The Countryside Alliance is still raising money but it won the battle over Hunting so I don't know why it's still around. By manipulating the legislation to ensure it was uninforcable and playing well in the media the CA succesfully saw legislation come to the statute books that will never work.

They won

Liz White: "I changed my mind"

In the eyes of her former hunt saboteur friends, Liz White has committed the ultimate treachery - she has become a committed hunter. Here, she speaks candidly of her dramatic U-turn.
In 1985 I moved down from Buckinghamshire with my family to Devon. I had no strong views on hunting and had never been hunting at this point, although I abhorred cruelty to animals.

I then met some people from the League Against Cruel Sports (Lacs) and listened to their opinions on hunting and immediately thought the whole thing sounded cruel and unnecessary.

Liz White fact file
Age: 29
Occupation: Chef and caterer
Hunts: Regularly on Exmoor, Devon
I did a lot of assemblies at school on this subject and handed out a lot of Lacs leaflets. I then went on a "sab" mission with the Lacs and tried to disrupt hunting events and generally catch some cruelty on camera.

However, I never saw a kill. Some of my friends were hunting regularly at this time and I was persuaded to go with them on my horse to see it from their point of view.

I had a really great day, my horse and myself thoroughly enjoying the whole thing.

I hunted another half dozen times and completely changed my view. What I hadn't realised was that the stag was hunted until it was brought to bay by the hounds and then quickly and humanely destroyed.

Painful alternative

A very important point is that a hunted animal is either killed outright or left unharmed for another day.


Ms White used to side with the "sabs"

If hunting was banned farmers would not tolerate the damage to their holdings caused by the deer. They would shoot them indiscriminately and the result would be a great deal of suffering leading to a slow and painful death

In the last century there was a period when there was no hunting and the deer population went drastically downhill.

Stags are picked out by a professional harbourer and are hunted and killed to control disease and to get rid of the older, weaker deer, enabling the herd to keep healthy.

The fact that we have a healthy herd of red deer is entirely due to being hunted and controlled by the Devon and Somerset Staghounds.

Prejudice or principle

Thousands of people depend on hunting for their livelihoods. Farmers are trying to recover from a very difficult and trying time recently and if the government ban hunting they will make it even worse.


"The stag is either killed outright, or allowed to go free"

It is unfair that people in the towns are making decisions for the country about which they are often completely ignorant, just because the country people are in the minority.

Ignorance is a key problem in this argument.

It also seems ironic that Members of Parliament want to ban something just because they do not like it and are prejudiced against it.

We are not toffs in red coats as so many "antis" seem to think. The majority of hunting people are ordinary hardworking, country-minded people.

A natural practise

Taxpayers' money was used to fund the Burns inquiry, which many MPs opposed to hunting obviously ignored as Lord Burns recommended licensing hunting.


"Protesters should concentrate on battery hen farming"

Deer are naturally hunted animals. They are wild animals living in completely natural circumstances, by being hunted they are kept as naturally as possible.

The "antis" claim to have animal welfare at the forefront of their argument. Yet if they had they would be more concerned with factory farming, intensive pig farming and battery chicken houses.

Just because these issues are not run by what they think are the upper classes they choose to ignore them.

Their arguments so often seem to be fuelled by hypocrisy and jealousy. There are far more important issues that the government should be dealing with, like the National Health Service and the education system.

Hunting is an intrinsic part of the countryside and if we lose one part the countryside and the people who live in it and love it will suffer.

A former hunt saboteur will be out riding today with the Quorn, one of the country’s most famous hunts, in Leicestershire. ark Halford, 30, spoke last night of his conversion to the sport after nearly seven years baiting huntsmen, shouting abuse at riders and tampering with hunt vehicles.

He now spends up to £10,000 a year on his hobby, owns five horses and has even been out hunting with the Prince of Wales.

Mr Halford has now become a hate figure of the anti-hunt lobby. He has to be escorted home by police after hunting. He said: “I get death threats and they have also threatened to kill my horses. They have videoed me, pushed me along and jostled me to the ground and they have also blocked my vehicles. They talk about rights and liberties but many of them are just hooligans and terrorists.”

He was also shocked by their intolerance when they learnt that he was homosexual. “They gave me a lot of grief for it. They even accused me of being a grass or working for the Special Branch. Yet with the hunting crowd I am openly gay and people are very welcoming of me and my partner Robert.”

Mr Halford is now in discussion with the Countryside Alliance to set up an organisation to encourage gay men and women to join hunts.

He said that his change of heart was because he no longer considered hunting to be cruel. “The fox is killed instantly and I believe it is a humane killing. I have seen many worse sights where foxes have been left injured after being shot and were riddled with gangrene. But when you’re hunting you kill it or you don’t.”

Mr Halford said that he become sickened by the attitudes of hunt saboteurs. “I was interested all the time in the welfare of the fox. But there were so many people involved in animal rights who didn’t seem to be interested in the animal issue. They were class-war anarchists and they thought it was all about toffs versus the rest.”

As a teenager in Leamington Spa, Mr Halford became involved with anti-field sport groups. He turned out regularly in his combat jacket, balaclava and boots and packed into a minibus for weekend “sabbing” trips. By his mid-twenties he had served on the national committee of the Hunt Saboteurs Association.

He admitted that he was never really comfortable with its lawlessness and tried to persuade its members to drop their violence for more tactical campaigning on animal welfare grounds. Nevertheless, he found himself drawn into action. “I’ve been arrested, spent a night in a cell and been involved in minor public order offences and affray.”

He recalled the weekly meetings to plan the disruption of hunts. “Basically the attitude was, ‘Let’s go get them’. Many were very violent and quite unpleasant. We would turn up at a hunt and shout filthy abuse and throw stones at the riders.

“It was often very scary and you trod a fine line between getting into trouble with the police or just causing lots of problems for the hunt.

“I remember people slashing tyres and scratching cars or causing damage to hunt property. Two or three times we blocked kennels and I even had my photo on the front page of a local paper wearing a balaclava and carrying a big stick.”

Most of his activity was directed against the Warwickshire Hunt but he received some punches, too, from irate huntsmen. He eventually became disillusioned with the “sabs” and grew tired of meeting in “dark grungy pubs”.

He said: “Most of the others were filthy even though they came from good homes. They were rebels with too many causes. There were some genuine types but most had chips on their shoulders. They were a bunch of left-wing anarchists who were students or unemployed. Most of them were spongers.”

Mr Halford finally distanced himself from the saboteurs when he got a job with a firm of funeral directors and had to be respectable. “I was already drag hunting and one day someone suggested I go on a real hunt. It was then that my perception of hunting people and their lifestyle changed dramatically. I was nervous about chasing and killing a fox, but now I can say I have never seen anything cruel and I really enjoy it.”

The Essex Farmers and Union Hunt, which has been the focus of anti-hunting groups, is to break with tradition by meeting outside Maldon, Essex, today. Officials denied that the mounting pressure from detractors forced the move, saying that the change made it easier for them to comply with foot-and-mouth regulations.