THEY HAVE ‘BALLS’: Fox hunters demand ‘minority’ protection from animal rights groups
The campaign group 'Hunting Kind' claims that people who are pro-hunting are actually a minority group who should be protected by law from animal rights activists. They cite examples of 'balls' being cancelled due to pressure from animal rights campaigners, hunts being sabotaged, and hunters facing issues with employment. Becoming a protected group would make it illegal for employers or venues providing services to discriminate against someone for having a pro-hunting stance.
ABAGAIL BUCHANAN: Under the UK’s 2010 Equality Act, discrimination on the basis of characteristics including age, sex, religion or belief – including pacifism and ethical veganism – is illegal.
Ed Swales, a robust, 55-year-old former Army captain from rural Northumberland, does not appear to qualify on any of the above but now the culture wars have reached the countryside, he might. Swales has mounted a legal campaign to make fox hunting a protected characteristic.
Swales has spent three years gathering evidence to argue that people who are pro-hunting are actually a minority group who should be protected by law. He has also suggested that hunters could be given “intangible cultural heritage” status by UNESCO based on recognition of the community’s spoken word and oral tradition.
“We’re actually as much, if not more, ‘animal people’ than the animal rights activists,” he says. “We live it, eat it, breathe it and sleep it – it’s our life. It’s not just some sort of weird hobby.”
This is red meat to anti-hunting protesters who argue fox hunting is cruel, violent and unnecessary. BBC presenter Chris Packham was among the first to comment, taking to X, formerly known as Twitter to ask his followers: “What shall we call them – I’ll go first: ‘barbaric savages’”. In a subsequent post, Packham vowed to fight against it and called it an “outright insult”…
Becoming a protected group, like Roma travellers or the LGBTQ+ community, would make it illegal for employers or venues providing services to discriminate against someone for having a pro-hunting stance. Swales’ campaign group, Hunting Kind, is now looking for test cases to take to court…
Where Swales lives in north Northumberland is rural and remote, so he says he has never directly encountered the type of discrimination he hears others face in more populated areas. However, he cites examples of balls being cancelled due to pressure from animal rights campaigners, hunts being sabotaged, and hunters facing issues with employment.
“They have horrendous problems,” he says, “Vehicles have been smashed up and had the windows smashed, the tyres slashed, we’ve had hounds kidnapped – stolen, never to be seen again.” Some animal rights groups qualify as “extremists, without a doubt,” he says. “They should be on the watch list of MI5″…
Hunting Kind has drawn up a philosophical belief system, which states that “humanity has a responsibility of stewardship towards the countryside and for sustainable wildlife management.” Additionally, they believe that “natural and traditional hunting with animals for pest control and wildlife management is sustainable, ecologically sensitive, naturally selective and humane”…
If you are in any doubt as to what that “perceived class of people” is, one citizen journalist who posted a riposte to Hunting Kind’s campaign described Swales as “a man who appears to believe that an overabundance of red trousers [qualifies] him and his merry band of killers as cultural pioneers”. SOURCE…
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