The Fitzwilliam (Milton) Hunt

The Future of Hunting

Thursday 18th November 2004 will go down in history as a black day for British Democracy and a bleak day for the British Countryside.

Back Bench MPs, driven by prejudice, bigotry and a failure to realise that the "Class War" ended twenty years ago have forced through a Bill against hunting that has nothing to do with Animal Welfare and, indeed, will cause the deaths of more foxes than hunts ever killed and will directly result in an increase in animal suffering in the British Countryside.

Those MPs will soon live to rue the day that they forgot that British Country People may be slow to anger, but they are even slower to forget - and once they are stung into action, they make implacable enemies.

The Fitzwilliam, along with all other hunts, is is constrained by having to act within the limits of this risible and shameful piece of so-called Legislation.

However, of this there is no doubt :

The Fitzwilliam (Milton) Hunt is not going to fold. We are going to keep together, we are going to keep fighting and we are going to keep hunting.

Neither are we for a second going to contemplate giving up the struggle to have the Hunting Act 2004 consigned to the dustbin of history in order that Hunting with Hounds be restored to its proper place in the conservation and wildlife management programmes of the British Countryside.

On 18th November 2004 we only lost a battle. We have not lost the war. We simply enter a new phase in the struggle for Justice.

Of 890 Members of both Houses of Parliament, 477 Parliamentarians rejected a ban on hunting whilst only 413 voted in support. The Government promised that this issue would be decided by a Free Vote, and yet this minority abused the democratic process by misusing the Parliament Acts to force through their prejudices. This is bullying, plain and simple - and bullying is as wrong in the countryside as it is in the school playground.