WITH regard to your recent article on hunting. I am sorry for anyone who loses their job. However people involved in hunting should remember that during the 1980s and early 1990s many thousands of workers in the countryside lost their jobs.

This information is from the Transport & General Workers Union which represents large numbers of people employed in the rural economy.

As many jobs in rural areas include accommodation, many of these workers must have lost their homes as well as their livelihoods.

Also during this period thousands of miners, steelworkers, and many others lost their jobs.

I do not recall any protests about this from the hunting community. The Tories were in power, hunting was not under threat, so why should hunters bother to protest?

However, when a large majority of elected MPs under a Labour Government vote in favour of a hunt ban, it's a different matter entirely. Protests from hunters and their supporters are loud and long, civil unrest is threatened, and the entire 'countryside' is exhorted to rise up and defend hunting.

If hunting with dogs is banned, hunts do have the option of drag hunting, where hounds follow a scent and not a live animal. So job losses could be avoided.

Hunters are privileged in this, having an option is a luxury which was denied to many thousands of ordinary working people not so long ago.

As for the claim by the huntsman that 'hunting is not a cruel sport'. Well, he would say that wouldn't he?

E ROBINSON

Former Northwich resident