Animal Rights Display Angers (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Animal Rights Display Angers

9:30am Thursday 15th November 2001 in Cumbria news

AN ANIMAL rights display was swiftly removed from a library 24 hours after it went up amid accusations that it was too political.

Retired school head Mary Silver saw red after chancing on the exhibition at Kendal library.

"It seemed perfectly innocuous, until further examination," she explained.

"I couldn't believe it.

We live in a livestock area, yet there were leaflets urging us to be vegetarians and criticising farming methods.

It was not helpful at all."

Mrs Silver said she was more concerned than angry that an overtly "political promotion could be shown in a publicly-funded building".

When she returned to her Grayrigg home, Mrs Silver contacted Cumbria County Council and the NFU to voice her disquiet.

Exhibition organiser Penny Pullen said she had been amazed by the protest.

Promoting the work of CWF - Compassion in World Farming - the display had already been staged successfully at both

Barrow-in-Furness and Grange-over-Sands libraries, said Mrs Pullen.

Also a retired teacher, from Grange, Mrs Pullen said there was nothing political about the information displayed.

"I accept the Procter and Gamble poster on animal testing was a bit gory and might upset a child.

"I would have happily removed it.

I couldn't see a problem with the rest of it."

Leaflets on "how to go veggie", intensive farming and cruelty to animal details, should have been allowed to remain, she added.

"I think the library has over-reacted."

But the officer in charge of Cumbria County Council's libraries and archives Jim Grisenthwaite said he had asked for the display's "temporary removal" so an investigation could be carried out.

"We try to be as even-handed as we can to all sections of the community, without fear or favour.

This has raised a question of procedures."

Mr Grisenthwaite said he believed the normal practice of including a disclaimer from the library had not been carried out in this case.

"We do not sanction political displays, but we seem to be on the edge here.

It is not political with a capital `P', but might be

perceived, by some, to be political with a small `p'."