Cheer for our hunt saboteurs and monitors

Hunt supporter Ukip leader Nigel Farage

Opinion: Let’s hear it for our hunt saboteurs and monitors

The appalling attacks that take place almost on a daily basis on those who monitor fox hunts leaves us in no doubt that even 10 years after the hunting ban, a few Neanderthals are still hunting foxes and their supporters are still hunting those against that vile sport. There must be thousands of hours of footage gathered over the last ten years by the monitors and hunt saboteurs showing masked and heavily armed pro hunting thugs meting out their own style of retribution. Conversely, there are very few, if any, videos of violence being visited upon the hunters from the anti-hunting side.  This is in spite of the ‘pros’ being well equipped with mobile phones and hand held cameras.

The Tedworth Hunt last month saw an isolated incident where the joint master, Michael Lane, was allegedly attacked and kicked in the head. The amateur video, which is now in the hands of the police, was taken by a female hunt supporter who originally filmed a clip of a lone saboteur, with both arms pinioned, being punched and kneed in the face and body by two hunt supporters. The woman’s companion can be quite clearly heard to say, ‘don’t film that’. The footage appears to have disappeared from the Internet, but it will be hard to deny it existed because it was shared around a great many anti-hunting social media sites before it vanished. We can only hope that it hasn’t been edited so that the police can fully investigate ALL of the incidents in their entirety on that day.

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The attacks on innocent people whose only motivation is to save animal lives raises important questions about the demeanour and the motivation of the pro hunt thugs who regularly take the law into their own hands. Hunt saboteurs go out to save animal lives in the field. They are a brave group of men and women from all walks of life, who put their own safety on the line to save the lives of foxes, deer and hares. They work by spraying scent (usually citronella) to confuse the hounds and they employ voice and horn calls in an effort to call the dogs away from where it is thought a terrified fox may be hiding. They are not fighters, nor are they out to cause trouble.

When a fight breaks out it is usually because the hunters have called in their bully boys to deflect from illegal hunting which is wide spread across the UK. Often the riders use their horses as weapons, forcing the sabs on foot to run for their lives. Last year a young female sab was almost killed when she was ridden down and left lying where she fell. In spite of clear video footage of the incident, the CPS decided to drop the case citing insufficient evidence.

Pre ban the violence against the saboteurs still existed but as hunting wasn’t illegal then and hunts had nothing to hide it was more push/shove and verbal confrontations.

Today there is an organised anarchy to hunt heavies. Balaclava wearing hunt thugs turn up fully armed and ready and willing to cause grievous bodily harm. As the hunters all carry mobile phones and sometimes even radios, their brutish familiars are ever at their beck and call. At all cost the saboteurs must not be allowed to obtain footage of illegal hunting.

The Countryside Alliance cannot fail to be aware of what is happening, yet there is no condemnation of the hunters’ bullying tactics. In fact, what is happening is a closing of ranks whilst the mouthpieces for that organisation attempt to vilify and negate the monitors and saboteurs.  The pro hunting press are only too willing to print scurrilous accusations of the supposedly unwashed, punk era sabs who, they say, only go out because they hate to see ‘Toffs’  having a good time. Of course this is nonsense, and with very little effort, anyone can do an Internet search on hunt havoc and see for themselves who are the real bully boys.

Animal bullies usually like hurting people too, and who better upon which to vent their aggression than a small group of ordinary men and women, some of whom are pensioners, who give up their free time to help the UK’s persecuted wildlife. The pro hunt lobby tries hard to label their opposition as terrorists whilst seeking to blacken the animal rights movement as a whole. A commentator for the Countryside Alliance even inferred that those against hunting don’t care about the animals, they are just looking for a fight.

With the hunting set it is black or white, and they truly believe they have a God given right to slaughter animals at will. Yet it’s hard to believe they are so blinkered as to not see the anomalies in their own propaganda. It is the hunts themselves who cause the mayhem, it is they who provoke and start fights. The foot followers and quad bike riders act as hunting’s private army.

This is the reality, this is what is happening out there in the British countryside today. The scurrilous attacks on social media are nothing short of libellous at times. People who are against hunting are regularly labelled paedophiles, fundamentalists, jobless scroungers, dirty thieves and even psychopaths. Face Book pages have been set up specifically to harass and intimidate. Whilst in the background the Countryside Alliance keeps up a steady stream of bilge with the sole intention of portraying the hunters as innocent victims of abuse and the sabs and monitors as the villains of the piece. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It would seem the BBC is not above a bit of pro hunting support either. The recent Country File programme was heavily biased in favour of the hunting chocolate box image. It was suggested in more than one quarter that the programme makers were warned about showing hunting as it really is if they wished for cooperation in making future programmes.

So, where does all this leave the issue of hunting with hounds? Ten years later and the fanatical animal killers are not going away any time soon. They try hard to make their sport wholesome but who honestly will believe that cornering a cowering, terrified fox and watching while it is torn to shreds is anything other than gross animal abuse. The sabs and monitors are in it for the long haul too and no matter what lies are told about them, or what physical and verbal intimidation they endure, they go out in their own time, using their own resources to save animals from callous, fanatical barbarians who are not above channelling their cruelty onto other humans too.

Resources
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=838089872915115&set=vb.568176806573091&&theater

http://www.westerngazette.co.uk/Police-probe-attack-hunt-clashes-Sherborne/story-26021643-detail/story.html

http://www.westerngazette.co.uk/Hunt-saboteur-demands-CPS-reinvestigates-case/story-26059116-detail/story.html

http://www.aminoritypastime.net/

https://nwhsa.wordpress.com/