"Excellent, excellent - the fox has been dispatched - someone tell the sabs the fun is over"

This was the radio traffic between 'Bravo’ and ‘Bronze Command’ police officers at the Surrey Union hunt near Shackleford on Saturday 28th March 2004 after they had gleefully protected yet another digout by the sordid little amateurs of the surrey union.

So far this season, the hunt have only managed to kill a couple of foxes above ground, and have resorted to organizing digouts by mobile phone to increase their kill rate. In fact, on Boxing Day, just so they could add another poor fox to their tally, they rode (not hunted) over a mile straight to a pre-arranged dig under the supervision of the local gamekeeper at Ellens Green. No hunting, no hounds in cry, no gallop behind the pack, just a quiet hack across a muddy field to dig out a terrified little animal all to make the hunt look like they kill a large number of foxes.

We’ve singled out Surrey police on this page because they are so blatantly biased, but in reality, this rant could apply to most police forces who regularly police hunts in their area. The pictures here show how in league they are with the hunt and terriermen, but their radio traffic revealed how woefully ignorant they are of the things they should be aware of – on the arrival of 2 Surrey Badger Group members, they were threatened with arrest for section 69 and 68 by ‘over eager’ cops who failed to realize that their arrival had been agreed with the senior officer to belatedly check whether the dig was a badger sett.

The police did not know whether there were signs of badger activity, on whose land they actually were or if the hunt had permission to be there – we have had many instances in the past of them digging in areas they have no right to dig. The police claimed their ‘evidence gatherers’ were experts on identifying badger setts, but when questioned further, it was obvious they would have had a job distinguishing their arses from their elbows if the hunt had told them it was the other way around! Completely clueless.

The unquestioning support of surrey police for foxhunting was again fully demonstrated that saturday when they ringed a dig out and helped the terriermen to kill yet another terrified, defenceless wild animal.

The hunt had started at Tilford near Farnham, and later in the day chased a fox which managed to evade the hounds in a large earth near Shackleford. Most of the police were apparently from Staines, so perhaps they were a bit out of their normal environment. In contrast to previous years where digouts have been discouraged when sabs are around to avoid breach of the peace situations, this season has seen unparalleled co-ordination between the hunt and the terriermen by mobile phone, backed up by blind support from the police.

Since February, the majority of foxes underground will have been either pregnant or nursing vixens, or dog foxes supplying them with food as they lie up underground, so the digging out of foxes at this time results in the deaths of many more than just the fox shot in the hole. The police laugh and joke with the terriermen at the expense of terrified wild animals, and revel in the distress of hunt saboteurs - it doesn't just show where the police favour lies, it devalues their 'position' which they constantly tell us is so important.

After the embarrassing events of a couple of Saturdays previously, when the policeman in charge of the assisting the digout on the Hampton Estate saw the hundreds of officers under his command kick their heels aimlessly as SHAC activists changed their demonstration plans in solidarity with the hunt saboteurs who had been so badly treated out in the woods, we thought Surrey police might review their policing methods, but someone is obviously pulling some pretty big strings with the powers that be. Or maybe they are just bent, power hungry little shits, who knows? If we were council tax payers or journalists in the Staines area, as we have said elsewhere previously, we might be asking why large numbers of their officers are trekking down to support a hunt in rural Surrey at weekends when they could be better spent 'policing the streets'?

Hampshire police have noted the behaviour of Surrey police by disallowing digging out on Saturdays in the light of the Hampton Estate incident, although something must have got their goat on Saturday, as they were reduced to offering selected sabs out for a fist fight at various points during the day!

Their does seem to have been a return to the bad old days of biased policing elsewhere in the country, particularly Derbyshire recently where the entire gathering of hunt sabs was arrested to allow the Barlow hunt to continue unhindered on one Saturday although there will hopefully be some civil action to educate the police in the error of their ways. Pity we can't sue individual officers - now that would really change things.