Dear Judges

BRITISH SHOW HORSE ASSOCIATION BOARD & SPORTS HORSE BREEDING (GB) COUNCIL – DECISION IN RELATION TO SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVITY

The Board of The British Show Horse Association (BSHA) and the Council of Sport Horse Breeding of Great Britain (SHB(GB)) both held Extraordinary Meetings on the 17 August 2023 to discuss matters relating to recent bullying and harassment on social media, and in particular (though not exclusively), the continuing offensive, abusive and misogynistic posts from Mr. John Bland.

Both organisations considered the content of the posts to be vitriolic, generally unsubstantiated, ill-founded and in some cases, obscenely presented.

Neither of our Societies will turn our backs on this situation because it’s uncomfortable.  As one of our Judges we expect you to uphold the highest standards of decency and integrity and we ask you, as both a human being and a Judge to understand and consider the situation that we are faced with.

We care about the fact that people who have been the subject of these posts may not be coping well with this current situation; they feel helpless to defend themselves in the unforgiving public court that is social media.  We simply have to do something to protect the integrity and mental wellbeing of our members, our judges, and our discipline of showing. We must maintain and be seen to uphold the high standards that our Societies have been built upon. 

We cannot have social media and anti-bullying policies that quote a zero tolerance and then take no action to eliminate such behaviour.

Please understand that if you are seen to be a social media “friend” of Mr. John Bland’s then it will be considered by others that you are tacitly supporting him in what he says.

We are united in our decision to ask that if you want to be friends with those who spread malicious information or act in a manner which does not meet our standards of common human decency, such as (but not exclusively) John Bland, to please remove yourself from our Judges panel(s) whilst you remain publicly on his social media page or on any other page associated with such a person. 

You may consider that we should not tell you who to be social media friends with, which is quite correct, and we would not do so.  However, this is not our intention, as a member of either Society you are bound to Codes of Conduct and we believe that supporting such malicious behaviour by this individual (or others), intentionally, actively or not, does not meet the standards of respect and integrity required by our Societies.

It is understood that there are some issues being raised within the showing community that require closer scrutiny and our societies are working to address them.  Your attention is drawn to the fact that we have procedures and processes in place to deal with allegations of misconduct and impropriety and that this is a confidential evidence based process. 

Kind regards

The Board of the British Show Horse Association