I guess now that the ink is dry on deal, or mores the point the PDF documents have been signed, I can enlighten the very many of you who have expressed an interest in the Fitzwilliam Injunction saga. If you’re not fully up to date then you can catch up here and here. OK, so assuming you know what’s been occurring I’ll fill you in on the rest of the details.
At the end of last week our legal representative was contacted by the Fitzwilliam’s legal team with an offer. That offer amounted to dropping those named from the injunction, with no claims made to costs provided we signed an agreement not to trespass on the claimants land. The claimants would still be pursuing an injunction against persons unknown.
Now this may seem to be not a particularly good deal but in this instance you need to consider the wider context.
Firstly, it was pretty clear that the Fitzwilliam were very keen to avoid a full trial against those named on the injunction. The legitimacy of their evidence and in particular their hunting methods had been seriously called into question by Mr Justice Freedman, along with the behaviour of their so called hunt stewards. Had the Fitzwilliam felt they were in a strong position they would have pushed on regardless.
Secondly, their claims for harassment, trespass against goods and the utterly laughable claims of assault were denied by the judge. Mr Freedman also noted that assaults did appear to have been carried out by the hunt staff and this could be followed up by the victims should they wish, causing another potential embarrassment for the hunt.
Thirdly, there would be no claims for costs. It was estimated that the hunt had spent in excess of £120,000 in bringing this injunction. That’s enough to make even the most financially wealthy hunt think seriously about taking out similar action and this is what we wanted to achieve. Most hunts rely on local land owners to allow them to hunt, the Fitzwilliam are one of the few who own a significant amount of land on which to hunt however they still leave this land for a large amount of their hunt season. With this in mind you have to ask yourself, did they get value for money?
Not really.
All they ended up with was a list of people who couldn’t trespass but could still use public rights of way and open access land within their estate. That’s not really a huge achievement given the level of investment. Their actual hunt country is in the region of 384,000 acres, they only actually own just over 4% of that. Now while they are pushing ahead with the persons unknown part of the injunction it is still a civil action and not something the police can get involved with. Sure, if you break the injunction the claimants can serve you and a judge could send you to prison for contempt of court however for that to happen the claimants have to know who you are. If previous junctions with regards to persons unknown are anything to go by, they would appear to be almost impossible to enforce.
The single biggest factor in favour of the hunt was the level of financial clout they could bring to bear for this undertaking. As normal working people we had no hope of raising the funds necessary to take this to full trial and with the outcome in question there was a real danger of losing what assets we have, had the case not gone our way. Simply put, there was no way I, or any of the others were going to lose their houses over this. All of the named defendants were of course hugely grateful to all the people who donated, some who shall remain nameless pledging some significant sums but having the funds to fight this was only half the story and no reduction in the final risk of having costs awarded against us.
Now the Fitzwilliam and their supporters may think differently, but the simple fact is we came out of this saga a whole lot better than they did.
Finally the costs of achieving this have exceeded what our original Crowd Justice funding covered and has left some of us significantly out of pocket. Please consider helping by donating here: Financial Costs
Desperate Flailings
Posted: September 30, 2019 in CommentTags: Aggravated Trespass, Beds & Bucks Hunt Sabs, Civil Injunction, Countryside Alliance, Desperate Flailings, Fitzwilliam Hunt, Harassment, Hunt Saboteurs, Inhumane, Intimidation, Thurlow Hunt
As you can probably tell by the lack of updates I’ve been pretty busy.
This time of year is always the most time consuming for those in the wildlife protection business. The cruel and unnecessary badger cull is in full swing and sab teams across the country are travelling many miles to save as many lives as they can. It’s also cubbing season so those not involved in anti-cull activities are getting up at the crack of dawn to target those hunts participating in that vile activity, all the time having to fit in time for work and their families.
Speaking of work . . .
I’ve always been of the opinion that you can measure your success against your enemy by the lengths to which they will go to try and discredit you or remove completely from the game as it were. Since my involvement in several well publicised court cases my identity became fairly well known. Due to this I’ve had car loads of hunt thugs trying to intimidate me outside my house, I was part of the injunction that the Fitzwilliam Hunt tried to unsuccessfully bring against a group of sabs who were constantly highlighting their criminality, I’ve had calls at home and threats to my partner. My home has now security cameras installed and the police applied a marker to my property and number, this means I get a priority response in the event of a 999 call. Not so long ago I had someone from the pro hunt side contact my work and make a complaint about me . . . and it’s happened again.
A letter was sent to the UK head of the company I work for which was then handed to HR and made it’s way down to my boss who spoke to me about it. Of course my employers aren’t in the slightest bothered about what I do, mainly because it’s got nothing to do with them and it’s perfectly legal. Provided I don’t bring the company into disrepute then it’s all good. The other issue was of course that the letter was sent anonymously. Come on guys, if you don’t have the courage behind you’re conviction then your claims are effectively meaningless and will be filed in the nearest recycling bin.
Indeed they did Nelson . . .
Having seen the letter and the photos of me that it contained my boss thought it rather amusing, apparently there were some good action shots of me running around in the countryside. Hardly earth shattering stuff. After further discussion with sabs from other groups it would appear that I’m not the only one who has been targeted at their place of work. So the question is, is this and organised effort or is it just coincidence?
Either way all their attempts have fallen well short of their intended outcome, in fact they were complete failures. What the pro hunt side fail to comprehend is that they don’t have the support of the wider general public and that is more than likely to include those employers that sabs work for.
Simply put, they are (and I’m going to coin a phrase by a friend of mine) “the desperate flailings of a drowning organisation”.
UPDATE: I held back the publication of this blog until I actually had a copy of the letter that was sent to my employers. Now I’ve seen it I have to say I’m a little disappointed by it’s contents. It’s almost as if someone from the CA wrote a standard list of lies (that’s all it is, a list) with all the usual “animal rights extremist” claims and then added my name to the top and references to this blog and the Beds & Bucks sab group. It’s poorly constructed and there’s absolutely ZERO information in there to make any employee concerned and the best they can come up with is some nonsense about aggravated trespass and harassment of hunt staff, which as we all know it utter hogwash. Maybe they should contact the Fitzwilliam and Thurlow hunts and ask them about their legal activities? Funny how they missed those little gems out.
The photographs were quite amusing but, come on guys, try and get something more up-to-date. Most of those are at least 3 years old, have you got nothing better? And one final thing, I know it’s probably something you don’t understand but no-one uses that font any more, much like your little minority hobby, it’s just ugly.