Saboteurs protest after hunt ban is rejected by charity
The Times
8 November 1993
Michael Hornsby
Huntsmen and saboteurs clashed in a spate of angry scenes at the weekend after members of the National Trust voted overwhelmingly against a ban on hunting on the 580,000 acres owned by the charity.
The vote in London coincided with the announcement by Michael Howard, the home secretary, that two criminal offences are to be created aimed at hunt saboteurs. Obstructing a hunt will become an offence punishable by three months' imprisonment and a รบ2,500 fine. Mr Howard said the change in the law was justified by the increase in threatening behaviour by animal-rights militants.
Yesterday saboteurs tried to rescue a fox which had been tracked by the Hampshire hunt to a hedgerow about half a mile from the road at Bighton near New Alresford, Hampshire. A confrontation between hunters and protesters ensued with the animal in the middle. The saboteurs summoned the RSPCA who took the fox away for veterinary examination. It was later humanely destroyed.
John Gray, the joint master of the Ropley-based Hampshire hunt, said last night: "It was a foolhardy thing to have taken the fox from the hounds. The saboteurs were very unkind to the fox and caused it more pain than if it had been left. Another two seconds with the hounds and it would have been killed outright. They ran the risk of being badly bitten."
Other incidents involving saboteurs were reported at hunts in Lancashire, Oxfordshire and Hertfordshire.
However, the National Trust, Britain's biggest private landowner, remains the prime target of anti-hunt campaigners. The trust is committed to holding a special meeting next spring to debate whether to hold an enquiry into deer-hunting.
A separate move is afoot to force the trust's ruling council to call an extraordinary general meeting, to debate a resolution calling for a postal referendum of the trust's two million members on whether all hunting on trust land should be banned.
At their annual meeting on Saturday, held at the Wembley Conference Centre, trust members voted by 100,723 to 29,722 to leave "the ethical and moral issues of hunting to be determined by Parliament". Angus Stirling, the trust's director-general, hailed the result as an "overwhelming endorsement" of the council's "neutral" policy on hunting.
The resolution's sponsors included Dame Jennifer Jenkins, a former chairman of the trust, Simon Jenkins, a former editor of The Times, Chris Bonington, the mountaineer, and Sir Denis Forman, the former chairman of Granada Television.
Peter Jackson, a former Labour MP and an anti-hunting member of the council, said yesterday he was confident of securing by Christmas the 1,100 signatures needed to force the council to hold a general meeting to debate a demand for a postal ballot on hunting. "The fact is that the council is not neutral because it is flying in the face of overwhelming public opinion by allowing hunting on its land."
Speakers at the meeting complained that "single-issue fanatics" were trying to hijack and bully the trust into banning hunting. But others argued that the trust was in breach of its duty to conserve wildlife by allowing hunting.
Lord Chorley, the trust's chairman, said he wished the anti-hunting lobby would now desist from its campaign, which was using time and money that the charity could better devote to other things.
