© 2024 Hunt Saboteurs Association
Yesterday we heard of the passing of former Labour deputy leader and anti-hunt campaigner John Prescott. The former deputy Prime Minister was one of the driving forces behind the passing of the Hunting Act 2004 bill twenty years ago, almost to the day
In the lead up to the 2001 General Election, John Prescott found himself on the election trail in Rhyl, North Wales. As he stepped off his campaign bus, he was confronted by a rowdy Countryside Alliance-organised protest. As he walked through the hostile crowd he was struck in the head by an egg thrown by Craig Evans, a farm worker and hunt supporter from LLangynhafal, Denbighshire.
Prescott retaliated by punching Evans in the face – a now infamous scene regularly replayed in the media. A scuffle broke out, before police arrested and handcuffed Evans, though no charges were ever brought against him.
That wasn’t the only violence carried out as part of the campaign against a hunting ban. On September 15th 2004, the day that the Hunting Act was to be voted on, the Countryside Alliance organised a protest at Parliament Square.
Violent scenes erupted as thousands of Countryside Alliance protesters clashed with the police, the pro-hunt supporters hurling missiles at police lines, police officers responding with batons drawn as the protesters tried to storm Parliament.
At least 29 pro-hunting protesters were later arrested, to much anger from the Countryside Alliance. A memo from Stepen Lambert, chairman of the Council for Hunting Association – a body linked to the Countryside Alliance, boasted that they had ‘got away with it’.
Whilst the shocking violence continued outside, eight protesters managed to get inside the House of Commons in an attempt to stop the free vote on the Hunting Act. Among them was hunting extremist Otis Ferry – son of singer and songwriter Bryan Ferry – later to become huntsman and joint master of the South Shropshire Hunt. After storming the House of Commons, the debate was stopped after members of the security staff feared the Commons was under terrorist attack. However, their attempts were futile, after their arrests the vote continued and the Hunting Act was passed.
On May 26th 2005, all eight were found guilty of violating the Public Order Act and handed a measly 18-months conditional discharge, and ordered to pay £350 costs each. Otis Ferry would later be convicted and spend four months remanded in custody in relation to an incident of assault and robbery of anti-hunting activists who were filming his hunt.
The year before the vote took place, 30,000 hunt members signed a pledge that they would break the law if fox hunting was banned.
Leading up to the vote, Maurice Askew, on the board of directors of the Countryside Alliance and a master of the Barlow Hunt, was quoted as saying:
”We are fighting for liberty and freedom. My warning for Mr Blair is that if he does not listen to us there will be a civil war in this country, the likes we have never seen since the days of Cromwell and Fairfax.”
And in September 2004, dead horses and cows were dumped on the streets of Brighton, where the Labour Party conference was taking place.
Ahead of the 2024 General Election, the Labour manifesto pledged to ban so-called ‘trail hunting’, to close the loopholes that have allowed fox hunting to continue and to finally finish off the job that John Prescott helped start in 2004.
And while illegal hunting has continued, so has violence from hunters. Last month a thug from the Cottesmore Hunt plead guilty to 5 counts of assault by beating, and on the same day that John Prescott passed away, a sab was beaten and had cameras stolen by the terriermen of the Mendip Farmers Hunt after she came across them ‘digging out.’
It’s now over to the Labour government to end this criminality and stop the hunting of wild animals as should have happened in 2004. But it raises the question, will we see more violence and criminality instigated from the pro-hunting lobby groups?
Together we can end hunting for good!
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