CSM EDITORIAL

We have all trespassed. Whether intentionally or unintentionally we’ve been on land we should not have been on. Perhaps we were exploring an old ruin or retrieving a ball. Maybe our map-reading skills got us lost or we saw a pretty stream we wanted to take a photograph of. Innocent enough? Perhaps trespassing shouldn’t be near the top of Boris’ or George Eustice’s To Do Lists?

Harmless trespassing is slap-on-the-wrist territory and it would seem at first glance that the law has got things about right – to trespass in English (and Welsh) law is mostly a civil tort rather than a criminal offence, meriting a light touch. The circumstances in which it is a criminal offence usually involve trespassing on educational premises, railway property or protected sites – fair enough.

Now watch these two videos which show exactly what the countryside community has to put up with on a daily basis these days:

What do these acts of trespass by animal rights crazies and hunt sabs have to do with animal welfare? Why in modern day Britain do the authorities allow these violent and threatening types to trespass on private land?

We repeat: the people in the countryside are subject to this kind of aggressive and threatening behaviour on a daily basis. Take the West Midlands sabs whose instigator Cathy Scott is constantly trying to provoke and incite violence and loves nothing more than breaking through hedges and walking up private drives and across land. Or Sam Walker letting cattle escape from pens.

The Countryside Alliance showed some shocking footage earlier on this year of a man threatening murder who claimed he’d just got out of jail for murder:

Why are the sabs and animal rights’ crazies ever increasingly frothing at the mouth?

The answer lies with the likes of LACS who run campaigns based on sometimes staged, emotive video. This draws in the PayPal donations from those whose blood they have managed to boil. Add a diet of PETA videos showing the skinning of Chinese dogs and Save the Whales videos showing waves of blood, the animal rights’ crowd are incited to boiling point. Who gets the brunt of this radicalisation? The UK Countryside – dairy farmers, hunting communities and others in the countryside, who could just be passing by in their cars with their children but get spat at by these people anyway, driven to hate humans for their apparent cruelty towards animals.

The time has come for Parliament to change certain forms of trespass from a civil offence to a criminal one. Without doing so there will be blood. We have warned of this before. How long before the antis – who have already wrecked many lives – revert to full scale terrorism via their increasing absolutism?

Boris and George, be warned. Please nip this growing trend in the bud.