On the rights track
Ivan Massow, an openly gay hunt official, says he uses rights campaign tricks to defeat the saboteurs
Ivan Massow, the Master of Southdown and Eridge Hunt, has vowed to champion the countryside and fight back against saboteurs as he compared the struggle to his fight for gay rights. He said the hunt will meet in Lewes, East Sussex, on Boxing Day despite attempts by activists to “bury them in paperwork”.
Staring at the risk assessment for the fourth time when he would rather be out on his horse, Ivan Massow might have been forgiven for feeling like he wanted to give up. But, as master of the Southdown and Eridge Hunt, he had vowed that he would not be beaten by the saboteurs and their attempts to “bury” the Boxing Day hunt under a pile of papers.
Animal rights campaigners have made numerous attempts to tie the hunt in red tape, including calling on the council to ban them from public land, making health and safety complaints and arguing that they did not have a licence for the toast they raise before setting out.
“The antis have tried to bury us under a pile of paperwork and it is very, very clever of them but everything will be covered, and we will go ahead, we won’t be defeated,” Mr Massow said before his hunt’s traditional meet in the centre of Lewes, East Sussex, on Thursday.
The multimillionaire financier, a leading gay rights campaigner, says that there are parallels between the fights he has taken on.
“It does feel like a struggle,” the 52-year-old told The Daily Telegraph.
“That is one of the reasons it is so aligned to my previous experience in gay rights activism. Now I feel that the countryside needs a champion, needs a bit of help in so many ways.”
Mr Massow believes that the attacks on hunting is threatening traditional rural life. As a result, he has opened up about his involvement for the first time.
The current Southdown and Eridge Hunt was formed in 1981 by the amalgamation of two packs, but it is believed the tradition of meeting in Lewes goes back hundreds of years.
It was immortalised by Siegfried Sassoon in Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man, based upon his friendship with Norman Loder, who was master of the Southdown Hunt from 1911 to 1913. Mr
Massow is in his second season as master but has been involved in different leading roles in hunts for more than two decades.
A friend of Joan Collins and the former chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, he is not the stereotype of a hunt master, and this may be why he has been reluctant to talk about it in the past.
He believes that it is not animal welfare that motivates the saboteurs, but “Corbynesque” class warfare.
But he is precisely the type of person to prove that the stereotypes of wealthy landowners in red coats are wrong. Adopted as a teenager before making his millions in insurance, he now lives with his partner Ed and his son Theo near Lewes, and dedicates a lot of his time to running the hunt.
While to the outsider this might also seem a million miles from fighting for gay rights, Mr Massow can see parallels. “They both feel like issues of liberty,” he said.
Since the 2004 Act banned fox hunting, hunts have adopted drag hunting, in which they chase a scent trail rather than an animal.
But the saboteurs did not give up when the Act was passed and have continued relentlessly to pursue hunts that they allege are breaking the law.
Mr Massow said that they have tried to engage with protesters and have in the past offered to let them lay the trail and given them a map of their routes.
But they merely used it to get ahead of them and jump out in front of their horses, scaring them and endangering the riders, he said. “They think that they are suffragettes throwing themselves in front of our horses but all they are doing is saving a piece of tissue being dragged along by a man in sportswear.”
For the animal rights activists, it is their own day out, they are themselves hunting the hunt, he said.
“The sabs have their own uniforms with the black balaclavas and the black clothing and they have their own mission. That mission is not to work with the community to create something wonderful; it is to destroy a tradition. This is a lifestyle struggle against the people they perceive as being the enemy. If we meet at a pub, they will go online and destroy that pub’s rating on Tripadvisor.
“They have tried everything they can with the council to get us closed down, and most recently the antis claimed that we are in breach of licensing law because we are serving drinks.” For hundreds of years, hunts have traditionally had a drink, usually port, from a stirrup cup before setting out for the day. The objection that they needed an alcohol licence for this was rejected as the pub providing them with the drinks will not be charging, Mr Massow said.
After meeting with the police, the council and filling in endless forms, the hunt has only just managed to jump all the hurdles thrown at them days before they are due to meet.
“These complaints are all very well organised,” said Mr Massow. “Part of what concerns me is that it is a terrible waste of money. I felt terrible that I was involving the taxpayer in all these meetings.”
It is not all bureaucracy, as he
‘The antis have tried to bury us under paperwork but everything will be covered and we will go ahead’
‘Both [gay rights and hunting] feel like issues of liberty’
alleged that those who opposed the hunt had also rewired jumps, putting riders at risk and tampered with shoots, including releasing young pheasants before they could fly and protect themselves.
But none of their actions, or the protests that are planned for Boxing Day, will stop the riders.
Personally, he would like to see the hunting ban overturned, Mr Massow said, as he believes that it is having a damaging impact on countryside life.
The ban means that foxes are being shot by gamekeepers because the growth in population has led to them threatening other wildlife, he said. When the hunts cannot ride, as has happened often this season because of bad weather, the activists turn their attention to other countryside pursuits or the local abattoir, which is now considering closing its doors. The result would be animals undergoing long journeys in trucks to slaughter.
But ban or no ban, one thing is for certain, that the Southdown and Eridge Hunt will continue to wow the crowds on Boxing Day.
“Lewes is a really lovely example of how thousands of people turn out on the street,” Mr Massow said.