With the Labour Party now taking time to reflect on the reasons it lost so disastrously at the general election, it might be a good time for the party to also re-examine its support for the Hunting Act.
For decades, the abolition of hunting has been part of the Left’s campaign and yet few have paused to really question the wisdom of this stance. I did. As a former executive director of the League Against Cruel Sports I am just one of a number of people who worked for that organisation who have changed their minds on the validity of the anti-hunt case.
Shortly after the end of the Second World War, some Labour politicians sought to outlaw hunting with dogs. The votes were lost, despite Labour having a massive majority. Instead of a ban, Atlee’s government commissioned an inquiry into activities involving wild animals, resulting in the definitive Report of the Committee on Cruelty to Wild Animals. Rightly, the committee did not examine hunting in isolation and recommended the banning of the gin trap, which was eventually outlawed in 1958 in England and Wales. But importantly the report found that organised hunting made an important contribution to the control of wild animals and did not recommend a ban on hunting with dogs, which was seen as causing no more suffering than that which wild animals may face in nature. Another reason was that it could not be shown that the alternative methods of control were more humane.
Nothing has changed since that time apart from the claims of anti-hunting groups, who are always keen to tell us all what they dislike, but rarely what they support. During the run-up to the Hunting Act, shooting was reluctantly put forward as the ‘humane alternative’. Yet when it comes to the badger cull, shooting was seen as cruel by Labour’s shadow DEFRA team. It cannot be the case that badgers feel pain but foxes don’t and it doesn’t take much thought to see through such duplicity.
