I dreamed of Amimal freedom

Courier Countryside Column  3 January 2014

The Dream that Changed the Countryside Forever

I had a dream over Christmas.  Perhaps I snoozed off after a surfeit of port and pudding, but in my mind I was sure that in 2014 it all changed. For I had glimpsed a time-line stretching back to the Gladiators of ancient Rome killing lions for sport in the Coliseum. I watched bears being driven mad by dogs in Shakespeare’s London.  I saw other canines tearing each other to pieces as men wagered on the outcome.  I heard the sound of cockpits as gamecocks attacked each other with lethal spurs. I watched generations of scarlet clad huntsmen and women tallyho-ing across the countryside as hounds ripped apart foxes and children were smeared with the blood.  I saw skies full of pheasants falling to earth as lead pellets tore holes in their flesh.  I saw marksmen with rifles waiting in the darkness to put bullets between the eyes of stripy-faced badgers.

But then, in my dream, the scales fell from all our eyes.  As the New Year dawned, one by one we awoke to the realisation that we do not have the right to kill another species for sport, or fun, or in the name of a ‘cull’.  We had all come to understand these creatures were sentient and felt fear and pain and had moral rights too.  We saw that as history had progressed we had outlawed bear-baiting and cock-fighting because we rightly realised they were cruel.  We came to find it morally reprehensible to slaughter magnificent elephants for the ivory of their tusks. Or to shoot tigers for the sheer ‘sport’ of it until there was none left on the planet.

It wasn’t such a giant leap for us to extend the ban to badgers and pheasants and rabbits.  And even those in the Countryside Alliance celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Hunting Act by agreeing that hounding a wild animal to death with a pack of dogs provided no more enjoyable entertainment than a good ride out on a crisp winter’s day following the scent of a drag or trail.

And it all had an unexpected consequence. The RSPCA and its new radical chief executive became irrelevant. Eventually it lost its royal charter.  And just before I awoke I saw Her Majesty bestow it instead on another charity, which was known thenceforth as The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to  Children. A Happy New Year.