ON THE face of it David Redvers has little to complain about. Tall and good-looking, he lives in an idyllic farmhouse with his wife, Laura, and their 18-month-old son, Charlie, and owns a 650-acre stud farm and a string of successful racehorses.
But behind the electronically operated gates of Tweenhill Stud near Hartpury in Gloucestershire, Mr Redvers, 34, feels under siege. It is not the gaggle of journalists gathered at his door that makes him feel this way. It is a government that has decreed that an activity he has enjoyed all his life is no longer legal.
Unlike some of those who were with him when he burst into the House of Commons during the hunt protest on Wednesday, Mr Redvers does not stand to lose his job or his home when the ban on hunting with hounds becomes law.
After 30 hours in a police cell he is bleary-eyed but just as determined as when he and his companions sneaked past the Serjeant at Arms staff dressed as builders. He admits he was “pooping” before approaching the chamber where MPs were debating the Hunting Bill. He refused to be drawn on how they had managed to evade the security but said: “It was ludicrously easy, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work it out. In the end we just walked in. I thought it was mad at the time and I still think it’s mad.”
He denied “categorically” there was any inside help. Mr Redvers said: “Spending 30 hours alone in a police cell was not a pleasant experience but I would do it all again. I did it because I felt I hadn’t done enough for a cause I believe in. If necessary I would be prepared to go to prison.”
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Mr Redvers is not a natural rebel. In 1995 he transformed his parents’ farm into a successful stud where he breeds racehorses and employs 12 people. Until this week his only previous brush with the law had been a speeding ticket.
After being released at midnight and getting home to bed at 4am, he was back at his farm by seven to feed the horses. It is concern for his horses that partly drove him to make such the protest. He said: “Racehorses that don’t quite make the grade or are getting long in the tooth often go for hunting. Now they will just be shot because there will be no demand for them. I reckon that at least 2,000 horses a year will end up in the knacker’s yard because of this law. It just hasn’t been thought through. ”
He is also worried about friends such as John Holliday, the Ledbury huntsman who made it into the chamber, who stands to lose his job and tied cottage when the ban becomes law in 2006.
If it were not for hunting it is unlikely that the paths of Mr Redvers, the millionaire stud owner, Mr Holliday, the £10,000-a-year huntsman, Luke Tomlinson, the Etoneducated, polo-playing friend of royalty, Otis Ferry, son of the Roxy Music singer Bryan Ferry, and Nick Wood, a professional chef, would have crossed. Mr Redvers said: “Hunting has helped create the countryside we have now. There are up to 10,000 people who will lose their jobs if hunting is banned.”
John Redvers, David’s father, does not hunt, but he also feels that the Government is ignoring his views, along with those of much of Middle England. He said: “The Government said they would decide on the facts but when the Burns report concluded there was no case for a ban, they ignored it.”
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At Wothersome Grange, the family seat of fellow protester Richard Wakeham, there was an air of pride and delight at the 36-year-old jockey’s antics in the Commons. The Wakehams are more accustomed to making the laws of the land than breaking them. Richard Wakeham’s maternal great-grandfather was Lord Bingley, a former Minister for Mines. Yesterday, Mr Wakeham Sr, a director general of the Equestrian Trade Association, who was appointed MBE in 2000 for services to the equestrian industry, said: “If he has broken the law, then he’s obviously got to take his punishment, but I thought he showed considerable courage and I’m sure he’ll accept his punishment, whatever it is, with similar fortitude.”
After years of marches, lobbying and campaigning, it seems to Mr Wakeham that only this week has the public been introduced to the full depth of the outrage which has been created in many rural communities by the proposed ban.
Covering almost every inch of the kitchen wall in the farmhouse are 32 prints, photographs, cards and calendars with a single theme: horses, hounds and hunting. The front-door knocker, should any doubts remain, is in the shape of a fox’s head. As Mr Wakeham, 68, a former army officer, sounded his battle cry, there was no mistaking a sense of bewilderment at finding himself a proponent of “mass defiance” against an elected British government.
Once a ban is in place, he nevertheless fully hopes and expects to see hunts across England continuing to ride with hounds in pursuit of foxes. Law-breaking on such a massive scale would, he believes, prove impossible to police.
And lest anyone believe that the pro-hunt lobby is merely the preserve of the decadent aristocracy, Mr Wakeham found an unlikely ally yesterday when the local postman arrived to deliver the mail. Adie Noble, born and bred in Leeds, would fit no one’s idea of a toff, and yet he has spent many years as a keen foot-follower of beagle and foxhound packs.
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Mr Noble said: “It’s a shame it’s come to this, but we’re not harming anyone and I was brought up to believe that every Englishman has a right to put across his point of view. That’s what we fought two world wars for, isn’t it?”