PROTECTION OF ANIMALS. (Hansard, 28 April 1937)

§ Mr. Barr
I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to protect those animals which though nominally wild are, in fact, kept in captivity or confinement, and released for the purpose of being hunted or coursed. The object of this Bill is clearly stated on the Order Paper, on page 2271. The Act of 1911 allowed such captive animals to be hunted or coursed if the animal was not liberated in an injured, mutilated, or exhausted condition. The Act of 1921 still allowed the practice, but it ordained that where there was coursing the enclosure must be such as would give reasonable chance of escape. This Bill aims at entirely discontinuing the practice of hunting or coursing tame animals held in captivity. It applies equally to the hunting of the carted deer and to the coursing of the captive rabbit or other animal. It is directed, not against sport, but against cruelty. We have all read from time to time in the Press statements 346 of what befalls, let us say, the carted stag when it is put on the run. We read of it rushing in panic through the streets of a town. We read of it seeking shelter in a house, in a garden, or in an out-building. We read of it leaping over a precipice or being impaled on spikes. We read of it taking to a running stream or being driven out to sea; and if it is lucky or unlucky enough to have its life spared, we read of it being boxed and carted away that it may be raced again and run another day.
A case was stated the other day by my hon. Friend the hon. and gallant Member for Nuneaton (Lieut. - Commander Fletcher), in which he gave an account of a stag which had been hunted for eight hours. It afterwards took to the water and for half an hour it was struggling up and down stream. Five shots were fired at it in the stream, and two farm servants out of compassion went into the stream, brought it ashore, and it had to be destroyed. But it may be said by some 347 that these accounts are apt to be exaggerated. I am willing to put every one of these accounts aside, and to take the official statement that was made by the Home Secretary at that Box on 18th February last. It was in reference to an incident of 9th February at High Wycombe. I will read the main passage as it was given by the Home Secretary: The stag entered the garden of a house, jumped through the fence and then through a second fence on to the railway line. It travelled towards High Wycombe along the railway line for some 500 yards and, on reaching the railway goods yard, returned to the main road. Apparently confused by the volume of traffic at this point, the stag jumped a fence and landed in the adjoining stream where the water is about 18 inches deep. Having crossed the stream, it found its way into the back garden of one of a row of houses bordering the stream and entered a shed, where it was secured. The animal was in a nervous state and bleeding from both forelegs. After an interval of about an hour, six persons arrived with a box van, into which the animal was loaded."—[OFFICAL REPORT, 18th February, 1937; cols. 1345–6, Vol. 320.] That official account is sufficient reason, if there were no other, for this Bill.
I shall take the House into my confidence by saying that former Bills of this kind have been objected to on account of the penalty Clause. I grant that the penalties may be regarded as heavy by some who think lightly of this matter. Twenty-five pounds, or three months' imprisonment with or without hard labour, is the penalty; but I would point out that the original Act of 1911 for the prevention of cruelty to animals at first had a penalty of six months' imprisonment for causing any suffering to an animal. That was afterwards, in 1912, reduced to three months. Now we know that that is no severe punishment when compared with similar punishments for any cruelty to animals. For example, the working of a horse in an unfit condition is subject to very severe penalties; and a magistrate, some time ago, when he imposed a month's hard labour for the offence of working an unfit pony, said: "We are determined to put down cruelty to animals." In a similar case the chairman of the magistrates, when he sentenced three youths for ill-treating a goat, said he was only sorry that he could not sentence them to be flogged. That would only have been adding a second and more grievous wrong to the first, nor can cruelty ever cure cruelty or beget 348 humanity. These severe penalties, if the House should be pleased to pass them, are the indication that we do not look upon this as a trivial offence, but as a deplorable cruelty which it is high time to bring to an end.
I shall refer to only one objection that is taken. It is said that the care and time of this House should be given to the protection of human beings rather than to the protection of animals. In my view the two causes may well go together. If you go back on history you find that those periods which were most devoted to the rights of man had also the keenest sense of the wrongs of animals. "Man's inhumanity to man" is very often the reflex of his inhumanity to dumb creation, and those who come to the aid of defenceless creatures are most likely to come to the aid of defenceless human beings.
Those who have formerly brought in Bills of this kind have often begun by reference to the condemnation of these practices in literature. I shall content myself, in closing, with one reference. On 4th May, 1789, Robert Burns, walking in his fields observed an incident of which he wrote this: One morning lately, as I was out pretty early in the field sowing some grass seed, I heard the burst of a shot from a neighbouring plantation, and presently a poor little wounded hare came crippling by me. You will guess my indignation at the inhuman fellow who could shoot a hare at this season, when they all of them have young ones. Indeed, there is something in that business of destroying for our sport individuals in the animal creation that do not injure us materially, which I could never reconcile to my ideas of virtue. It was on that occasion that he wrote one of the finest of his odes, with the first verse of which I shall close: Inhuman man! curse on thy barb'rous art, And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye! May never pity soothe thee with a sigh, Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart.

§ Mr. Lees-Smith
On a point of Order. May I ask for your guidance, Mr. Speaker, on a point of some difficulty? This matter, which arouses great feeling in the country has been raised by my hon. Friend, and no Member of the whole Government Front Bench has been present throughout my hon. Friend's speech. May I ask whether there is any means by which the right of this House to have the leadership of the Government can be asserted?

§ Mr. Speaker
I have no means in my hands.