Weekly Lesson, Cancel Culture: Pigeon Racing

Pigeon racing has recently fallen foul to cancel culture and is now considered barbaric, a number of news investigations have uncovered instances of pigeons being mistreated. My Father used a method of racing which they called the “Widowhood Method”. Knowing that pigeons tended to mate for life, fanciers would take one and send it to a race, it would fly home quicker to get to its mate and children.  That kind of thinking is now considered cruel. In  recent years, cancel culture has taken the country by storm. If a public person steps out of line, publicly broadcasts an opinion unsuitable for the population at large or even quietly shares a private view then they could be removed from social media, events, movies and if they have committed a crime, they could be fired. Their career could become null and void literally overnight.   This restriction no longer applies only to famous people, it also applies to sport as well.

 My father used to take medicine made for us kids and feed it to the birds when they were sick, actually his birds were treated like royalty. That was our view in the 1970s, that he was treating the birds well by using items made for humans to assist them, however these days there would be questions whether he was actually breaking the rules. In fact today, that practice of sharing family medicine with birds might be considered animal cruelty or doping.

Like most farmers, breeders and animal lovers, these birds were my Father’s responsibility yet he had a healthy detachment from them. I don’t think they could be called pets.  I remember seeing him drowning some of these birds which were terminally ill: “for their own good” he used to say. Putting animals out of their misery is always upsetting but strangely okay when it comes to hunting and sporting. My Grandmother was the same, she used to catch a chicken from the garden and simply twist it’s neck, remove its entrails, pluck the feathers out and put it in the oven. It kind of reminds me of the words of my Arab friend.  While I was living in Arabia he used to say things like: “that cow is very stupid. It eats too much, that means we eat that one first”.  They were animals which served a purpose, the idea that they were pets was secondary to their primary use.

A trip to the pigeon clubhouse was serious business. Meetings, election of new members, presidents, vice presidents and declarations of winners took place there. Our local clubhouse was a spit and sawdust kind of a place, it looked like a 1920s  pub without the alcohol or strangely like a church hall without the trappings. Bare floorboards, small feathers in the air and baskets of pigeons waiting to be put into a transporter, carefully vetted by the club executives to ensure mechanisms for the birds to be released at exactly the same time. Women were strangely absent – this was a man’s place except for the purposes of cleaning, where women were required weekly, sweeping up the cigarette butts and feathers.  Knowledge was freely shared in the clubhouse and  men of all ages would drop by to visit my father’s loft and to learn his craft. If by chance you found a bird you didn’t own you could identify its owner by the number on its ring. Huge lists were published by a Union, complete with ring number,  (the birds wore a ring with the number on their legs) country codes, owner numbers and contact telephone numbers and some people even knew country codes by heart.

I often wondered where pigeon racing came from  and  as early as 1881 people were racing these birds.  Their popularity peaked during the War where they were used to carry messages to allied troops, crossing borders with ease and I’m sure that British people continuing to race them was some kind of homage being paid to their past service, led by the Queen of course setting an example with her own birds.  

As much as I loved these birds, the stench of the loft was stomach churning, my father kept the place clean by scraping up bird droppings daily but there  was a lingering smell. I often wondered how people had patience to look after these birds. These days there would also be questions about how the stench affected humans and whether it is actually safe. My father was troubled by tuberculosis yet he never connected that to keeping birds which is strange in hindsight.

The birds represented something which has been lost in British culture now, it was an art, a science even, offering the ability to excel in your hobby whilst working full time, participation in a club which offered interpersonal skills as well as following a tradition of the past as this craft was often passed down through the generations from Father to Son.  

The future of racing is under threat and scientists are trying to prove a link between mobile phone use, the magnetic field of the earth and disorientated pigeons. This will likely spell the end of what was once a popular sport. Yet these birds may still prove useful where the internet fails.