fox hunting | ukwatch.net

Hounded

Ellie Keen — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 10:48:01 +0000

SCHNEWS asks who’s harassing who as hunt seeks giant exclusion zone

“If we can get this, it will be a massive victory for hunting and will set a precedent for other hunts to follow.” Simon Bonner – Countryside Alliance chairman.

“This is nothing more than a flagrant attempt to use the anti-stalking laws – which were drafted to protect vulnerable individuals – to prevent the monitoring of hunting because the hunt believe the Hunting Act does not give people the right to monitor.” – Simon Wilde

Yes, repression via the Protection from Harassment Act is back! (see SchNEWS 581). The Crawley and Horsham Foxhunt are trying to take out an injunction against local hunt monitors Simon and Jaine Wilde, along with the rest of the West Sussex Wildlife Protection Group. They’ve received the now familiar black ringbinders of ‘evidence’ from Timothy Lawson Cruttenden (aka TLC)1 and are now due in the High Court on the 15th July.

The hunt want an outright ban on “old sabbing tactics — balaclavas, sprays, whips, hunting horns and tape recorders”, or so says senior master Anthony Sandeman, “But the main thing is the continual trespass. Farmers are getting fed up with it.” Of course trespassing isn’t usually a criminal offence under English law but if the injunction goes through it will give the police a power of arrest over a huge swathe of West Sussex. The hunt also want to prevent ‘loitering on footpaths’ for the purposes of filming and, crucially, they even want to prevent hunt monitors from filming from public roads. Other clauses in the proposed injunction include an exclusion zone around the hunt kennels and a demand that monitors inform the police 24 hours before any planned activity. Breaching any of these clauses could mean arrest and prison.

To recap for those of you who weren’t paying attention: injunctions under the Harassment Act create criminal offences out of civil law. An ‘interim’ injunction – which can be obtained on the flimsiest of evidence – has the full force of law behind it. In this case something as simple as standing on a footpath taking photos could become a criminal offence, punishable by up to five years in prison.

But why are the C&H Foxhunt – adamant that they are only carrying out legal activities – so camera-shy? One hunt monitor who attends the hunt is in no doubt: “We know the C&H are hunting, they cast the hounds into woods, and frequently chase foxes. What they do bears no resemblance to drag-hunting. We’ve been watching hunts for years and we know what hunting looks like.” The League against Cruel Sports discovered the C&H breaking the hunt ban in February 2007, saying, “The reality is caught on film in horrifying detail. A fox is pursued by the Crawley and Horsham over the Sussex countryside. It seeks refuge in a small hole on the edge of a field. Twenty minutes later – and after a frantic dig out involving three men, spades and two terriers – the fox is dragged to the surface, held aloft and thrown to the waiting hounds. After ten minutes of being savaged by the hounds – encouraged by watching huntsmen – almost nothing remains of the fox.”

Of course according to Lawson-Cruttenden, “We’re not trying to stop anyone who wants legitimately to monitor the hunt, but we think that means people are entitled only to photograph the master and huntsman while they are engaged in legal hunting activities.” What this means in practice is that if anyone else at all is within the camera angle then monitors could find themselves under arrest. All others (including the C&H’s thirty-strong squad of stewards) will have the status of ‘protected persons’. Our hunt monitor told SchNEWS: “Effectively filming will be obstructed and potentially made illegal. All they’ll have to do is have a protected person with them whenever they’re up to anything dodgy and we’ll have to put our cameras away.”

Toff With Their Heads

This attempt to strangle the rights of hunt monitors to document the abuse of wildlife showcases the balance of power in the countryside. On the one hand you have some of the UK’s richest landowners/grandees – including the likes of Nicolas Soames MP, grandson of Winston Churchill – backed to the hilt by the wealth of the Countryside Alliance and the Master of Foxhounds Association, and on the other a group of slightly more down-to earth individuals who go out every weekend to try and gather evidence of the abuse of wildlife.

Unfortunately civil court cases cost money and it’s possible the landed classes may be able bulldoze this through by sheer weight of bullion. If they lose then, hey, it’s just this year’s agricultural subsidies down the pan and one less tin of caviar at Christmas – but if Simon and Jane lose then they lose their home. Of course ‘Fatty’ Soames has every reason to stay away from the lens: on the strength of film from the monitors he was fined for riding a quad bike on the public highway without a crash helmet. But with an injunction in place the monitors might have been arrested for filming in the first place, preventing any inconvenient court appearances.

The real irony is that the notorious C&H hunt are no strangers to the ‘stalking’ game themselves. Pro-hunt websites such as Moochers.org carry photos, profiles and addresses of those they refer to as ‘antis’. In recent years, monitors have captured on camera C&H huntsmaster Kim Richardson warning monitors, “You’re all fair game now … I’ve fucking told everyone” – before assaulting one of them. Richardson is the son of the late Sir Michael Richardson, who was known as ‘Mr Privatisation’, one of the highest ranking freemasons in England and a ‘darling’ of Lady Thatcher.

During the run-up to the ban, supporters of the C&H achieved a publicity coup by ramming the monitors van off the road – while it was occupied by a film crew from ‘Tonight with Trevor Mcdonald’. Hunt supporter John Hawkins was convicted of GBH after breaking a female monitor’s arm in two places on 29th January 2005. During the same incident a hunt whipper-in and steward were cautioned for assaulting the driver and stealing the group’s van keys. More recently, terrier man Jeremy Charman was fined £80 for throwing a dead rabbit at monitors in November last year. Meanwhile hunt steward Christopher Curtis received a warning for blocking footpaths – under the Harassment Act!

Simon and Jane have suffered a great deal over the years due to their commitment to the fight against bloodsports. As well as being a continuous presence at their local hunts they were leading voices supplying evidence to the various parliamentary inquiries, which eventually provided the evidence required to back an outright ban. They’ve had attacks on their home, carcasses dumped in the front garden and been the victims of repeated vicious beatings in the field.

As one hunt monitor told us: “This injunction under the Harassment Act is nothing more than an attempt by some very rich men to buy themselves an exemption to the law of the land. If granted it will be a charter for abuse of wildlife and monitors alike. A video camera is often our only way of protecting ourselves when under attack by hunt thugs. It’s also our only way of documenting the horrific treatment dished out to wildlife by this organisation which claims to be hunting legally.”

For more about Hunt Sabbing see www.hsa.enviroweb.org

1. For more about TLC and the tender loving care he puts into injunction cases against animal rights, as well as anti-arms trade and climate change activists see SchNEWS 581, 531, 509, 492, 471

Bunch of Hunts

JamieSW — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 11:09:19 +0000

“It’s pretty much business as usual hunt sabbing in the fields of rural England, three years after the hunting ban came into force – if you can call it a ban; week in week out we see hunts chasing and killing foxes in direct violation of the ban.” – H.S.A. Press Officer

Three years since the ban on hunting with hounds was passed through parliament, has it made a blind bit of difference to the bloody fate of persecuted British wildlife? No – but it has provided an invaluable lesson on how people with cash and influence can buck the law with impunity. Not only that, but those trying to curb their illegal activities face police harassment and hunt thuggery.

When the the Criminal Justice Act 1994 was first introduced, one of its main targets was the Hunt Saboteurs movement, denounced as “Thugs, wreckers and bullies” by the then Home Secretary Michael Howard. Within hours of the bill receiving royal assent, police moved in and began arresting those disrupting bloodsports under the new offence of ‘aggravated trespass’. At one point, Sussex police were fielding nearly eighty officers every weekend to arrest and harass hunt saboteurs.

Contrast this with the Hunting Act 2005. Pretty unequivocal in its terms, it made hunting with hounds a criminal offence. The more naïve might have expected a similar police effort made to clamp down on those now in breach of the law. What actually happened was that David ‘there’s none so blind as those who will not see’ Blunkett announced a ‘softly-softly’ approach, letting the police off the hook. In a backstairs deal, hunting became an offence – but not one for which details of those arrested would be recorded, or one which would count towards national crime enforcement statistics. The same police forces which had deployed vast resources to harass anti-bloodsports activists now simply ignored the hunting issue.

Bloodsports enthusiasts carried on their merry way, initially using the flimsy legal camouflage of ‘exempt’ hunting. What this meant in fact was that some hunts took to having a bird of prey on hand (falconry isn’t banned), others a few bumpkins with shotguns (because it’s allowed to use two hounds to flush prey towards guns) and others still took to dragging smelly rags around miles from the action in attempt to pretend they were drag-hunting. Once it became apparent that across the country police were not about to take any action anyway even these pantomimes were dropped. For example on Saturday 5th January, the Surrey Union foxhunt chased and killed a fox on the village green at Ockley, Surrey. This was photographed by sabs. Efforts to interest police in the footage were met with the thin blue line of complete indifference.
“Finally – seven years after Neo-Labour promised to ban hunting with dogs, the law’s been passed. Foxes can relax and hunt sabs can hang up their balaclavas…Or can they?” – SchNEWS 486

Of course there have been a handful of prosecutions across the country – twenty-five to be exact. Almost all of those prosecuted by the CPS have been targeted for ‘low-level’ hunting – using lurcher dogs to hunt rabbits and hares. While just as cruel as yer redcoated, stirrup cup drinkin’ landownin’ variety, the setting of dogs on wildlife isn’t protected by that most vital exemption in the Hunting Act – the defence of being a toff.
When huntsmen from the more prestigious hunts find themselves in court, always as a result of footage taken by the League against Cruel Sports and often as a result of private prosecutions taken out by them, they are equipped with the best legal advice money can buy. As a result they can afford to pay for continual appeals and, like Premiership footballers charged with speeding, find themselves able to wriggle through the smallest of courtroom loopholes.

We are now nearing the end of the third fox-hunting season since the introduction of the ban. Sab groups, committed to taking direct action against bloodsports, have gathered hours of footage of hunts breaking the ban. In response, the hunts have upped the level of violence and intimidation – especially against those carrying cameras. This season has seen a rise in violence targeted at sabs, with vehicles attacked and people hospitalised. And it is usually the camera operators they go for first.

When police do turn up, naturally they haven’t developed a sudden sympathy for the anarchists in their (t)rusty black landrovers. In November last year, sabs out with the notorious Old Surrey and Burstow fox hunt, filmed huntsman Mark Bycroft blatantly urging his hounds on to a fox.

One sab told us, “They were on to their third fox of the day – it broke out of some woodland and we were standing there filming. Police arrived and told the sabs, “You lot move away or you’ll be arrested.” When we asked what for, we were told aggravated trespass. Pointing out that we were disrupting a unlawful activity didn’t do any good as at that point Bycroft rode up and told the police, “You lot sort ‘em out or we will.” The cops then immediately jumped on one cameraman and wrestled him to the ground, putting him in handcuffs. Minutes later they arrested me.” All charges have since been dropped.

Of course it’s not surprising that the boys in blue line up with the chinless in pink – some of them ride with the hunt! On Saturday 9th February 2008, Sabs on the South Downs and Eridge hunt were bemused to have an off-duty WPC from Surrey ride up to them flashing her warrant card. Strangely enough two sabs were later arrested and held for 22 hours. “Basically our vehicle had been blocked in by hunt thugs. After one female hunt sab had been ridden down we’d asked for police assistance and been told that the matter ‘had already been dealt with’ – i.e. they’d asked the WPC if everything was OK. To try and get out I rolled forward with the Land Rover and cracked a brake light on the 4×4 blocking the road. When the police eventually did turn up I was nicked for criminal damage!”

And the courts take a lenient view of hunt violence. One hunt supporter, convicted of GBH in November for breaking a woman’s arm in two places, merely received an eight month suspended sentence. You can easily imagine what would have happened if the offence had been the other way round.

As one greying veteran of the anti-bloodsports battles told SchNEWS, “Screw this monitoring lark: no more standing around with cameras while still getting attacked by the huntscum and arrested by the plod – let’s get back to old fashioned sabbing…”

With the law still an ass, all kinds of anti-hunt action continues – and help and support is still needed. See www.huntsabs.org.uk