Lessons learned in the battle for hunting

When I joined the Countryside Alliance in 2002 to help out in the run up to the giant Liberty and Livelihood March, I thought we were fighting for the future of hunting. During the next couple of years there was an extraordinary series of battles culminating in the passing of the Hunting Act in 2004 and the subsequent implementation of the ban on hunting with dogs in February 2005.

Those battles were crucial and in no small part shaped the remarkable success of post-ban hunting, which very few could have predicted back then. I now realise, however, that the battles we were fighting were not over whether or not hunting was going to be banned, because that war had been lost long before.