Tiverton Boxing Day Meet 2019
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- Protestors have vowed to return to Tiverton’s Boxing Day meet “until foxes are safe.”
The Tiverton Foxhounds meet each year at Tiverton Pannier Market before trotting through the town centre. This year, for the first time, they were greeted by around a dozen protestors with placards calling for the Hunting Act 2004, to be enforced.
Holly Perris was one of those who lined Fore Street to show her anger at the Tiverton Foxhounds on Thursday, December 26.
She said: “We’re out here today to protest the hunt because trail hunts invariably lead to dead foxes. It’s a loophole in the law which needs to be closed, and we’re here today to send the message that the ban needs to be enforced and we need to protect our wildlife.
“We want people here today to feel a little bit more uncomfortable. There’s only a few of us, and there’s a lot of them, but we know we’re doing right, and they’re doing wrong, and they need to feel that.
“I think we got our message across. People were angry with us, pulling our signs, yelling at us, so we rattled them and annoyed them, which is what we came here to do.
“I applauded children as they came past on their horses as it’s not their fault, they’re dragged into this, and frankly I think it’s unfair on them and hopefully I think a lot of them will grow up and join a lot of us here in the protest knowing that it’s wrong.
“We’ll be back here next year. We won’t stop until foxes are safe.”
Another, Marta Ainley said she was told to ‘f-off.’
She said: “I’m very against wildlife being disturbed and killed just for fun. They don’t die quickly.
“The terrier men go out before the hunt and block up badger sets which is also illegal so that foxes when they go to group to escape being ripped apart, can’t disappear into. All in all, they do a lot of damage to the countryside, and I hope that the hunting act isn’t going to be repealed
“They’re allowed to hunt, but they’re supposedly meant to follow a pre-laid trail which they never do.”
Hundreds of people gathered in Tiverton Pannier Market to see the hounds and horses arrive at around 11:00 am.
Speaking to the crowd, Kelvin Thomas from the Tiverton Foxhounds said they were hunting within the law.
He added: “It’s probably the wettest year we have had, but we’re all good to go, we have a lot of fun, and we continue to have fun.
“There are several people, some of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party that are left, have got some placards out on the main street, I’ll let you have a word with them as you go.
“We’ll come back next year, and we’ll always keep coming back. It’s part of Tiverton’s heritage, these are the Tiverton Foxhounds, and we’ll keep coming back, and it’s wonderful to see everyone turn up and support us.”
Neil Parish, MP for Tiverton and Honiton said it was “great” to see supporters of the hunt.
He added: “It was a wonderful election result; as far as I was concerned anyway. We won a couple of votes; we have Brexit on the way - what was all the fuss about?
“Seriously, it will be nice to have a new agricultural policy and a new environment policy. Let’s plant the trees where it’ll do some good, not just plant trees where they won’t. Let’s sort out flooding, let’s sort out soil erosion and let’s make sure we have a healthy farming community as well as a healthy hunting community here in this area.
“It’s great to see you all, and we will take stock when we get back to Parliament. We’ll take the numbers and see what to do about hunting. We will then talk to the hunting fraternity to work out precisely what you might like to have done either repealing the Hunting Act altogether or changing it.
“Until we’ve taken stock of exactly who is in Parliament, we cannot decide that today.”
Mr Parish added that the new intake of northern Conservative MPs would change the House of Commons for the better.
“It’s lovely to see Mr Bercow go off on his holidays and Sir Lindsay Hoyle, although Labour, he’s a great guy, he’ll make a great speaker, and he won’t interfere with Parliament as Bercow did,” he added.
“It’s really lovely for me, in particular, to go back to Parliament and instead of debating things late at night, losing the votes, taking the legislation, bringing it back, losing it again; but finally we’ll be able to win the votes and hopefully Boris will be able to negotiate a free-trade deal with Europe so Britain can go forward in the world and we can be a great country.”