The police in the UK and elsewhere tend to be socially, if not always politically, conservative. It takes them time to catch up with modern values. Embracing change is never easy, especially for the police and its officers.

Back in the last century some women campaigned for the right to vote. They broke the law at times and the police arrested them. Eventually the right of women to vote was accepted and passed into law. Later in the century laws to outlaw racial, religious and sexual discrimination were passed and gradually the police adapted to the new norms.

When people first started campaigning against hunting with dogs a few were prepared to ignore the law to disrupt what was then a legal activity. We have now arrived in the 21st century and the situation has changed. Hunting wild mammals with dogs is now illegal and individuals and groups that campaign against it, whether in parliament, on social media or out in the field are actually opposing criminal activity.

It is true that some groups still call themselves hunt saboteurs, but sabotaging criminal activity is something the police should support. Their role after all is to sabotage ie disrupt, the activities of those who rob, rape, murder and steal or break the law in other ways. Sadly certain sections of the police ‘service’ still don’t seem to have caught up. Perhaps the title of hunt ‘saboteurs’ has confused them and they still see these groups as in some way acting illegally in seeking to prevent the hunting of wild mammals with dogs. Perhaps the work of ex-police officers in advisory roles in pro-hunting groups has confused them. Perhaps it is the presence of some members of ‘the great and the good’, including senior police officers, in hunts that has caused this. However this situation arose it needs to be remedied. Recent reports of police officers declining to take evidence from hunt saboteurs because they are ‘against’ hunting combined with the lack of adequate policing of hunts suggest that in this respect the police are living in the past.

Policing of hunts should not be just a public order matter, it should also involve preventing and detecting illegal behaviour by hunts themselves when that occurs. In recent months we have seen a number of cases before the courts where evidence of criminality was largely from monitors or saboteurs. Where were the police whose job it is to prevent and detect crime? Hunt meetings are usually well policed in relation to public order. Why is the policing of them in relation to wildlife crime so inadequate?

The police in the UK are supposed to operate “by consent” and to carry out their duties “without fear or favour”. They need to start doing that and to be seen to be fighting crime no matter where it takes place and no matter who the perpetrators are. Until they can do that they are failing in their duty to the public they are sworn to serve.