A NI Hereford cattle breeder has called for a full and independent investigation into the wider dealings of the UK Hereford Cattle Society after he was one of two prominent members removed from the society earlier this year.

“Questions have to be asked. The truth must come out,” said Portadown breeder James Graham, who along with Ballynahinch breeder, David Smyth had their memberships cancelled in June 2024, with no right of appeal.

The latest accounts of the UK Hereford Cattle Society to the year ended 30 June 2024 show it spent £77,000 in legal fees as part of a process to remove Graham and Smyth from its ruling council.

The resolution, which was passed by the council, has resulted in both men not only off the ruling body, but also out of the Hereford society in totality – they cannot register cattle or sell at club sales.

That decision has left them feeling extremely aggrieved after years of service to the breed. Graham was elected by NI members as a UK director in 2021, while Smyth was elected to the council back in 2012 and served as UK president of the breed as recently as 2023.

“Under new articles of the association adopted in 2023, they could only remove us as members. They couldn’t remove us as directors, so they destroyed us as members. They destroyed our reputations,” Graham told the Irish Farmers Journal.

“I travelled the length of the UK as president of the Hereford Society. It cost me a lot of time and money and for what,” said Smyth.

Both men are still considering legal options and have already spent thousands of their own money on legal advice.

However, any legal challenge comes with at a high personal risk given that a potential judicial review is unlikely to be covered by Directors and Officers insurance cover held by the society.

Removed

The council meeting on 27 June 2024 was attended by both Smyth and Graham. It had been called by Hereford Society CEO Paul Sneyd to consider resolutions that it would be “in the best interests” of the society to have both NI members removed.

At that meeting, a solicitor acting for Smyth and Graham offered mediation, which was turned down. “We said our bit; they said their bit. We left at 2.30pm to get a flight home. Before we got to the airport we got a phone call to say a vote was taken and we were out,” said Graham.

Complex

The Irish Farmers Journal has reviewed hundreds of pages of documents in the case. It is complex and there are also many underlying historical issues to be explored.

A lot of the evidence points to a very dysfunctional society in NI and also at UK level, where there has been a high staff turnover and a number of recent legal cases involving Hereford House.

It is for the membership to judge whether Graham and Smyth were treated fairly and ultimately, whether spending £77,000 (to June 2024) on the case is good use of members’ money.

At a meeting of the UK Hereford council on 13 February 2024, the chairman, Philip Allman, said there was “a slightly unpleasant thing to be done”.

He revealed he had received a letter from the NI Hereford Breeders Association (NIHBA) which accused Graham and Smyth of “bullying and coercion”. The minutes of the meeting show that both men were asked to step outside by Hereford CEO Paul Sneyd while the issue was discussed.

The advice to Sneyd from solicitor, Derek Backhouse was that the allegations of this nature “must be taken seriously” and an external investigation would be considered as independent.

Despite that, some members were unsure, with one highlighting the potential cost and that some of the content was “rather flaky”. Sneyd himself said there wasn’t “a lot of substance in the letter, and it is poorly put together”. The council agreed to take further legal advice.

The letter was unsigned and did not come from the then secretary of the NIHBA, Mark Moore. Instead, subsequent investigations showed it was written by former NIHBA chairman, John Gill, working alongside, what he described in evidence, as a “consortium of other people”. Gill has not served on the NIHBA committee for a number of years.

In the letter Gill referred to “numerous instances of bullying and coercive behaviour” by Graham and Smyth. Examples included that one of the men had tarnished the reputation of the then NIHBA chairman, William McMordie by telling a NI committee meeting that McMordie had reduced a member of staff in Hereford House, to tears.

That allegation has consistently been denied by McMordie.

Gill’s letter went on to allege that Graham and Smyth were unhappy with McMordie’s decision to hold a NIHBA election and had tried to overrule him. One of the two NI council members was also accused of phoning up members in an attempt to swing votes in upcoming NI elections. “Council members should remain impartial in these circumstances,” notes the Gill letter.

The final allegation was that Graham and Smyth were members of the Elite Hereford Breeders Association, which potentially was a conflict of interest.

A second letter from an unnamed NIHBA member was sent to Hereford House on 27 February 2024 which also made allegations that Graham and Smyth had “bullied, insulted and made little” of NIHBA committee members in NI.

Investigation

In response to the letters, the ruling council of the Hereford society decided to press on with an investigation, appointing Clarke Willmott, a firm of solicitors based in Somerset.

The investigating officer appointed to the Graham and Smyth case was Kathryn Walters, a senior associate at Clarke Willmott solicitors.

Her report shows that she interviewed nine different people between March and April 2024. Eight were Hereford breeders in NI, while the other was Beverley Turner, an employee at Hereford House.

Of the eight NI breeders, seven took part in phone or online interviews, while one communicated by email.

Among the seven NI breeders formally interviewed, three asked to remain anonymous.

Split

What comes through in the interviews is a fact no-one can dispute – there is long and historic split in the local membership, with breeders effectively in two camps, one of which is supportive of Graham and Smyth.

The contrary view was set out in the first interview with John Gill. Lasting over two hours, Gill suggested that Graham and Smyth wielded too much control over the NI committee. Instead, as UK Council members he argued their role was to relay information back and forth between Hereford House and NI.

During his interview, Gill was asked by Walters who else in NI she should speak to regarding the allegations made in his letter of 12 February 2024. He put forward a number of names.

The argument made by Graham and Smyth is that this in effect, created a scenario where all those interviewed were from one of the two camps in NI, which has simply added to the sense of injustice felt by them.

Both men were invited to interview, but they declined on the back of legal advice from their solicitor, who communicated with Walters on their behalf.

Investigation report

In her investigation report to the Hereford Cattle Society (HCS) of 16 May 2024, Walters found there “was a case to answer” that Graham and Smyth had potentially engaged in behaviour that could be deemed as “bullying” and/or “coercive”.

She did note that relations within the NIHBA were “poor” and there is “ill feeling” that relates back to the formation of Elite Hereford Breeders Ltd.

Walters set out three options for the Society: to decide the allegations are 1) not upheld; 2) upheld in part or; 3) upheld in full.

“In the case of options two and three above, it may be that the HCS wish to consider the removal of James Graham and David Smyth as trustees and/or from the HCS.

“This is an outcome which at least five of the HCS members interviewed informed me that they considered would be appropriate,” advised Walters.

She also suggested it would be appropriate that all Council members receive “updated governance training” and that a complaints handling procedure should be prepared and made available to all members of the Society.

The catalyst for the complaints

The “final straw” which prompted John Gill and others to write a letter of complaint about Graham and Smyth relates to disagreements around the election of a new 12-member committee of the NI Hereford Breeders Association (NIHBA) within the last year.

In his interview with Walters, the then NIHBA chairman, William McMordie explained an election was due last November, although Graham and Smyth did not think it was necessary at that time.

However, at a meeting in early December, McMordie said the committee agreed that the election should proceed, without delay, with paperwork sent out to paid-up members by the then secretary, Mark Moore.

“They [Graham and Smyth] didn’t want the election because they had the majority of the committee,” McMordie told Walters.

McMordie had been in contact with Beverley Turner at Hereford House in December and early January, to see if an updated list of paid-up members had been provided to her. By mid-January, McMordie had sent a list to Turner, who then proceeded to put election papers in the post to NI members.

A couple of days later, Graham and Smyth contacted Turner and asked to see the list of paid-up members. After taking advice from McMordie and CEO Paul Sneyd, Turner responded that she couldn’t send the list to them.

Smyth challenged Sneyd on that issue, pointing out that as a council member, he had a right to check whether the NI list was correct. Sneyd relented and the list was sent, without the agreement of McMordie, who told Turner he was “very disappointed” by the decision.

Graham also rang Turner to complain about how the situation was handled.

In the meantime, Graham and Smyth realised the list wasn’t fully complete, so the NIHBA committee agreed that a second set of election papers had to be sent ahead of their AGM on 22 February.

At a committee meeting in late January, current NIHBA chairman, David Wilson, noted in his interview with Walters that there was “a lot of bickering and there was an awful lot of insults” exchanged between members.

It was at this meeting that Graham accused McMordie of insulting Turner and making her cry, something which he denied.

The evidence from Turner confirmed this was not true, although in a statement from a former Hereford House employee, seen by the Irish Farmers Journal, the claim is made that it was a third party who had told Smyth that Turner had been upset by McMordie.

Potentially, wires had been crossed, but either way, the accusation levelled at McMordie at the January committee meeting had not gone down well and it was the catalyst for the Gill ‘letter of concern’.

AGM

Those present at the NIHBA AGM in February report there were angry exchanges, some of which were directed at former secretary Mark Moore. In a subsequent timeline of events, Moore pointed out that he had been unable to progress the election at the end of 2023 due to pressure at work and an illness of a close family relative.

Recalling events at the time, James Graham told the Irish Farmers Journal he had simply suggested the election was put back for a year to get all member names sorted.

“The list wasn’t complete – people had paid money. We were trying to do the right thing and get that list correct. That is our duty as directors,” he said.

An issue raised throughout the Clarke Willmott investigation relates to the existence of Elite Hereford Breeders Ltd, a company of six directors, including Graham and Smyth.

In his interview with Kathryn Walters, current NIHBA chair, David Wilson said that Elite Hereford Breeders (EHB) was seen by many as “a breakaway group, a rival group” to the NIHBA. “You see, this was really where the whole problem started,” he said.

EHB was set up in late 2015 by breeders who were unhappy with a decision by the NIHBA committee to potentially move the venue for bull sales from Dungannon to Ballymena. It ran a number of sales in Dungannon, however, the last one was in 2017.

“It was a marketing company to sell cattle and was endorsed by Hereford House. Something similar exists in England in the form of ‘Designer Genes’ sales. Elite breeders has effectively been dormant for seven years,” said James Graham.

The NI Hereford Breeders Association (NIHBA) has had a very successful breed scheme running in NI since the late 1990s. With a deduction of £3 per head taken off farmer cheques, it has resulted in a substantial pot of money in NIHBA coffers.

During interviews with NIHBA members by Kathryn Walters, various estimates of between £70,000 and £100,000 were put forward.

It is also clear there has been some internal disputes within the NIHBA on how this money is spent and whether it should be invested. However, the major issue has been with the UK Hereford Cattle Society.

“There was a row in 2018/2019 and by that time there was 200 head per week in the scheme rather than 30. It all went wrong,” explained Graham.

Most Hereford cattle are processed through Dunbia and the company wanted to make one payment to Hereford House, rather than the NIHBA. However, some members of the ruling council argued that the money should stay within the wider society, rather than be funnelled back to NI.

At the time the row led to two prominent council members from NI (Des Kelly and Robin Irvine) resigning. David Smyth stayed on as a council member. Funds were not sent back to NI for three years.

Settlement

Legal advice was sought and eventually an agreement was reached, with the Hereford Cattle Society accounts to the end of June 2023 showing it made a “one-off settlement” of £35,000 to the NIHBA. Going forward, the £3 per head deduction is split evenly between the NIHBA and the Hereford Cattle Society.

“It took years to get that money back. In my view, the whole process did not go down well with some people in the organisation. It is the catalyst that started all of this. Breeders in NI did not realise the work we did on their behalf,” said Graham.