Sheep magazine archive 1: issues 3-9

26
A perspective from a West Midland
Hunt Saboteur on fox hunting,
policing and the state.
When I was a teenager I remember
coming across an Animal Rights stall
and picking up a leaflet on fox hunting.
I always remembered thinking that the
idea of killing an animal for anything was
immoral but to think people organised
on a weekly basis to go out with a pack
of hounds to chase and disembowel a
sentient being for ‘sport’ was just barbaric.
How can we ever call ourselves a civilised
society when we still allow bloodsports?
The fact that we have a hunting act set
in criminal law shows that the majority of
people do think bloodsports are abhorrent
and have no place in modern society so
a benchmark has been set by the hunting
act it just needs strengthening to stop these
numerous accidents from occurring.
The first hunt I went to was with the
Oxfordshire hunt monitors to the Bicester
hunt. I remember thinking how aggressive
the atmosphere was and how many people
on horses with hounds all to terrorise a
sentient wild animal. The first time I heard
hounds in cry sent a shiver down my back.
I knew from the first time I went out that
this was something that I wanted: to try
and help stop-fox hunting.
I went out with the hunt monitors for a
while who, although they do a fantastic
job gathering evidence for prosecutions,
wasn’t enough. I wanted to go directly
into the field to try and help the hunted
fox from being ripped apart.
With this in mind, I got in touch with the
Hunt Saboteurs Association to see how
I could get involved. I was put in touch
with folks from Birmingham and have
never looked back.
From working full time in my local
community I began to see how the
world can be so different if you
challenge something that the state
wishes to protect. Obviously I had
heard of police corruption, read about
it and watched T.V programmes on it,
but I never thought I would witness it
myself first hand. You don’t when you
live a life that the state is happy with –
contributing to taxes, working full time,
buying commercialised goods everything
really that a capitalist and functionalist
SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 5