CSM EDITORIAL

Lord Walney’s comprehensive 100,000-word review on countering political violence and disruption, submitted to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak just before Christmas, includes a recommendation to empower the police to prohibit face coverings during protests.

The government is expected to provide a response to these suggestions later in the year.

Currently, under Section 60AA order of the Criminal Justice Act 1994, in a designated area, a police officer can instruct individuals to remove any item used to conceal their identity. Failure to comply with this directive can lead to arrest.

Lord Walney’s proposals go beyond these existing measures, proposing that police be granted explicit authority to impose a ban on masks as a precondition for permitting a march. Should organisers refuse to comply, the police would have the ability to prohibit the march and potentially bar future demonstrations if the specified conditions are not adhered to.

The report has many in the countryside asking, what about the sabs?

If Lord Walney’s suggestions are taken up, what will happen to the 200 or so hunt saboteurs who mask up and terrorise trail hunters across the UK?

In short, the police would be able to ask the saboteurs to unmask using the old legislation just as they can now. Lord Walney’s legislation is targeted at formal protests and marches, which the hunt saboteurs do not have the numbers for.

So how would the new legislation, if enacted, help?

Not at all.

What seems odd is that the hunting community are at all interested in Lord Walney’s plans:

The hunt saboteurs are already on a database. They are well-known to the authorities and, as those in the sleepy hunting community have belatedly woken up and started to expose them, the public now has access to specifics about them too, just as they can access paedophile lists and other databases of unsavoury individuals.

Rather than relying on new legislation that the police can enforce or not, the next stage for the hunting community should be to contact the employers of the saboteurs – some work as teachers, others as nurses – and make them well aware of their (often government) employees’ weekend terrorism, as well as continuing to expose their fundraising scams and to report them to the police.

In 2022, one such sab lost his career in assessment & technology when it was pointed out to his company what he’d been getting up to online in the evenings – they were shocked and apologetic, ditching him the next morning.

Since the hunt saboteurs operate through both a physical presence at meets and online through their gaggle of ghastly granny trolls, the hunting community’s database should encompass their multiple social media IDs as well as individuals’ photographs and criminal records. This will help stave off the sabs’ cancelling tactics where they use multiple fake IDs to target a premises hosting a hunting event, giving the false impression that they have numbers.

In their efforts to expose such a small number of cadres the hunting community, with its reserves, really should be able to step up and get these tasks done. There are already fissures that are easy to exploit.

Forget the masks.

Since when has the Government ever helped the hunting community? The likely next government is threatening to ban all hunting, even trail hunting, outright anyway!

What then for the masked sabs and their fox cadavers in freezers? Back to GoFraudMe’s pretending to have cancer? Raptor ‘persecution’? How about pursuing the traveller community for hare coursing? No doubt the latter would have a few choice destinations for sabs’ masks.