If a group of burglars were to march on parliament calling for repeal of the Theft Act for the restrictions that Act places on their nefarious activities, their calls would rightly be dismissed. If those who like to drive at racetrack speeds petitioned for a repeal of the Road Traffic Act, their campaign would be discounted as nonsense. And so it is puzzling why those with a desire to kill wildlife for ‘sport’ are given such a wide arena in which to campaign for repeal of the legislation which rightly places bloodsports on the wrong side of the law.
The proscription of hunting followed an extensive and often exhausting campaign spanning nine decades. The determination of the League Against Cruel Sports and its supporters meant that while there were numerous twists and turns on the road which led to the Hunting Act, there was never a moment at which the campaign was questioned.
And so it should not be a surprise that the bloodsports lobby, led by the Countryside Alliance and its more descriptively named predecessor the British Field Sports Society, showed utter determination to stop the passage of the law, and since they failed in that campaign, an utter determination to have the law overturned. Their difficulty, aside from the enormous public opinion firmly against them, is that every argument they put forward for repeal of the Hunting Act can be easily dismissed as spurious.
The League never imagined that the passage of the Hunting Act would mean that the hunters would stop hunting. To revisit the earlier analogy, the Theft Act didn’t stop burglars burgling. But we did hope that they might at least respect the law, and we did hope that rather fewer of them would be out breaking the law; during the 2009-10 hunting season, the League’s evidence suggests that two thirds of hunts were acting in a manner consistent with traditional hunting practice.
Footage from that hunting season taken by League observers and monitors has led to the successful prosecution of a terrierman working for the Ullswater Foxhounds in Cumbria, and as I write, cases are progressing through the courts against members or supporters of the Quantock Staghounds, the Fernie and Sinnington Hunts, and other cases are with the police. Across the length and breadth of the country, our observers are working within the law to bring those who break the law to justice. They are, in many respects, a rural version of the neighbourhood watch, a role endorsed in guidance issued by the Association of Chief Police Officers.
Of course, not all of those involved in the passage of the Hunting Act remain supporters of it – not least Tony Blair who in his recent memoir
[1] comes close to an admission that he told a Home Office minister to tell the police not to enforce the law. Few people involved in the campaign in the late 1990s and early 2000s ever thought that Blair was a true supporter of the legislation, but the reignition of the debate caused by his memoirs reminds us that there is a constant job to do in reminding people why hunting was banned and why it must remain so.
And one doesn’t have to look far to find evidence of how effective this law has been. Government figures published earlier this month showed 57 convictions under the Hunting Act in 2009 – more than one every week and certainly more than the three or four convictions the hunters will say there have been. The reality is that the Hunting Act has been used more often than any other wildlife crime legislation and prosecutions continue to increase in numbers.
The League Against Cruel Sports has led the campaign against hunting since its inception in 1924, and an extensive report published in September is the League’s latest instalment of evidence for that campaign. The League has revisited the science, the law, prosecutions and convictions, civil liberties, rural economics, the history of hunting and every other relevant aspect to bring this timely report, neatly and comprehensively felling each of the arguments put forward against the ban on hunting.
Hunting is a thing of the past. Next month, on Boxing Day, we will see the red-coated masters and huntsmen trotting through idyllic English towns for their ‘traditional’ seasonal meet. This is their sixth Boxing Day under the Hunting Act and it’s time they adjusted and got used to it – hunting wild animals for sport is history.
Link to report download: www.league.org.uk/nofuture
[1] Tony Blair (2010)
A Journey London, Random House