On this day in vegan history · February 18, 2005
The Hunting Act Takes Effect
Centuries of fox hunting tradition ran into a ban that took effect at one minute past midnight, and neither side has stopped arguing about it since.
The facts
- Royal assent
- 18 November 2004
- Came into force
- 18 February 2005, in England and Wales
- Scotland's earlier ban
- Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Act 2002, in force two years before the English and Welsh law
- Convictions by 2014
- 378 people convicted of Hunting Act offences; only 24 involved anyone from a registered hunt
On 18 February 2005, three months after it received royal assent, the Hunting Act 2004 came into force in England and Wales, making it a criminal offence to hunt foxes, deer, hares, and mink with dogs, subject to strictly limited exemptions. Scotland had already gone further two years earlier, banning the pursuit of foxes with hounds under the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Act 2002. The law only reached the statute book after years of stalemate between the Commons, which wanted a ban, and the Lords, which did not; Parliament finally forced it through using the rarely invoked Parliament Acts. Enforcement proved uneven from the start. By 2014 there had been 378 convictions under the Act, but only 24 of those convicted were connected to a registered hunt.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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Fox hunting makes a very important contribution to the control of foxes and involves less cruelty than most other methods of controlling them. It should therefore be allowed to continue.
The 1951 Committee on Cruelty to Wild Animals (the Scott Henderson report), as quoted in the Hunting Act 2004 background
Source: Wikipedia -
I always thought the hunting ban was a pretty bizarre piece of legislation
David Cameron, on a proposed Coalition-era review of the Act, January 2012
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
The Act didn't end hunting outright, hunts still ride under exemptions like trail laying and flushing to guns, but it drew a legal line that had never existed before: killing a wild mammal for sport with a pack of dogs became, for the first time, a crime in England and Wales.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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