A pro-foxhunting group says it has prepared a legal case to try to prove that hunters are an ethnic minority whose hunts should be protected under equality laws.
Ed Swales, the chair of Hunting Kind, claims he has been advised by a leading human rights lawyer that hunters unequivocally qualify for legal protection under the UK Equality Act 2010.
Speaking to the FieldsportsChannel podcast, Swales said: “The qualifications of an ethnic group, there are five of them, and we hit everyone straight in the bullseye.”
He said he had spent three years preparing a legal challenge that had now been reviewed by a human rights KC “who sits on the council of the European court of human rights”.
Swales said: “The outcome of that from the human rights silk is that as a protected minority group under the Equality Act, we qualify, undoubtedly 10 out of 10.”
He said the group would try to mount legal challenges to prove that those who support hunting have suffered discrimination such as losing work or contracts, or been abused on social media. If successful, such action would give hunters the same protection as minority groups such as the Roma community or LGBTQ+ groups.
Swales accused “the animal rights extremist movement” of launching “a person-on-person conflict” against hunters under “the excuse of animal welfare”.
The former Labour minister Mike Foster said the group had lost the plot. He wrote on X: “‘Show me an example of people who have lost the plot,’ the hunt lobby never fail to disappoint.”
In a video on the group’s website, Swales claimed Keir Starmer would understand the legal challenge.
He said: “Keir Starmer, in his position as prime minister with a legal background, would one hopes understand the detail and the plain fact of the matter that we are a minority ethnic group of British people that hunt.”
Hunting Kind believes hunting is an extension of natural selection.
In the video, Swales said: “We see it as a really important part of wildlife management … We’re actually doing people a service. We’re picking up the foxes or the hares or the deer or the rabbits that are either old, they’ve got no teeth, they can die of starvation, or they’ve got the disease, or they’re just not adapted to outperforming a dog in that chase. So we’re happy with that natural selectivity.”
He also said hunting was not cruel. “I can tell you for a fact it is not cruel because I take no delights in the suffering of an animal. I am as animal welfare friendly as anyone I have come across, and my hunting compatriots are the same.”
In the video Swales said the group was committed to reversing the “Bambi effect”.
He added: “Animal rights unfortunately are coming at it from a very uneducated and anthropomorphic point of view, and they’re blinkered to what we see as rural reality and wildlife management reality. And they’re also deaf. They don’t want to listen.”
