Northumberland hunters claim Equality Act protects practice as part of pit village cultural heritage

The film, featuring interviews with Ashington men who use lurchers or terriers to hunt, will premiere at a public event at 1pm on Sunday, May 12 at The Miners pub in Ashington.

The group believe their right to hunt ‘for the pot’ is protected by the Equality Act and is a generations-long part of mining communities, with some using the practice to find food during the 1984 miners’ strike.

Current restrictions allow the practice with landowner permission but they fear it could be banned in future.

One of the film’s contributors, 56-year-old Mitch Young, said: “There are a lot of proud people in the North East who have traditionally done this for hundreds of years and for it to just be ripped away from you by people who do not even know you is just an absolute disgrace.

“The documentary expresses that and shows you what we are about and what we do.”

The highways worker added: “If a Labour government brings in these changes in legislation I will not be able to hand down the things that my father and grandfather have handed down to me.”

Hunting was mostly outlawed by the Hunting Act 2004 with some exceptions, considered by some to be loopholes.

The Labour Party has said it will “strengthen the Hunting Act to end the illegal hunting of foxes, deer, and hares” if it wins the next general election and that the 2004 law was a “landmark moment” that is “widely supported by voters.”

This is backed by animal rights groups. PETA’s vice president of programmes Elisa Allen said: “The sooner the government closes all loopholes that allow depraved individuals to continue participating in this blood sport, the better.”

The League Against Cruel Sports’ head of campaigns Emma Judd said: “So-called ‘traditional’ cruel sports are really just old fashioned, illegal, and cruel, and the law should be tightened to ensure those who would chase and kill animals in this way can be properly prosecuted for it.”

However Ed Swales, one of the campaigners behind the film, argues the Hunting Act “disrupted how the countryside was run,” resulting in animals being treated like pests and killed in higher numbers.

The army veteran from Scremerston, near Berwick, said: “It was considered by anybody that knows anything about law and liberties that that law was a bad law that was ill-constructed and completely prejudiced and discriminatory.”

Ed has prepared a legal defence and says he is prepared to defend someone in court who was discriminated against because of their pro-hunting views under the Equality Act.

He said: “I have prepared the legal case. I have submitted a mini-PhD effectively that has been peer reviewed by scientists and anthropologists and written by me, which basically articulates what hunting means to us.

“I am absolutely convinced by my legal team that if we get the right case coming forward it will be very easily won and then that will establish the legal precedent.”

Ed added: “It is not like playing golf. It is something they spend their entire life doing, whether it is breeding dogs, training dogs, actually hunting with them.”