League Against Cruel Sports: In a league of their own

In this article from My Countryside magazine, former Executive Director of the League Against Cruel Sports, Jim Barrington, takes a look at the problematic history of this anti-hunting group.

For an organisation that opposes ‘bloodsports’, the League Against Cruel Sports certainly likes to indulge in its own form of bloodletting. 

Just as major sporting events come round every few years, the ritual of ousting the League’s chief executive is upon us once again. The latest defenestrated chief is Andy Knott, a former army officer who admitted when taking the position in 2018 that he’d hardly heard of the League. Still, the only real qualification required for the job is a dislike of hunting. 

In a way, that points to my failure as executive director of the League in the 80s and 90s, making the grave error of trying to discover more about the activity and, just as importantly, what would fill the vacuum if banned. Debating with hunting people on many occasions slowly led to understanding the activity, though in League terms this is blasphemy. I walked out in 1995. 

Let’s take a look at the history of this anti-hunting group that’s so keen to tell us what they dislike but are reluctant to say what methods they support. From its formation in 1924, disagreements arose resulting in the breakaway National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports. It makes the Monty Python sketch about the People’s Front of Judea and Judean People’s Front look quite sensible. 

When Richard Course became involved with the League in the late 1970s it immediately became more political, donating large amounts of money to the Labour Party to ban hunting. Not one to shy away from dabbling in illegal activities, he was finally ousted in the late 1980s. 

Following my departure some years later, the League went through another turbulent period. Having recruited a new CEO, she left within days, saying that the organisation was ‘ungovernable’. 

By 1997 the Labour Party had taken power and minds were focussed on a bill to ban hunting. When the Hunting Act was finally passed in 2004, it was hailed as a watershed moment for animal welfare. Even years later, the League claimed: “The Hunting Act 2004 has proven to be the most successful wild animal welfare legislation in England and Wales.” Not so now, though. 

Having strong convictions might be regarded as a good qualification for a job with the League, but convictions of a different kind were never an impediment. Numerous employees and committee members, including Course himself, had convictions for various offences ranging from theft, damage, violent disorder and grave desecration. 

In 2014, another conviction was added to the tally. A pub fight involved the chief executive of the League, Joe Duckworth. He pleaded guilty to the charge of using threatening or abusive words or behaviour and was bound over with a conditional penalty of £500. Despite a salary of £105,000 per annum, his legal fees were paid by the League. Duckworth left the League shortly afterwards in 2015, saying he wanted a more ‘hands on’ role – an unfortunate phrase given his brawling conviction. 

Annual General Meetings (AGMs) could be fiery affairs too. After one AGM that involved the usual insults and finger-pointing, coupled with some fruity language, one member revealed on social media: “What a sad day in London yesterday. In nearly 20 years of attending the League AGM I never experienced anything like this.” 

Now it’s Andy Knott’s turn. He claims to have been gagged, had his salary withheld and finally been forced out for wanting to close all the ‘loopholes’ in the Hunting Act. It appears that Labour’s commitment to ban trail hunting doesn’t go far enough for him. “It might be as simple as changing scent,” he says, while referring to Labour’s manifesto commitment as a “betrayal” in supplying a “new smokescreen in hunting”. Describing his former employer, Knott states: “They didn’t make a noise at Labour’s U-turn, because they are now an empty vessel of the Labour Party.” 

Knott has initiated legal proceedings against the League and its former chairman, Dan Norris, now Labour’s candidate in North East Somerset and Hanham. There’s some confusion as to whether or not Mr Norris declared this legal action was live when he was adopted as the candidate for Labour. 

Despite the decades encouraging hunts to follow a false scent instead of a live animal, Knott seems to have revealed the League’s true motive, which is to end all hunting with dogs. He appears to care little about the communities involved with hunts, the jobs involved, the rural businesses that rely on hunt kennels and indeed the future of the hounds themselves. Without even assessing what impact the current Hunting Act has had on wild animal welfare, he wants to destroy the entire infrastructure surrounding hunting with hounds. 

It seems that the Labour Party has pushed back against this assertion that hunts must be eliminated which has led to the latest round of bloodletting. As I know only too well, the League Against Cruel Sports hits the wall time and time again when it is challenged to back up its fundamentalist positions with actual evidence.