Penny Mortimer in this week's Sunday Times ...
Thank God for our sensible police forces. At a time when our parliament is in complete disarray, the Association of Chief Police Officers has announced that the ban on hunting is hard to enforce and chief constables have more pressing priorities.
To force the ban through, more than 700 hours of parliamentary time and the Parliament Act were used to introduce a ridiculous and badly drafted bill. Since then there have been eight prosecutions of hunts, of which only three have been successful.
Tony Wright, a huntsman in Devon, was in 2006 found guilty of illegal hunting by a district judge at Barnstaple magistrates’ court in a private prosecution taken out by the League Against Cruel Sports. After 3½ years, his case ended up in the High Court and he was acquitted. The judgment interpreted the muddled law in such a way that two other prosecutions were dropped. If the courts can’t decide how to deal with this law, how can the police be expected to do so? There have been scenes of high comedy, with packs of hounds, huntsmen, saboteurs and policemen chasing each other round England’s pastures green.
There are 325 registered hunts in England and Wales and, as a result of the publicity engendered by the ban, more people than ever before are today following them, on foot or on horses or in cars. The police know that 99.9% of them are decent, law-abiding citizens who hold no brief for cruelty to animals.
The truth is that when this law came about Tony Blair, then prime minister, and other middle-of-the-road new Labour bigwigs had no real interest in banning hunting. Indeed, I had always wondered if the £1.1m they received from animal rights organisations, including the Political Animal Lobby, influenced their policy. A hunting ban was a bone to be thrown to their tiresome backbench dogs, many of whom saw it as “a revenge for the miners”, assuming that everyone who followed hounds was a signed-up Tory toff who had cheered for Margaret Thatcher when she closed down the mines.
I went to Wales before the ban and met former miners who said their jobs had been taken away from them, they couldn’t afford to go on holiday, no leisure centres had been built for them and now the powers-that-be wanted to take away hunting, their only pastime and pleasure.
By contrast, the zealots of the animal rights movement were delighted when the ban came into effect. In the 1990s I helped to run an organisation called Leave Country Sports Alone which represented members and supporters of the Labour party who objected to the proposed bill. I received through the post not only razor blades stuck to the inside of an envelope, but also excrement – whether human or otherwise I didn’t care to investigate – which Terry, our poor postman, was required by law to deliver, even though the package had broken open en route.
I also received anonymous letters with such messages as “I hope your balls drop off (if you have any) and your fannies shrivel and dry up” and “I hope you get cancer and die a slow and painful death. Yours sincerely a well wisher”.
Earlier this year a supporter of the Warwickshire hunt was killed by a gyrocopter that had been used by anti-hunt “monitors” to follow the hunt for some weeks. A man linked to a local animal rights group, Protect Our Wild Animals, has been charged with murder and is now awaiting trial.
Animal rights “monitors” must be instructed firmly that it is the role of the police, and no one else, to uphold the law. Activists cannot appoint themselves to police hunting any more than other citizens can appoint themselves to police any other law.
The Hunting Act has done nothing to improve animal welfare but has, in fact, harmed it. The rights and wrongs of hunting have been debated ad nauseam for decades. It has to be accepted that legislation cannot change the predatory instincts of foxes or the views of farmers who seek to protect their pigs, sheep and poultry. In places where there is now no hunting, such as over National Trust land, the fox population is contained by trapping or shooting or worse. It is an utter fallacy to believe that shooting involves less suffering for foxes than hunting. Many people argue that it would be better for the welfare of the fox if there were more hunting taking place than at present.
There are no reasonable arguments left for retaining the Hunting Act. Bad laws should be repealed and this is a very bad law. David Cameron said about it last year: “It’s quite clear it isn’t working. There are more people hunting than ever before. The law is being made to look an idiot and that isn’t a good situation to be in. We have a very clear position on this: there will be a free vote and if there is a vote to repeal the hunting ban, there will be a government bill in government time.”
For the sake of our overburdened policemen, trying to foil terrorist plots, solve knife crime and keep the traffic moving, let’s hope he is one politician who will stick to his word.
The GOS says: Although I am strongly opposed to the ban on hunting because it is a dictatorial interference with the daily lives of ordinary country people, I can't help feeling rather bemused at the arrogance of our head policemen. Since when do they decide which laws are worth upholding and which aren't? Who's in charge here?
I am reminded of the ludicrous situation in my own area where the county council have introduced so many unnecessary speed limits that the police have said publicly that they can't possibly enforce them all so they're going to decide for themselves which are worthwhile and which aren't. The fault, of course, lies more with the law-makers than the law-enforcers. There's no point making laws that can't be enforced.
Mind you, this hunting decision on the part of the police is quite a major U-turn. Their attitude to supporters of hunting used to be quite different, as we pointed out recently - see the bottom of this page.
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