Hunt sabotage and the hunt debate

Jim Barrington writes for Countryman's Weekly, discussing hunt sabotage and the hunting debate.

I can vividly remember the first time I went out as a hunt saboteur. The target was one of the Kent Hunts and this was going to be a day when a fox's life would be spared and these animal abusers stopped in their tracks.

Then, I believed hunting with hounds was just a cruel sport that needed to be banned and those taking part were the rather foppish types so often depicted in film or television versions of a foxhunt. This was going to be easy, but how wrong can you be?

The Tickham Hunt was a farmers' pack which did not take kindly to a bunch of hippies interfering with their activities. It wasn't a pleasant day for us sabs, who left thinking we had done a good job, but knowing in our hearts that we'd been easily seen off by the hunt followers.

Naive people

It's hard not to admire the purer intentions of young, naive people who are willing to prevent, as they see it, needless cruelty. What was missing from that situation was a calm, sensible explanation of wilder wildlife issues and precisely what hunting with hounds achieves - something the late Sir Roger Scruton set in motion when he initiated discussions with antis on the future of hunting.

Back then, hunt saboteurs saw the hunts as nothing more than people killing for fun and would argue that some other method, such as shooting, should be employed. One of the first televised films of saboteurs in action showed just such a discussion between saboteurs and hunt supporters.

In the mid-1970s, the BBC ran a series of programmes entitled Open Door with the aim of allowing various groups free access to make a film about their activities and have this broadcast on national TV. The Hunt Saboteurs' Association applied and was successful in being offered a television slot. This provided a major boost to the saboteurs in terms of publicity, finance and membership.

By the late 70s, hunt sabotage had become a firm part of the hunting debate and as time went on attracted a type of person who clearly saw the attack on hunting in far wider terms, some being of an anarchistic nature and others simply looking for confrontation.

The hunting world has been a little slow in catching up with highly efficient use of edited video films shot by antis and placed on social media platforms, but that is now changing. Take a look at the recent footage the Countryside Alliance and other pro-hunting bodies are now gathering.

The group of saboteurs in the customary black outfits swearing at a woman on whose property they have driven. The masked thugs, lined up and the handcuffed by police at the Cheshire Hunt. The foul-mouthed and intimidating fanatic at the Warwickshire Hunt who claimed to have been imprisoned for murder and shouted threateningly at a female Hunt steward that he would "go in again," at the same time sexually assaulting her. Vile comments on social media are commonplace, the sad death of Roger Scruton prompting a new batch.

It is virtually impossible to see any of these people as being genuinely compassionate and having animal welfare as their main concern - indeed, they appear to take delight in the distress they cause to hunt followers, whether they be elderly or children. This is a world apart from the people I first met back in the 70s - they had the right sentiment, just the wrong target.

It's time politicians, the media and the public understood what is really going on here. This is a form on vigilantism played out in a thuggish, violent manner, justified by false allegations of illegal hunting and the pretence of support for animal welfare.

The Government's proposal to outlaw intentional trespass has the hunt saboteurs worried... and so it should. They have been getting away with their own kind of lawbreaking for far too long.