Fox
Hunters in the U.K. Want Protected Status Under Discrimination Law
A
lobbying group is preparing a bid to define hunting with animals as a protected
belief. Many experts have questions.
Amelia
Nierenberg
By Amelia
Nierenberg
Reporting
from London
Aug. 26,
2024
Updated 9:23
a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/26/world/europe/uk-fox-hunting-ban-status.html
English fox
hunters have tried, for years, to push back against a nearly 20-year-old ban on
their beloved sport.
The
centuries-old tradition of using packs of dogs to chase and kill foxes — or any
wild mammals — became illegal in England in 2005, after a long parliamentary
struggle driven by campaigners and lawmakers who opposed it on animal welfare
grounds.
So far, the
law has stood, and fox hunting remains hugely unpopular among the general
public: 80 percent of people in Britain think it should remain illegal,
according to YouGov, a polling company.
Now, a
pro-hunting activist has a new plan of attack.
Ed Swales,
the activist, founded Hunting Kind, a lobby group that aims to protect hunting
with dogs and other forms of hunting, in early 2022. He wants to use Britain’s
Equality Act — which protects people from discrimination because of their age,
race, sexuality or religion, among other things — to classify a pro-hunting
stance as a protected belief.
That would
put it in the same legal category as atheism, pacifism, ethical veganism, and,
ironically, a moral opposition to fox hunting.
“If he’s
‘anti-hunt,’ well, you can be ‘hunt,’” Mr. Swales said. “It’s just the same
law.”
Mr. Swales,
55, said he was preparing to bring a series of anti-discrimination lawsuits in
the hope of setting a legal precedent that could, eventually, help reverse the
fox-hunting ban.
“We’ve been
doing this for millennia,” he said. Hunting is “literally part of our cultural
heritage.”
Hunting
itself is not illegal in England. Shooting deer, rabbits, duck and some other
animals is allowed during hunting seasons, with permission from the landowner
and a gun license.
But the
hunting community is bracing for an anticipated challenge by Britain’s new
Labour government, which pledged to ban trail hunting — where dogs follow a
deliberately laid scent trail, usually of fox urine, instead of a real fox — in
its election platform.
The British
Hound Sports Association, which promotes and governs hunting with dogs in the
U.K., says that by simulating traditional fox hunting, trail hunting allows the
community to continue “to support the sport they love” despite the ban.
But animal
rights activists say trail hunting can be a smoke screen for illegal fox
hunting, because trails frequently run through land where foxes live, and
foxhounds cannot always tell the difference between a fox and an artificial
scent.
Last year,
Chief Superintendent Matt Longman, England’s police lead on fox hunting, said
that illegal hunting was “still common practice,” with trail hunts frequently
taking place in natural fox habitats.
“Foxes often
end up getting caught and killed by the dogs regardless,” said Josh Milburn, a
lecturer in political philosophy at Loughborough University who studies animal
rights.
Late last
month, Mr. Swales sent out a survey to fellow hunters to try to find potential
discrimination cases. He said many shared instances of verbal abuse or
intimidation during recent hunting excursions. And this year, two venues
canceled events for trail hunting groups after campaigns from anti-hunting
activists. “They got told, ‘We are canceling you because we got so much
pressure from the anti-hunt brigade,’” Mr. Swales said.
Some experts
said that the planned discrimination lawsuits were a distraction from the
debate over animal rights, which hunters with dogs have already lost in the
court of public opinion. “In making this argument that fox hunters are the
persecuted group, they’re trying, I think, to shift the conversation from
talking about foxes to talking about people,” Dr. Milburn said.
Others
questioned the idea that those who hunt with dogs — a community that has
traditionally included some of Britain’s wealthiest landowners — needed special
protection.
“Here we
have an argument being made that in fact some of the most privileged in our
society should also be protected on the basis of their shared activity chasing
and killing a terrified wild animal,” Edie Bowles, the executive director of
the Animal Law Foundation, a legal research charity, wrote in an email.
Several
lawyers and academics who study discrimination said Mr. Swales’s argument might
have some success, but the bar would be high. Under Britain’s 2010 Equality
Act, a protected characteristic must “be a belief and not an opinion or
viewpoint” and it must “not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.”
“The test
requires that the belief be genuinely held and that it be sufficiently cogent
and weighty and coherent,” said Colm O’Cinneide, a professor of constitutional
and human rights law at University College London. A mere political opinion
would not pass muster, he said: “There needs to be some sort of belief
structure or framework.”
Experts said
that a protected belief could be easier to argue than trying to define hunters
as a minority ethnic group — like Sikhs, Roma or Jews — which Mr. Swales has
also proposed.
Speaking at
a public event in late July, he claimed that his advisers had told him that
“the qualifications of an ethnic group, there are five of them — we hit every
one, straight in the bull’s-eye,” which he reiterated in interviews with The
New York Times.
“The legal
assessment is that we would qualify for both categories,” he said on Thursday.
But he has
since backed off from the idea of starting with the minority group argument,
saying his team would prepare protected belief arguments instead. “Pick the
lowest hanging fruit first,” he said, paraphrasing his legal team.
Hunters have
already tried, and failed, to argue that bans infringe upon their rights.
In 2007, a
belief in fox hunting was explicitly denied protection in Scotland’s courts,
where a judge found that “a person’s belief in his right to engage in an
activity which he carries on for pleasure or recreation, however fervent or
passionate,” did not compare to protected beliefs or religion, and therefore
would not be covered under human rights law.
And in 2009,
the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled that the ban on fox
hunting with dogs did not violate human rights.
“If hunting
can be shown to be more than a recreational activity, perhaps as part of a
belief system in human supremacy over animals or human dominion over the earth,
then a protected belief system could work,” Dr. John Adenitire, who teaches
animal rights law at Queen Mary, University of London, wrote in an email.
For Mr.
Swales, it is now or never.
His push
comes after years of stewing about restrictions on hunting — without, he says,
enough of a fight back from the hunting community.
“All we do
is sit here and talk about it and drink sherry and bemoan and bewail our
situation,” he said. “And nobody actually does anything.”
Amelia
Nierenberg is a breaking news reporter for The Times in London, covering
international news More about Amelia Nierenberg
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