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The League Against Cruel Sports is an animal welfare organisation which campaigns against so-called blood sports, in particular fox hunting and hare coursing. More recently, it has campaigned for regulation of greyhound racing and against commercial game shooting and trophy hunting.
History
The League began in Morden, a suburb of London in 1923. Henry Amos raised a protest against rabbit coursing, he was successful in motivating support and managed to achieve a ban. This encouraged him to organise opposition to other forms of cruel sports and so in 1924 along with Ernest Bell, he established the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports. Although many blood sports such as bull, bear and badger baiting and cock fighting had already been outlawed at the time, the laws only applied to domestic and captive animals. With the RSPCA unwilling to take action against hunting, Amos and Bell identified a clear need for an organisation which would campaign against what it classified as cruel sports.
The first Chairman of the League was Sir George Greenwood who moved the following resolution at the inaugural public meeting "This meeting registers its emphatic protest against all sports of hunting an animal to death for human pleasure and calls upon the Government to introduce legislation to prohibit such sports".
The following charter entitled "What We Stand For" was produced -
- Our Principe: that it is iniquitous to inflict suffering, either directly or indirectly, upon sentient animals for the purpose of Sport.
- We Condemn fox-hunting, otter-hunting, stag-hunting, hare-hunting and rabbit and hare-coursing, because they are organised forms of cruelty for pleasure, and, therefore, prejudicial to the best intrests of the State.
- We Support and Recommend all clean humane forms of Sport, such as football, cricket, golf, running, swimming, scouting, hill-climbing, etc., etc.
- We Specially Recommend Drag-hunting as a substitute to hunting animals and we appeal to Hunts to adopt it. Also "hunting" Big Game with the Camera as Major Dugmore and others do.
- Blooding" Children: We protest against the insult offered in hunting circles, not only to the child-life of the nation but to the community generall, by smearing children's cheeks with blood from the brush or pads of a fox or other animal hunted to death, and we demand the cessation of this demoralising custom. We respectfully invite Religious, Education, Social Welfare, Humanitarian and allied bodies, by passing resoluations towards this end, to co-operate with us to make our demand effective.
Organisation
LACS is a membership-based organisation that depends largely on direct mail packages to raise funds. The corporate structure includes both a limited company and a charity (some of its party political campaigning would not be allowed under charity law).
Recent Activities
The League supported the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Act, passed in 2002 by the Scottish Parliament, and the Hunting Act 2004. Both laws make it illegal to chase fox with more than two dogs, but allow the use of two dogs (England) or one dog (Scotland) to flush fox to be shot. Both laws also allow the use of one terrier at a time below ground to flush a fox to be shot if the owner of the terrier has written permission from the land owner or occupier to reduce fox populations in order to prevent or reducing serious damage to game birds or wild birds being kept on the land. The terrier must wear an electronic locator collar.
The League is currently campaigning against commercial breeding of non-native gamebirds for shooting, and against hunts that it believes are continuing to hunt wild mammals contrary to the 2004 ban. It also campaigns to extend hare coursing/fox hunting legislation from Scotland, England and Wales to Northern Ireland.
In August 2006, the League successfully undertook a private prosecution (because the police would not act) under the Hunting Act, against the huntsman of the Exmoor foxhounds, and argued that this showed that the Hunting Act was clear in its meaning. This prosecution is curently under appeal.
Frustrated that the mounted hunts are continuing, are more popular than ever, and are getting access to more land, the League Against Cruel Sports is now trying to use a vague "anti-social behaviour law" (or "asbo") written in 1999 to try to curb graffiti, abusive language, excessive noise, litter, drunkenness and drug dealing in the cities to curb curb organized fox hunting in the country. Meanwhile, the latest poll shows that more than half of all Britons expect the ban on fox hunting to fall.
Criticism of LACS
There has been some criticism of the LACS in the media. Former LACS Executive Director James Barrington has noted, "Four previous LACS directors have now said publicly that a ban on hunting would be wrong – not the most comfortable fact for a pressure group dedicated to the abolition of hunting."
Barrington himself had a change of heart about the mission of the LACS -- driven in no small part because he actually spent time in the countryside with the mounted hunts. He writes: "At the end of a long, slow learning-curve, I was convinced that a ban on hunting would have a serious and negative effect on animal welfare. Moreover, I concluded that properly-regulated hunting can justify its place in Britain’s countryside as a relatively effective, humane and ecologically positive form of wildlife management."
It should be noted that Barrington himself was an unpopular Executive Director and was largely perceived as attempting to use the LACS as a vehicle for his own political ambitions within the Labour Party.
Tactics of Current Leaderhip
The current President of the League Against Cruel Sport is acclaimed actress Annette Crosbie who told The Mirror's David Edwards ,"When I think about it, I think humans are the nastiest species of animal on the planet ...". In the same interview she describes herself as "impatient, intolerant, judgmental, tactless -- I'm not very nice, I'm really not. And if you don't do it my way, by God you'll be sorry." However it is in part due to these propensities that her tenure is considered a success so far.
Crosbie says "We believe that nobody has the right to terrorise and kill animals for sport," she supports the actions of animal rights activists, telling The Mirror, "The campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences has been very clever -- to frighten the banks into backing off is wonderful... Apart from rescuing animals they focus people's attention on what's going on. You cannot get politicians to pay attention until you get out on the streets and do something."
See also
External links
- Interview with David Edwards, The Mirror (UK), Jan. 10, 2003
- Interview with David Edwards, The Mirror (UK), Jan. 10, 2003
- Interview with David Edwards, The Mirror (UK), Jan. 10, 2003