News Round-Up (14th Feb 2021)
Leaked documents reveal an industry in decay
Recent news has been largely dominated by Hunting Leaks, a website publishing internal documents from hunts and other hunting organisations.
STOP THE PRESS
As this newsletter is being finalised, ITV News announced that police have charged Mark Hankinson following his involvement with the leaked Hunting Office webinars. Hankinson is head of the Master of Foxhounds Association.
Hunting Leaks
Spinning off from anti-cull website Innocent Badger, the website has published approximately two sets of documents a week. On 5th January 2021, Hunting Leaks first revealed minutes and other documents from the Mendip Farmers Hunt (MFH). These provided extensive insight into the financial situation of the hunt including discussion in minutes from November 2020 of possibly selling the hunt’s bungalow to cover its ongoing costs. June 2020 minutes talked about, among other things, the number of hounds leaving the MFH’s pack that season. It is rare for this type of information to reach the public and The Citro covered it in an article about hunts killing hounds.
Perhaps the most significant outcome of the leaks so far came from the revelation that MFH supplies stewards to Glastonbury Festival. Innocent Badger explained:
We understand that the thousands of pounds they usually earn from the Glastonbury festival is from working as stewards… This year’s Glastonbury festival is rumoured to be called off, but should it go ahead, if stewards start being questioned about their involvement in fox hunting, then Michael Eavis only has himself to blame for employing violent nutters in the first place.
This news apparently reached Eavis. On 14th January, ITV News reported that Eavis had banned the MFH from “fundraising activities” at Glastonbury Festival.
A month later, on 3rd February, Hunting Leaks published minutes from a September 2018 meeting of pro-hunting group This is Hunting UK (TiHUK). It reveals financial problems at the core of the group, including “nearly £7,000 [that] had been taken from funds by a colleague”, a matter “under investigation by the police”. At least £200 had been intended for a child’s memorial fund. TiHUK’s meeting also discussed tensions between it and other hunting groups including the most senior body, the Hunting Office. Minutes say TiHUK’s members believe the Hunting Office’s proposed restrictions on TiHUK’s activities would leave it “‘gagged’ and severely restricted”.
On 19th January, Bath Hunt Saboteurs highlighted Jonathon Seed’s campaign to be Wiltshire’s Police and Crimes Commissioner (PCC). Other local sab groups including Wiltshire Hunt Sabs have since led an online campaign against Seed due to his history with fox hunting. The candidate was at one point a joint master of the Avon Vale Hunt. In 2013, Seed was one of five men that went to court following a dig out of a badger sett. Two of the five were prosecuted for interfering with a sett while allegedly “trying to rescue a terrier”, after which the case was dropped.
The campaign against Seed was boosted after Hunting Leaks’s publication of the TiHUK documents. Seed is listed in these in the minutes as a regional co-ordinator for the hunting group. Wiltshire Hunt Sabs said that this doesn’t appear on Seed’s November 2018 register of interests and is therefore a “failure to adhere to the councils core principles”. The PCC elections will take place alongside local elections on 6th May 2021.
Seed isn’t the only public servant that’s caused a commotion. Nick Herbert was appointed chair of the College of Policing on 14th January. But, as The Citro recently detailed, Herbert’s history with hunting started in his youth and continues today. Police monitoring group Netpol highlighted how this may be a “conflict of interest”:
Hunting and shooting during lockdown
Although hunting in the UK is on a hiatus due to the Covid-19 situation, news from the fields continues emerging. On 14th January, News & Star reported that Cumbria Police were appealing for more information about illegal hunting in Threlkeld, near Keswick. The incident took place on Boxing Day 2020, and the Hunt Saboteurs Association claimed that the Blencathra Foxhounds were responsible.
A couple of days later on 16th January, South Coast Hunt Sabs said shooting estate staff had attacked members of its group. The group said it was following a tip-off from a member of the public when sabs were attacked, including one left with concussion. It isn’t the only shoot that appears to have gone ahead despite contravening lockdown guidance. On 21st January, East Kent Sabs said it attended a driven gamebird shoot with at least ten vehicles present. Phoning the police, the group were told that the “activity is legal” although no further clarification was given. And on 29th January, Beds & Bucks Hunt Sabs said it attended and broke up a “small” shoot near the Gaddesden Estate, Hemel Hempstead.
20th January saw two equally grim stories come to light. The Canary reported that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped a case concerning the Cotswold Hunt. On 21st October 2020, Three Counties Hunt Saboteurs captured hounds chasing what it described as a “young and clearly terrified fox”. The Canary said later footage showed a man “carrying what looks like the dead fox cub”, and said the case was dropped because the CPS “just wasn’t interested”. On the same day, the HSA published footage it said shows terriermen from the Grove and Rufford Hunt using an artificial earth during a meet on 12th December 2020. Speaking to the Independent, a spokesperson for the hunt said “hunt representatives” were “carrying out exempt hunting activities relating to the use of one dog below ground to protect game birds for shooting”.
Mendip Hunt Sabs provided a sliver of good news, though. On 25th January the group said the courts found Mendip Farmers Hunt supporter Christopher Hurden guilty of “aggressively grabbing” a sab’s mask and causing “irreparable damage” to a camera. The sab group stated that:
Hurden was given a one year conditional discharge and ordered to pay our sabs £150 compensation, along with £200 court fees.
Across the water, Hunt Sabs Ireland reported on 7th February that local police fined an unregistered foxhunt in Castlecomer, County Kilkenney, after it killed a “beloved family fox”. Several members of the hunt were fined a total of €2500 for breaking Covid-19 restrictions.
Cull figures and law changes
A number of legal changes have also been announced recently. On 15th January, the Telegraph reported that long-anticipated reforms to trespass law would be announced the following week. The reform concerns the government’s March 2020 Strengthening police powers to tackle unauthorised encampments consultation. They are expected to create a new law of ‘intentional trespass’ that criminalises the otherwise civil offence of trespass, specifically when an “encampment” is created. The Telegraph quoted a Home Office source as saying:
We are delivering on our manifesto commitment to crackdown on the blight of unauthorised encampments.
However, at the time of this article’s publication, the government hadn’t yet made the announcement.
The three days from 27th to 29th January also brought three major announcements. First was the release of figures from the 2020 badger cull. Badger expert Rosie Woodroffe said the government’s data showed “at least 38,642 badgers” were culled:
These figures were published as environment minister George Eustice said there would be no more new culls after 2022. But this news echoed a similar announcement made in March 2020, leading Derbyshire Against the Cull to describe the 2022 announcement as a “smokescreen”.
On 28th January, the Scottish government said the killing of mountain hares would need to be licensed from March 2021. This replaces the previous August-to-February open season. The law originally went through Holyrood following a campaign by Green MSP Alison Johnstone in June 2020. Anti-grouse shooting group Revive Coalition said at the time that “common sense had prevailed”.
And on the following day, DEFRA announced its intention to ban burning on “protected blanket bog habitats”. Curtailing this activity will affect the grouse shooting industry, though to what extent is uncertain. RaptorPersecutionUK collated writer and activist Guy Shrubsole’s analysis of how few estates are likely to be impacted thanks to the wording of the law. As bird expert Mark Avery pointed out, this is due to the law stipulating an apparently arbitrary definition of “deep peat”.
Mystery ending
Finally, something of a mystery. On 31st January, South Wales Hunt Sabs posted that the Brecon & Talybont Hunt had ‘gone missing’ from its kennels. The group said it had found the hunt kennels “empty, the house derelict and the huntsman gone”.
ITV News reported on 9th February that hunting appears to be “running out of money”. This was based on September 2020 minutes from the Master of Foxhounds Association published by Hunting Leaks. Perhaps the Brecon & Talybont Hunt will be the first of many to falter under the weight of Covid-19 restrictions.
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Headline image via A Minority Pastime