‘Hunt saboteurs threaten us and pick on our children, but the police refuse to scrutinise them’

The debate around trail hunting is already deeply divisive – now accusations of ‘two-tier policing’ could further inflame tensions

Up and down the country on Saturday, horses, hounds and humans turned out for what hunt enthusiasts heralded as “the day we begin to change minds”. The 27 hunt events nationwide did not involve actual fox hunting, which was outlawed two decades ago. Instead, National Trail Hunting Day was held to showcase a legal (for now) alternative, in which a trail layer on foot, horse or quad bike puts down an animal-based scent for the dogs to follow; often by dragging a sock or cloth along the ground. The idea is to simulate a traditional hunt, minus the live foxes. 
Depending on whom you speak to, either huge numbers attended at the weekend, or hardly anyone did. “Probably 30,000 [people] up and down the country turned out to support [it],” says Oliver Hughes, managing director of the British Hound Sport Association (BHSA), which organised it.
“The Great British public stayed away in their millions,” trumpeted the Hunt Saboteurs Association. 
Such contrasting versions of events are typical in the debate around trail hunting, which opponents claim is a smokescreen for illegal fox hunting – and which Labour has said it will ban as part of a drive to improve animal welfare (though it was not mentioned in the King’s Speech, and a date for any legislation has yet to be set). 
On the other side of the fence (sometimes literally) is the BHSA, which naturally rejects the smokescreen label.
Treading the line between the two camps are police tasked with enforcing the hunting ban introduced by Labour in 2004 – while also dealing with any saboteurs straying outside of the law. 
Now, an already heated conflict has become hotter with an intervention by former defence secretary and hunt aficionado Ben Wallace, who has taken issue with previous comments by Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Matthew Longman, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) lead on hunting with hounds crime. After Longman described trail hunting as a “smokescreen for continuing illegal hunting”, Wallace returned fire, saying Longman “should be removed” if he can’t police without fear or favour. 
In comments published by The Times, Wallace also complained that there’s “a sense of two-tier policing” in the countryside, with hunt saboteurs allegedly treated with undue leniency. Their “thuggery” is going unchallenged, claimed Wallace, who joined the board of the BHSA after stepping down from his ministerial role. 
In response to Wallace’s comments, Longman counters that policing is already being led without fear or favour: “In this instance, without the favour around expectations offered by the hunting community and without fear of senior figures repeatedly calling for the removal of police leaders.”
What officers are doing now, he says, is “levelling [the] playing field” by properly policing hunts that have for years broken the law by failing to control their dogs and other offences.
This is “putting unfamiliar pressure on hunts to stop any breaking of the laws”. But, he argues officers still lack “sufficiently sharp enough powers” to police hunt criminals – comments that may do little to calm the tensions.
“I think the police obviously have a very difficult job and they have to police it for everybody,” says Hughes, taking a somewhat more diplomatic tone. “The saboteurs regularly turn up clad in black, wearing balaclavas, looking very threatening, and it’s felt they don’t get quite as much pressure or inspection from the police as the hunts do.”
The saboteurs’ tactics include filming children and putting “pretty unpleasant comments” about them on social media, he says. But he acknowledges there have been arrests on both sides. Last year, hunt saboteur Paul Allman was branded a “danger to the public” by a judge and jailed after confronting the Wynnstay Hunt in Cheshire before striking two hunt supporters.
“It’s fair to say [saboteurs] are stopped from time to time, but there is a lot of pressure on the hunts,” says Hughes.
There have been about 25 convictions of people on BHSA-accredited hunts in the past two decades, he says. However, this relatively low number masks what some hunt followers feel is a sense of hostility towards them among the police.
“The police seem to call into question the hunts quite regularly. Quite often it doesn’t go any further than questioning, but that’s quite a disturbing thing for someone who’s never had it done,” says Hughes. “We’re not sure the saboteurs face quite the same grilling.”
The saboteurs, as might be expected, take a very different view. Simon Russell, chairman of the Hunt Saboteurs Association, calls Wallace’s comments “laughable”. There certainly has been two-tier policing of hunting for decades, he says, but with hunt followers, rather than saboteurs, benefiting. “Hunts [have been] given free range to break the law before and after the ban,” he says, “they’re constantly involved in illegalities; whether it’s under the hunting ban or assaults of our members. The police rarely turn up at hunts since the ban, so they don’t enforce it.”
In 2019, the Belvoir Hunt in Leicestershire paid almost £50,000 to two hunt monitors from the League Against Cruel Sports, who were attacked while filming their activities in 2016. 
Meanwhile, Russell claims the assaults on his own group’s members are “constant and regular”, and that they are under-reported and under-investigated by police.
As for the rights and wrongs of trail hunting, the question is again fiercely contested. Opponents say it results in hounds actively pursuing the trails of live animals and that it puts horses and dogs at risk too, as they can end up straying onto railway lines or busy roads. 
The Countryside Alliance is among those to defend the sport. Polly Portwin, director of the campaign for hunting at the organisation, warns that Labour’s manifesto pledge to ban it “would be bad for rural communities”. “It’s a big part of life for a lot of people,” she says. “We know we’re not a huge community, but it’s an important community; it’s close-knit, and [trail hunting] is a lifeline for many.”
It’s too soon to know how many minds were in fact changed by Saturday’s open day. But if Labour’s ban goes ahead, it’s clear they will have strong feelings to contend with in the British countryside.