League Against Cruel Sports

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The League Against Cruel Sports is an animal welfare organisation which campaigns against 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.

[edit] 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 cruel sports. It is a membership based organisation whose corporate structure includes both a limited company and a charity (some of its party political campaigning would not be allowed under charity law).

The League supported the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Act, passed in 2002 by the Scottish Parliament, which make it illegal in Scotland to chase or deliberately kill a wild mammal with dogs and the Hunting Act 2004 which has similar effect in England and Wales.

The League is currently campaigning against commercial breeding of 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.

Amongst the League's supporters are many people who used to follow and take part in hunts. Indeed, the League has produced publications against fox hunting written by a Master of Fox Hounds and by a professional huntsman. On the other hand, in the period 1990 to 2001 a number of high profile members of the League Against Cruel Sports defected to the pro-hunting and "Middle Way" side of the argument, most notably former chief executive Jim Barrington, and former chief officer Graham Sirl (following his forced resignation).

In August 2006, the League successfully undertook a private prosecution 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.[1]