Overview

Who will buy this book? Those interested in abolition of blood sports.On the 19th February 2005 the abolition of blood sports became law in England and Wales following the passing of the Hunting Act 2004. Nowhere was the passing of this Act more keenly felt than by the three remaining West Country packs that hunt the wild red deer.Stag hunting has always been the most hated blood sport on the anti 'hit list', sustaining constant attack for over one hundred years. The book takes the story from the start of Henry Salt's 1891 campaign against the Royal Buckhounds through to the post-2004 ban machinations of the Countryside Alliance. The pages between cover in depth every aspect of the story from the earliest attempts at parliamentary legislation in 1883, the formation of the League Against Cruel Sports, through the years of the League's Edward Hemingway, Raymond Rowley, Richard Course and Douglas Batchelor, culminating in a detailed account of the final 1997-2004 push to abolition. Every major report on the subject from the 1951 Scott Henderson Report to the Burns Inquiry are given due prominence, as are major stag hunting incidents and court cases.For the first time serious coverage is given to the role of direct action from the attempt at hunt sabotage by the LACS in the late 1950s, through the birth and early years of the Hunt Saboteurs Association, to the Save Our Stags Campaign of the 1970s and '80s. The role of deer sanctuaries, undercover operatives, hunt monitors, along with every splinter group that has opposed stag hunting (including carted deer hunts in Britain and Northern Ireland), are all given due prominence. The book also contains a comprehensive explanation of the history and practice of deer hunting, much of it 'culled' from the annals of the hunters themselves, which offers a fascinating insight into what they consider acceptable in the name of 'sport'.This is the first book (with the exception of Mike Huskisson's excellent 1983 Outfoxed) to be attempted by a former hunt saboteur. Therefore, not only does it give HSA its rightful place in the long history of blood sports abolition, but also attempts to explain something of the tactics, philosophy, and motivations of animal rights that has sustained the movement for over forty years.Detailing as it does the 'back-room' stories behind many of the best-known blood sport incidents of the last 100 years this book should prove as controversial as the subject it covers.

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9780955478604

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Born in 1946, Ian Pedler has been opposed to blood sports since first joining the League Against Cruel Sports as a ten-year-old. He was active with the Hunt Saboteurs Association from its inception in 1963, then as founder of the Save Our Stags Campaign, while also serving as an Executive Committee member of the League until resigning as an active animal rights campaigner in the late 1980s. His professional life has been spent in the field of community mental health social work, at which he is still employed part-time. He lives in the West Country with his wife Josie.

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