Today sees the Festival of Hunting Hounds coming to Peterborough. For decades, this event was known as Festival of Hunting but – as so often in the hunting world – language has been manipulated to hide their real intent.
The event will be held at the East of England Showground, despite the East of England Agricultural Society previously closing down the site for events, due to the site being redeveloped for 1,500 new homes and a leisure centre. However, there was never any doubt that the Festival of Hounds would be allowed to use the showground, as the landowner is heavily involved in hunting. Described as a “patch of scruffy wasteland just next to the A1” by Peterborough Hunt Sabs, it is in fact owned by the Fitzwilliam Hunt.
The land is leased to the East England Agricultural Society but the land registry shows the land owner to be Milton Estates (Fitzwilliam). Surprisingly, it does not appear on any of the high court injunction paperwork regularly used by the Fitzwilliam in an attempt to hunt on their own land without sab scrutiny.
Today marks the 137th year of the event, despite hunting with hounds being banned 20 years ago. However, this will be the last Festival held in Peterborough, and depending on the forthcoming consultation to be held in Parliament, predicted to be this autumn, we hope there will not be many more of these events.
Unsurprisingly, the Festival hasn’t gone down well with locals. In local press, the posts on their social media have received negative comments about the event and hunting in general. Obviously the Countryside Alliance have tried to put a positive spin on this sham, promoting hound and equine activities, such as inter-hunt relays – but after twenty years of deception the public are just not buying it.
Temperatures are reported to reach 24°C today so exercising hundreds of hounds in the full sun all day is not ideal, but animal welfare has never been high on their list of priorities. It really does feel like some last-ditch desperation from the hunting community.
To give the event even less credibility, just over a week ago at Peterborough Magistrates, a member of the Fitzwilliam hunt was convicted of illegal fox hunting. The Whipper-In Jacob Whalley, pleaded guilty under Section 1 of the ‘Hunting Act’, making this the fourth Fitzwilliam conviction for illegal hunting. Huntsman Parish returns to court in November to face charges connected to the same incident. On three of these occasions, the evidence leading to the convictions was gathered by hunt sabs.
How much longer must be put up with this farce? We can’t answer that for definite, but we can guarantee the Hunt Saboteurs Association will be there until the bitter end.
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