Bitter feuding a stake in the heart of the Beef Plan
From lofty promises 12 months ago, the Beef Plan Movement is in danger of losing its members amid internal strife
In January last year Beef Plan founder Eamon Corley told a packed hall in Holycross, Co Tipperary that the newlyformed group was looking to raise €2m to process and market its own beef and already had “customers lined up” to buy it.
Around 200 farmers filled the room that night. However, the organisation today is far from such heady days, with a split in the organisation leaving two factions claiming they are in charge.
Less than 12 months on from its first meeting in Holycross, the group held another meeting, with Gardaí and private security needed to keep the peace at the request of the organisers, while the number of farmers in attendance was significantly less.
The Beef Plan’s original roots started in 2014 when beef ‘grassroots’ members of IFA held a crisis meeting in Navan.
The group never gained traction, but from autumn 2018, the key players of that group began to mobilise again.
Corley and his co-chair Hugh Doyle held meetings around the country, building up membership of a new organisation that claimed at one point that it had 18,000 members.
The Beef Plan Movement, whose existence was based around the mobile messaging service WhatsApp, allowed large groups of people to communicate through their individual county groups.
Through early 2019 Beef Plan continued to build momentum, leading to a protest on July 10 to Leinster house of around 2,500 members.
It was followed in late August with the start of a now infamous series of protests taking place at meat factories, calling for a fairer share of the retail price.
Weeks of sometimes controversial protests and actions by the group started, including the naming on social media of people who passed the pickets, while the meat processors called the protests “illegal blockades”.
Then, with the threat of legal action looming over a number of organisers, a number of leaders of the group stepped away from the public eye to avoid injunctions before, in a now disputed decision, Beef Plan suspended its protests to engage in talks.
However, many of those protesting refused to back the suspension of protests and a number of what were deemed ‘unofficial’ protests began.
After a number of tense days in September, the final protesters eventually moved away from factory gates, but significant cracks had emerged at this point within the Beef Plan Movement and many questioned whether its organisers had lost control.
Behind the scenes, the ground had been set for a power struggle, between a National Committee and those who originally established the Beef Plan.
In a bid to “set the record straight” as the organisation descended into turmoil, Beef Plan founders Doyle and Corley recently appeared in a number of videos putting their side of the story of the lead-up to the split.
Protests
Corley conceded that the decision to step down the protests was “maybe not a democratic decision”, while Doyle stated that the decision taken “at a national level to stand down the protests” was something he was completely in disagreement with.
According to Doyle, there were farmers standing on the picket lines, prepared to risk their liberty and potentially go to prison. “That’s the sort of guts we want in Beef Plan.”
The formation of a splinter group, the Independent Farmers of Ireland, at this time, Doyle said, stemmed from the fact Beef Plan was weak.
However, those behind the decision — the National Committee which was set up in May 2019 — argue that if the organisation had gone to court, the likelihood of its financial resources being depleted within a couple of days would have meant Beef Plan being wound up by September and it would have lost its Department of Agriculture recognition.
Demot O’Brien, spokesperson for the National Committee, which was put in place to run the organisation while Doyle and Corley stepped aside, says that this group is still in charge. However, Corley and Doyle say it was only there as a temporary measure.
Governance
The development of a set of rules and governance, is central to the key issue of who now runs the organisation. According to Corley, it took nine drafts to finally get a document which four directors of Beef Plan signed off on, and the National Committee was consulted during the later stages of the process.
However, according to Enda Fingleton of the National Committee, there were just five drafts produced, and that about a week before the fifth draft was signed, some members of the National Committee put forward more points and expected to be able to review the final draft before it was signed.
According to Doyle and Corley, it was agreed that an AGM would be called in all counties, and elections held for a National Committee of 26 individuals. However, this meeting never happened, according to O’Brien and Fingleton, who claimed there was a lack of clarity around county elections.
Subsequently county chairs called a meeting, held in Portlaoise in December. At this meeting supplementary proposals around elections were drawn up and these were fully supported by all counties in attendance, Fingleton said.
He says it was decided at this meeting that some parts of the rules covering county elections were wholly inadequate, and lacked the robustness of procedure needed to run fair and transparent elections.
The Split
However, Doyle says there were a lot of reservations about how business was being done by the National Committee, including sending a letter to UK retailers saying there is force-feeding of cattle in Ireland due to the 30-month rule.
This could have damaged Ireland’s beef trade with the UK, Corley and Doyle say in their videos.
“They had already agreed to the rules and governance. Now suddenly they wanted to change them. As a result of that, it was decided they [the National Committee] were no longer fit for purpose. I felt that Beef Plan was unravelling,” Doyle said.
Then, on January 4 Corley and Doyle sent an email to media to say they had stood down the National Committee.
“The National Committee was only a temporary committee — they were not supposed to last by August. On January 15 they would have been timed out, according to the rules they themselves signed off on,”
Doyle says. However, Fingleton claimed it was not possible under the rules and governance for the national chairman to stand down the National Committee.
The decision to stand down the National Committee and their subsequent rejection of the founder’s authority to do so has led to mass confusion among Beef Plan members and has left the two wings in open dispute.
Portlaoise EGM
On January 26 the National Committee held an EGM, which they say was attended by 250 people. Motions of no confidence in Doyle and Corley were carried and the National Committee said they considered the membership of the organisation had given them their loud and clear direction on how to proceed.
In a further twist to the dispute, posts in a WhatsApp group, called ‘Silage Testing’ found their way into the public domain, with some of the messages displayed at the Portlaoise EGM. According to Corley and Doyle, this WhatsApp group was set up by a band of people who wanted to hold elections and go along with the rules and governance.
“It was the founders of Beef Plan coming together with other members to basically save Beef Plan and reinstate the Beef Plan that was originally there — a grassroots organisations that was inclusive of everyone,” Doyle said.
However, the National Committee has a very different view of this group. According to Fingleton, the comments on this WhatsApp group suggest that ‘Silage Testers’ was set up to try and manipulate elections.
“Members have a right to know about Silage Testers’ hidden agenda and to have a clear understanding of the National Committee’s desire to run a fair and transparent organisation in which everyone’s voice can be heard,” he said.
It was also agreed at the meeting that to overcome the challenge imposed by the closing down of the organisation’s WhatApp groups, each county committee would duplicate the pages in the county they are from and use these pages to communicate with the members in this way.
However, Corley and Doyle have warned that this move will breach GDPR rules and that the National Committee is a ‘rogue’ group.
When an internal dispute takes hold of an organisation, both sides can forget what they are fighting for. The issues on which the Beef Plan campaigned remain unresolved in the main and it’s been some time since the group have been actively working on behalf of their members.
At this point, a resolution to the impasse seems far off — as an AGM looms on March 15 — with both sides becoming more entrenched each day.
What’s clear though is that farmer confidence in the group has been severely dented, and when the real Beef Plan Movement eventually does stand up it will be interesting to see how many of its members have stuck around.