HOW THE UK PIGEON SPORT WENT WRONG

by John Clements

The relationship between the RPRA council and specialist clubs including Nationals has never been particularly warm. It is impossible to know what goes on behind closed doors but I think it reasonable to assume a kind of stand off between the two exists that falls short of cooperation. The annual RPRA awards are a good example of the central role of the RPRA doing just enough, as a kind of token gesture to National racing only when they have to.

Sometimes National pigeons are left out of RPRA awards completely in preference to Federation and Combine pigeons. Federation and Combine pigeons are in fact treated as being the same quality as National or even International pigeons. We get the feeling that it is part of the policy of the RPRA not to want to encourage National clubs in an official way.

An example of the way the RPRA and RPRA regions think was illustrated when I went to one regional ceremony distributing RPRA awards. The region concerned hadn’t even thought of having a photographer present to record the event. It seemed to me to be a throw away ceremony added on to an ordinary regional meeting to be forgotten as quickly as possible.  

The reasons for this lack of concern are obvious - National cubs with their large membership spread over the whole of the whole country have the potential to challenge the RPRA. As luck would have it most specialist clubs do not take up this option to exercise their power. They succumb to rivalry and breakaways between each other and as a result lose their strength.

In the meantime the RPRA sails on and carefully does nothing about racing or officially recording the quality of individual pigeons in the UK.

The whole set up is designed to stop progress - the RPRA having nothing to do with racing and the National clubs having nothing to do with each other. It’s a kind of purpose built traffic jam to bring the UK sport to a halt. We have in fact created a system that does not want to identify our own good pigeons so the whole process is a downwards spiral to either nothingness or the alternative, importing supposedly better pigeons in from other countries.

Unfortunately only a few in the RPRA are aware of what is going on and for the most part those who run National clubs haven’t a clue. They do not see the benefit of marketing their own good individual pigeons and by doing so fail to market their own club. They themselves are so divided, one against the other, the RPRA can do what it likes which includes not having any part in identifying top UK pigeons.

The commercial world is very happy with this. If UK top pigeons were ever to be identified it would make the job of selling pigeons much more difficult, so everyone keeps mum, and overall everyone, especially the Netherlands and Belgium are very happy.

The whole thing is a cozy concert for all concerned. The losers are the best UK fanciers, the best individual pigeons and the UK as a pigeon country.  

Ideally the RPRA and UK National clubs should get together and jointly bat for Britain. If they did this, if they worked together, they could achieve so much. In due course of time the UK as a pigeon country could close the gap between how the UK are seen and how Continental pigeons are seen. If the UK ever began to sell pigeon stock worldwide in numbers approaching that of Belgium and the Netherlands, the UK pigeon sport would get a tremendous jolt for the good... We would export more and import less. Morale would improve and suddenly we all would become optimistic instead of pessimistic. The UK would then gradually become known worldwide for genuine top class hard pigeons that crossed a hostile strip of water to get home.

At the moment both organizations fail do this lest it impinge on various small time vested interests. The worst thing that can happen is for someone who sells a lot of pigeons to be seen as not performing very well but even this is not much trouble. There are still those who buy pigeons from people because they are well known despite the fact they may well have not been racing for years.  

I notice The Midlands National and the National Flying Club make a great play of putting the Queen in a prominent place on the cover of their yearly rule-books. This display of the Queen’s picture seems, on the face of it, patriotic. In fact it is not patriotic at all but is in fact playing a game of trying to raise their public status by associating themselves with royalty. It would be far better if they marketed schemes that officially identified top pigeons in their races and began to help their members to generate exports. That would be real patriotism. 

Unfortunately both clubs seem unconsciously to believe the Dutch and the Belgians always produce superior pigeons than the ones that compete and do well in their own races. I can assure them this is not so all the time. I would hope, in due course of time, when they get the message, they would find it in themselves to stand up for their own top pigeons. They could do this by publicly stating a price they were prepared to buy the winners back for. That way they would be endorsing the value of their own races by underwriting them.

For the most part we still unconsciously believe we should buy pigeons from Holland and Belgium in order to catch up. We never do catch up of course and in fact gradually get further and further behind. The last UK strain was the Kirkpatricks; since then the UK have produced nothing worth naming.

It seems the whole sport has fallen for an outrageous scam that is set up to promote pigeons from the Netherlands and Belgium at the expense of our own brave, hard pigeons whose achievements and tremendous performances are officially not publicised. In the UK it is possible to hide really good pigeons by not taking notice of them and to promote ordinary pigeons by singing their praises to the rafters. At one time or another we have all fallen for it. It’s about time we realized just what is going on.