Violent huntsmen who attacked elderly protesters helped propel Tory leader David Cameron to power, the Mirror can reveal today.
Members of the Heythrop Hunt have been captured on video roughing up demonstrators and damaging their cars. But they helped Mr Cameron get elected as an MP in 2001 by canvassing votes for him.
Mr Cameron openly supports hunting and pledges to end the ban on using hounds if elected. He has ridden with the Heythrop, has friends who work for it and its members work as Tory activists to help him in election campaigns.
But leaked documents reveal the sickening violence behind this hunt.
Police have repeatedly investigated it over allegations that members hunted foxes illegally.
And six Heythrop supporters have been cautioned by police for attacking protesters. Anti-hunt campaigner Peter Bunce, 68, said: “We have been driven at, ridden at, sworn at, threatened, tailed and intimidated whilst monitoring the Heythrop hunt since the ban.
“And Cameron wants to reward such behaviour by re-legalising hunting.” Former Ministry of Defence engineer Mr Bunce was knocked on to a car bonnet and his camera damaged by a hunt supporter who yelled at him: “I’m telling you to get the f*** out of it or I’ll f*****g fill you in.” Police cautioned his attacker.
Gran Judy Gilbert, 60, was knocked flying by a burly farmer as she filmed Heythrop which hunts near Mr Cameron’s constituency in Witney, Oxfordshire, and Stowon-the-Wold, Glos. She said: “It was terrifying. I felt a painful massive thud in my back and suddenly I was in mid air. I went headlong and landed in bramble bushes about 6ft down the steep slope.
“It was difficult to get up and my hands were bleeding. I was shaking, feeling sick and shocked and appalled that someone could behave that way towards a woman.
“Once I got to my vehicle I saw the hunt followers laughing and jeering. The whole thing was sickening. My attacker was cautioned but has never apologised to me.”
In March, another Heythrop Hunt supporter was fined £80 for trying to run over a woman.
Others have been fined or cautioned for trying to sabotage cars, including putting nails stuck in Mars bars under their tyres, stealing a CB radio aerial and kicking vehicles. Mr Cameron – who has shot deer in Scotland, and ridden with the Old Berks Hunt, run by his wife’s stepfather Lord Astor – wants to repeal the 2005 fox hunting ban.
He has said: “We’ve passed a law that everyone is openly flouting and it makes the law look stupid.”
Guy Avis, secretary of the Heythrop Hunt, is friends with Mr Cameron and recruited volunteers to his election campaign because he was a “very supportive” candidate. Roderick Fleming, also a Heythrop backer, is based at Mr Cameron’s Chipping Norton HQ. He and the owner of Heythrop Park, the hunt’s historic home, have made sizeable political donations to the Tories.
Mr Avis said yesterday: “Those antis are bloody annoying. They are asking for it.” But when asked about pensioners being attacked, he replied: “I’m not condoning that but I don’t know anything about it. We abide fully with the law. I don’t know anything about these cautions and accusations.”
Mr Avis also claimed it was a coincidence that hounds were caught on film chasing a fox. He added: “There are occasions when foxes appear during the hunt and the hounds being hounds chase them. There’s nothing we can do.
There has been one time since the ban that we accidentally killed a fox but we informed the police. We use trails like most hunts.
“This footage could mean anything. It could happen if the fox runs across the trail. If this is what it shows then that is what must have happened.”
Hunt Details
Source: Daily Mirror
