Imagine what would happen if J. Edgar Hoover, founder of the FBI, were running the RSPCA. It sounds ridiculous, I know. But suspend your disbelief for a second, and suppose that a crusading individual convinced of his destiny to conduct a campaign against wrong-doing had turned the nation’s favourite animal charity into a quasi-official investigations unit, targeting those people and institutions he personally disapproved of.
He might then seek to publicise the most dramatic or controversial cases of animal neglect and cruelty in order to generate headlines. He might, for example, use intelligence gleaned from investigators tracking fox hunters in a particularly genteel part of the country in order to make an example of them, perhaps to revel in the opportunity to describe them as ‘common criminals’.
Such class-oriented campaigns, along with shocking and bloody exposés of the farming and meat industry, would earn popular support for a time because, as we know, Britain is a nation of animal-lovers.
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