© 2024 Hunt Saboteurs Association
On Thursday 26th September, Warwickshire Police and Crime Commissioner Philip Seccombe announced that someone had been appointed to carry out the independent review into Warwickshire Police and fox hunting. The very next day the Chief Constable Debbie Tedds handed in her resignation.
From the moment the Community Protection Notice (CPN) against the Warwickshire Hunt was dropped by Warwickshire Police days before it was due in court and replaced with a secret protocol, West Midlands Hunt Saboteurs began a long and relentless campaign for truth, transparency and justice.
The CPN was issued to the Warwickshire Hunt after they ignored a previous warning about their antisocial use of public roads. The evidence stretched back years, including footage of them hunting across busy main roads, hounds running out in front of oncoming vehicles, weaving in and out of traffic and vehicles having to perform emergency stops.
West Mids Hunt Sabs led the public backlash against the decision to bypass due process and replace the CPN with a secret protocol which to this day Warwickshire Police have refused to publish. West Mids Sabs obtained and published a copy of the protocol which enabled the Warwickshire Hunt to not only break the law but avoid getting caught after Warwickshire Police had agreed to warn the hunt an hour before they intended to show up at any hunt meet
The campaign initially focused on Philip Seccombe’s membership of the Countryside Alliance and the obvious conflict of interest that created. Seccombe has repeatedly denied any involvement or undue influence over the decision to drop the CPN. A denial that many people did not believe, Seccombe’s huge 40,000 majority was slashed to just 261 after he was narrowly re-elected in May 2024.
West Mids Sabs got their followers and the local community involved, flooding Warwickshire Police with Freedom of Information requests in an attempt to achieve some transparency. However, some of these were refused whilst the rest of the requests were ignored completely.
Warwick and Leamington MP Matt Western also got involved in the issue, writing letters to both Seccombe and Tedds asking for transparency. After not getting any answers he then wrote to the Home Secretary who also refused to answer. Finally, he raised the issue in Parliament.
Meanwhile West Mids Sabs kept the issue alive with new articles in the local press appearing every few weeks. The press campaign culminated in an expose on Channel 4 News in which Debbie Tedds refused to take part and where Police Chief Matthew Longman described the policing of hunting as “one of the most farcical eras in criminal justice history”. In a follow up piece on Channel 4 News MP Matt Western accused Warwickshire Police of a ‘cover up’
With their credibility in tatters the secret protocol was quietly dropped with Warwickshire Police claiming it was only ever intended to last a year.
More recently West Mids Sabs published screenshots showing that the daughter of Chief Constable Tedds has an extensive list of friends on social media who are fox hunters, including masters from two separate hunts; the Bicester Hunt with Whaddon Chase and (surprise, surprise) the Warwickshire Hunt. Despite the spotlight being on them the Warwickshire Hunt have arrogantly carried on as they would have pre-ban and as a result have found themselves being charged as a corporate body after Three Counties Hunt Saboteurs filmed them killing a fox.
Having a Chief Constable whose daughter is friends with the people in charge of an organisation due in court on criminal charges and who have previously been given a get out of jail free card by the police only adds to the perception of a biased two-tier policing system.
It speaks volumes that the day after Secoombe, in a bid to salvage his own reputation, launched his independent review into the policing of hunting that the Chief Constable should hand in her resignation.
There are still many questions that need to be answered and it remains to be seen how “independent” this review actually is. It is also still down to Philip Seccombe to choose Tedds’ replacement. However, this is a chance for Warwickshire Police to press the reset button on how they approach the policing of fox hunting.
A spokesperson for West Midlands Hunt Saboteurs said
“Tedds has clearly jumped before she was pushed, before all the awkward questions are asked by the review, before she has to reveal the contents of the secret protocol and her role in it. We won’t stop asking those questions and demanding truth, justice and transparency for our wildlife”
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