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WHERE IS THE ANGER?

A personnel opinion by Ian Pedler

It is well over four years since the implementation of that farce known as the Hunting Act 2004, which masquerades as an attempt to abolish blood sports.  Four years in which nothing has changed.  Red deer, foxes, hares and mink are still being killed, only now the perpetrators have become victims of class warfare, bigotry, prejudice, or the subject of some half-baked concept of Labour’s revenge for the 1984/85 miner’s strike.  Most of the regional and national press now portray their efforts to continue with their sordid activities as the actions of “rural freedom fighters”, while the passing of the Act is viewed by that same press as a vicious attack against the very concept of democracy – “a perfect example of the tyranny of the majority over the minority” to quote The Times.  The squalid blood sport publications (Shooting Times, Countryman’s Weekly, Horse & Hound, The Field etc.) scream with vitriol against the compassionate people who still speak out against the cruelty, while those same people are divided against themselves in the throes of a fratricidal civil war that threatens to tear the animal rights movement apart.  The League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) is at loggerheads with Protect Our Wild Animals (POWA) over how to approach the failure of the Hunting Act, with LACS pretending that everything is fine and all the Act needs is a ‘bit of implementation from PC Plod, while POWA want ‘reckless clause’ amendments to strengthen the Act.  All of which is equally pointless given that the Brown Government has about as much intention of touching the blood sport issue again as the Countryside Alliance (CA) has of finding a soul.  While the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), in silent company with the RSPCA, have disappeared up their own backsides, half pretending that the Hunting Act was never actually anything to do with them anyway.

The blood sport lobby meanwhile appears to go from strength to strength, with every passing day giving testament to their ability, not only to circumnavigate the law, but change the very concept of compassion.  For now we see, thanks to the CA’s newly appointed Claptrap Commissar James Barrington that many in the animal rights movement are little better than “religious fundamentalists who ignore the scientific evidence”, which apparently shows that blood sports are not cruel, while completely ignoring the fact that “animal welfare is very close to the hearts of most hunting people”.  This disingenuous rubbish has been trotted out in vast quantities since the start of the year, accompanied in many newspapers with colourful pictures of heart-warming traditional Christmas card scenes of the good and the great moving off from the local meet intent on promoting their brand of ‘animal welfare’.  Nowhere is there the slightest evidence as to the end product of this ‘welfare’, the pregnant deer disembowelled at the end of the hunt, the shredded fox, the screaming hare on the coursing field, with attempts to redress the balance in the press meeting with a wall of silent indifference from most editors.

The self-righteous indignation of these people was sent into over-drive with the death in March of Warwickshire hunt supporter Trevor Morse, a man whose loss to humanity will be greatly missed when you consider “his first love was hunting, followed by shooting”, and that “he had only missed two or three days (hunting with the Warwickshire) in the past twenty or thirty years”.  Tales of violence-obsessed antis filled the pages of the hunting magazines, attempting to portray the hunt monitors as former saboteurs by another name, with that nice Mr Barrington taking the opportunity to reiterate that most antis were anarchists in nature with the blood sport issue giving them “a rare chance to confront the people they despised, the people who were hunting, and had little to do with animal welfare.”  The prize though must go to 18^th March issue of The Countryman’s Weekly for asking: “The dreadful question now lurking in the back of our minds is what will people like those who are seemingly intent to injure and kill people who disagree with their dogma do if the Hunting Act is repealed?”  No reference here to the hundreds of saboteurs and hunt monitors battered into hospital admissions by the legions of hunt thugs who have operated for years with virtual immunity from prosecution, much less concern for our people, such as Mike Hill and Thomas Worby, who have been killed while attempting to save the hunted animal.  The case of Christopher Marles, who battered hunt monitor Kevin Hill half to death, followed by a brutal attack on monitor Helen Weeks a year later hardly rated a mention from the hunting community.  It was only the fact that Marles was under a two-year suspended prison sentence for the Hill attack that prompted the authorities to jail him for six months following the Weeks attack, with the Exeter Crown Court Recorder Ros Collins informing him “You acted like an arrogant, cowardly drunken lout…” Tell us something we don’t know!

Another factor in the blood sport fanatic’s favour is their unerring ability to constantly sing from the same hymn sheet, with seldom a word of internal dissent to break the surface of total unity in defence of killing for sport, with the antis quite often unable to agree on the time of day.  Stag hunters, fox hunters, hare coursers, shooters, along with every other brain dead Johnny who delights in killing for fun maintain a united-front against the world, backed with an endless supply of money supplied from the aristocracy down to the lowest form of animal abuser, namely terrier men and gamekeepers.  While their message is conveyed via some dozen or more weekly magazines devoted to their love of killing, coupled with open access offering free publicity on demand from most of the media, with our only ‘right of reply’ consigned to the Dear Mr Editor letters page of the local journal, while as far as I can see the one radical publication on our side would appear to be HOWL four times a year!!  Their political wing, the Tory Party of David Cameron, have already pledged to repeal the Hunting Act after winning the next election, while our side appear in total disarray.  Already the Vote OK bandwagon is primed and ready to roll when the election date is announced – where is our political voice?

With so many odds stacked against us is it not now time to take a serious look at where we go from here?  To stop tinkering with the Hunting Act 2004, an Act that in my opinion was never intended to work, merely to enable the Blair Government to buy time from their back-benchers and allow enough time for the heat to be taken out of the issue, while the animal rights movement divided against itself.  Read the Act.  The first third abolishes blood sports, while the remaining two thirds give every excuse, clause, exemption and legal loophole to allow hunting to continue until such time as a future Tory government repeal it.  What we have achieved is a situation that once this Act is repealed no other government in our lifetime will ever touch the issue again, allowing the right to kill for sport to continue in perpetuity. 

Do we wait for the Act to go, for go it will, or do we prepare for the inevitable and accept that the time has come to stop believing that a nip here, or a tuck there, will change anything?  It is my firm belief that the HSA must again take the lead as the radical edge of animal rights.  Never forget that it was the hunt saboteurs back in the winter of 1963 who kick-started the process which grew into the movement we know today, with every success that we take for granted a direct result of those very first direct actions against the West Country fox and stag hunts.

Right now the animal rights movement has come to a crossroads, transfixed in the head-lights of the oncoming juggernaut like the proverbial rabbit, unable to decide whether to sit tight or run.   It can go down the road of conciliation with those who derive so much pleasure from killing for fun and keep writing the letters to the Honourable Members in the hope that they will spare us a few seconds from filling in their expenses forms, or it can start the fight back.  I know which road I would rather it travels.

Ian Pedler is the author of "Save Our Stags: The long struggle against Britain's most controversial blood sport".

With the Hunting Act in total disarray and the likelihood of its repeal at the hands of a future Conservative Government looking more certain every day, the publication of former stag hunt saboteur Ian Pedler’s new book Save Our Stags: the Long Struggle against Britain’s most Controversial Blood Sport could not prove more topical.