Appealing - for justice, commonsense and our way of life.

Letter Writing Everyone will have seen or displayed the Alliance placards reading ‘Fight Prejudice. Fight the Ban’. Recent weeks have shown just how true that slogan is, and how much prejudice governs the media attitude to hunting. The Countryside Alliance are constantly asking all hunting supporters to engage with local public opinion and write to their local newspaper whenever hunting issues are raised. If you live in Somerset, or simply don’t read the North Devon Journal, then you may have missed the following exchange of letters. It all started with a gentleman from Bideford who is well-known for his anti-hunting views, writing to the Journal and suggesting that the police should be doing much more to police hunts to ensure that the law is being followed. I answered his letter with the following, which was published 14th September. Dear Sir Surely Mr HVF Winstone (Letters 31st August) cannot be serious when he suggests that our overstretched police force should be devoting more time to driving around the countryside trying to check that hunts are complying with a law which is a close runner for the title ‘Most ridiculous law of the past 100 years’? The Hunting Act 2004 makes it illegal for you and your dog to hunt a mouse , but alright for you to allow it to hunt a rabbit or a rat. You must train your dog to distinguish between rabbits and hares, since it is illegal to chase a hare. If the hare is wounded by shooting however, then it is legal. But woe betide you if you try to hunt a fox wounded by shooting, because that is illegal! You must not chase a squirrel out of your garden with a dog, and it is illegal to chase away deer or foxes with dogs unless you shoot them as soon as they are flushed from cover. If you cannot see the deer or fox, then you can wait until you can do so before shooting it, as any responsible person would, but you may be breaking the law because someone else in a different vantage point may have seen it and a court may rule that it has already been ‘flushed’ and therefore should have been shot immediately. Is anyone still convinced that the police should be spending more time on this law? Come on, Mr Winstone! You know as well as most reasonable people that the Hunting Act was nothing to do with animal welfare, and everything to do with spite and prejudice. There is little argument about the fact that quarry species are much worse off in welfare terms without hunting than they would have been with it. I am sure I am not alone in wanting to see police dealing with violence, theft, and terrorism and yobbery rather than allocating the formidable manpower which would be necessary to monitor hunts which are doing their utmost to comply with a bizarre law. Yours sincerely, Tony Dunn On 21st September, a weekly columnist in the Journal who writes under the name of ‘The Smuggler’ made the following comments, under the headline ‘ Hunting: Why would the quarry be better off with it?’ ‘Of course we all know the Hunting Act has nothing to do with animal welfare and everything to do with spite and prejudice’ So says Tony Dunn in last week’s letter page. So says, I would intimate, someone with years of ‘good breeding’ and not an ounce of intellect. ‘There is’, Mr Dunn suggests, ‘little argument about the fact the quarry species are much worse off in welfare terms without hunting’. Now, you might prefer to accept that God made all creatures, or that they may have progressed along the lines of Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection. Nowhere in either of these hypotheses does it suggest there is a ‘quarry species’. This would be a peculiar breed of animal, put on earth for the sole purpose of being hunted down and killed. Is it also a possibility that Mr Dunn is suggesting that chasing such an animal with a pack of dogs and tearing it to pieces is actually in the best interest of the creature’s wellbeing? I have a nasty feeling these people have their heads so far up their own bottoms they can no longer separate the facts from their own specious fictions. ‘   This was war! So I replied with the following, published 5th October: Dear Sir, I would like to reply to ‘Smuggler’s’ insulting comments about me and my earlier letter concerning hunting with hounds and the absurd Hunting Act 2004, made in his column on Sept. 21st. He knows nothing about me or my lineage or education. Yet he feels free to make the comment that he considers me to have years of ‘good breeding’ and ‘not an ounce of intellect’. He uses an out-dated, mythical idea of a ‘typical’ hunting person. From his position of profound ignorance he seems unaware that most people who keep horses to hunt on Exmoor come from a wide variety of backgrounds. They often give up much in order to keep a horse. I know of some who don’t take the almost mandatory annual holiday, plenty who drive old vehicles, many with poorly paid jobs. They keep a horse and hunt because they love horses, hounds and the magical fusion of these creatures with nature and the countryside which hunting provides, and take pleasure in the fact that they are both enjoying themselves and contributing to the necessary control of a pest species, and the beneficial role of the hunt in rural communities. From the shelter of his weekly column, ‘Smuggler’ makes one wonder if he ever gets out of Ilfracombe onto Exmoor and the countryside on his doorstep, upon which he obviously feels qualified to express an ‘informed’ opinion. If he did get out, he may have noticed a few red and green placards around with the words ‘Fight Prejudice, Fight the Ban’. This, of course, refers to the bigotry of a majority of Labour MPs who voted in the Hunting Act. Like Smuggler, ‘toffs on horses’ were a suitable minority group on which to vent their spleen and inadequacy. . I was talking about hunting to an enthusiastic Frenchman walking the Two Moors Way the other day . He asked me if I was a ‘lord’ because he thought only aristocrats hunted in England! His ignorance was forgivable and amusing: Smuggler’s prejudice is altogether darker, and falls into a different category. Indeed, I fully expect a future column of his to start making claims that all foreigners are criminals! Some people, of course, will take issue with my comments, but I suggest Smuggler’s blind prejudice on the question of the sort of people who go hunting perfectly demonstrates the comments on the placards. Actually, I do have years of ‘good breeding’: but from an impeccable working class background! I went to sea as a sixteen-year old, and am a Master Mariner by profession, working for many years in a multi-national environment where people were judged for themselves and not by stereotypes, or speech or ’breeding’. I happen to have spent several years studying at a couple of Universities and have a Master of Arts degree in Literature, and other academic qualifications. So I think it’s really a case of Smuggler=Nil, Tony Dunn=game, set, and match! . And hunting supporters will keep fighting until this grossly illiberal law is repealed. Yours sincerely Tony Dunn   So, that is the situation to date. Hopefully, I do hope all this will inspire a few others to put pen to paper and show the general public that there are plenty of us hunting supporters out here! Letters should be no more than 400 words, and you will find it better to try to deal with only one or two points you wish to make in each letter. Write to: North Devon Journal, Avery House, Liberty Rd, Roundswell Business Park, Barnstaple, EX31 3TL , or e-mail letters@northdevonjournal.co.uk Letters sent by e-mail must include a postal address.