A Farmer Accuses a Hunt
It was Mr. Henry Williamson, I think, who said that in matters of country life the local paper was more interesting than all the national dailies put together. Certainly the local paper carried this week a startling item which the daily Press seems to have missed. At a branch meeting of the National Farmers' Union in Canterbury a local farmer made the astonishing allegation that during an outbreak of foot-and- mouth disease, when he "had to put up with every kind of restriction," the East Kent Hunt went gaily through his land, through premises with the notice Path Closed : Foot-and- Mouth Disease, and through his neighbours' land. "Even on the day my cattle were slaughtered the hunt went by in full cry on the far hill." There seems to be no reason to doubt the word of this farmer, who qualified everything by saying, "I do not want to be vindictive "; but if such allegations are true they form an extraordinary example of, as the farmer himself goes on to point out, "one law for the rich and one for the poor." The N.F.U. rightly considered reporting the affair to the Ministry of Agriculture, and it is clear that the matter ought not to rest there.
Previous page
