of us have enjoyed numerous adventures and experiences together - walking the Cumbria Way and the Coast to Coast Path, bathing in Iceland's Blue Lagoon, wandering Scottish islands and messing about on narrowboats – it’s not much over a year since we celebrated our joint 30 year anniversaries on the Shropshire Union Canal.

In diametrically opposite circumstances to those in which John and I were recruited to LACS by a forward thinking, energetic new management, we were both subsequently forced out by the incompetent regime that followed. John wasn't going to let that stop him and, in the absence of effective campaigning by the League, he became a consultant to International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) who, along with the RSPCA, was largely responsible for the eventual success of the Hunting Act 2004.

The Act was, of course, flawed, and we knew it from the start. As a result, the hunting fraternity has ridden roughshod through the loopholes ever since, without any serious attempt to police them. John wasn’t standing for that. He wanted the law tightened up. But he was no longer part of the major anti-hunt groups, so he gave his allegiance to POWA (Protect our Wild Animals) which was primarily a hunt monitor group - a sort of civilian 'police force’ that would collect evidence of law-breaking by the hunters to provide to the prosecuting authorities.

John also got involved with The Fox Project’s wildlife deterrence aspect, working with us to resolve animal / human conflicts on major projects such as the construction of the Millennium Dome.
Interspersed with all of this, John wrote books on animal rights philosophy, the ineffectiveness of ‘pest control’, an autobiography and a novel, and he co-wrote a revised version of my own book “Unearthing the Urban Fox”. In 2014, the RSPCA forgave him his earlier trespasses and presented him with their highest award - the Queen Victoria Gold Medal for services to animal welfare.

John has now passed, and it is something of a bitter relief to know the bone cancer that debilitated him is no longer causing him pain. Our thoughts are with Teresa, and we hope she will take consolation from the knowledge that John will long be remembered as a legend in the animal welfare/rights movement and a man who left the world more than a few degrees better than he found it 77 years ago. 

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