Alliance Party member John Blair has introduced a Stormont bill to ban the “cruel and inhumane” practice of fox hunting in the Six Counties.

Alliance also announced the move on Facebook.

Countryside Alliance Ireland then emitted its usual gibberish in response.

The group claims to act as “the voice of rural communities”, yet fails to actually represent the views of people in those areas. The League Against Cruel Sports reported poll results that showed more than 70% of people in NI want fox hunting to be banned.

These figures are comparatively consistent in urban and rural areas of NI.

Fox hunting: Rural voters back ban on cruel ‘sport’

This mirrors similar figures in the south of Ireland. After a poll showed 68% of rural voters wanted a ban there, Ruairí Ó Leocháin of Stand With Badgers, said:

Rural Ireland is tired of being falsely portrayed as supportive of this violence and rejects the suffering it inflicts on wildlife and the countryside alike.

The Countryside Alliance Ireland claims to “protect and celebrate the beauty and vitality of Ireland’s countryside”.

Leocháin cited the “routine destruction” caused by the barbaric so-called sport and the “displacement of protected wildlife”.

A previous Stormont vote on the issue failed in 2021 by a narrow margin of 45 votes to 38. That was partly the result of Sinn Féin whipping its MLAs to vote against it.

On this occasion that will be less likely. Last week the party voted at its annual Ard Fheis (conference) to back a ban on fox hunting. The vote took place at Belfast’s Waterfront Hall and will dictate party policy on both sides of the border.

Sinn Féin delegates at conference back ban too

Delegates rejected motion 28, which cynically tried to use Irish mythology to garner support for ripping defenceless foxes to shreds. It said:

…hunting in Ireland dates back thousands of years with Irish Mythology and examples such as Cu Chulainn the “Hound of Ulster” being defined by their hunting roles in Celtic lore.

Réada Cronin TD scoffed at this nonsense. She said:

I never expected to find Cú Chulainn on the clár [agenda] of our Ard Fheis. Cú Chulainn never put on a red coat and tally hoed after a fox on horseback with hounds.

That mindset, that entitlement was never part of our culture. Sinn Féin would never be the party that introduced fox hunting to Ireland but we must be the party to end it and send it back to where it belongs in our colonial past.

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Ann Graves TD took a similar line, quoting Oscar Wilde’s observation of:

The English country gentleman galloping after a fox: the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

They backed motion 29, which described the fox hunting for leisure using dogs as:

unavoidably cruel and by necessity inflicts terror, exhaustion, irrevocable injury, and death on the foxes involved.

Shónagh Ní Raghallaigh TD called out the absurdity of describing the maiming and murdering of an animal as ‘sport’.

It is not a sport when the other team doesn’t know it’s playing.

Running for your life and enduring exhaustion and terror is indeed a very long way from play. Following the recent events at Stormont and the Waterfront, it will hopefully soon be a form of sadistic entertainment no longer available to these thugs on horseback.

Featured image via Pixabay/ Camera-man