Clad in black, masked like pound-shop London gangsters, the shoot saboteurs were out on the 12th August this year. Ostensibly hunt saboteurs in their lightweight summer uniform – or so their flags suggested – instead of twiddling their thumbs until the hunting season recommences, a few groups of sabs coordinated to disrupt the perfectly lawful activities of several shoots across the North of England.
The first target of one amalgamated group of sabs was a walked-up shoot in the Forest of Bowland. The police attended, but with the day’s shooting thoroughly spoiled by their loutish behaviour, the sabs moved on. According to their social media posts, they struggled to find another shoot to disrupt, but having tried many locations, they eventually found a shoot in the Yorkshire Dales. The police took this sabotage more seriously and a sab group even described the police’s behaviour as “arsey” - astonishingly hypocritical given their wantonly unlawful activities.
The disruption of a legal activity on private property is aggravated trespass – a criminal offence. Saboteurs who disrupt shooting on private ground are not only acting criminally, but they show themselves as totally ignorant of the huge benefits that shooting brings to the countryside. This is perhaps not altogether surprising as there is a vanishingly small chance of true country people being amongst the sab groups, who are more often than not politically and prejudicially motivated.
Fortunately, the condemnable and illegal activities of shoot saboteurs seldom extend beyond the 12th August. But whenever there is an instance of sabotage it must be treated with due care and all those involved in shooting are advised to avail themselves of what to do if such an event happens on their shoot or on a shoot they’re attended, whether as a gun, beater, picker up or in any other role.
The Countryside Alliance has a guide of practical advice for shoot managers in the instance of sabotage. The government is in the process of passing a law to increase existing police powers to prevent disruptive protestors from concealing their identity in areas designated by the police and to make such concealment a criminal offence. Although, it is difficult to understand what new powers are necessary given the changes made to Section 60AA of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act in 2017, which the Countryside Alliance campaigned long and hard for.
In the last 8 years, however, the police have remained reluctant to act to remove face coverings whether in relation to animal rights extremists, political demonstrators or football hooligans. We would argue that since the change in the law in 2017 the fundamental problem is not that the law currently does not give the police sufficient powers to act against people who are using face coverings both to intimidate and to avoid prosecution for criminal activity, but that the police are not using those powers.
Further amendment to the legislation may well be justified, but if the police do not use the current powers it is difficult to see how new laws will change the situation. The wearing of balaclavas and other face coverings in this context is a cynical tactic and its use by extremists will continue to grow unless the police use the ample powers they already have to stop it.