League Against Cruel Sports

Timeline

1923 – The League began in Morden, (now a suburb of London) after Henry Amos raised a protest against rabbit coursing; he was successful in motivating support and managed to achieve a ban. This encouraged him to organise opposition to other forms of blood sports and so, along with Ernest Bell, he established the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports. Although many blood sports such as bull, bear and badger baiting and cock fighting had already been outlawed at the time, animal protection laws only applied to domestic and captive animals. With the RSPCA unwilling to take action against hunting, Amos and Bell identified a clear need for an organisation which would campaign against what it classified as cruel sports.
1927 – The organisation had 1000 members.
1932 – Bell left the organisation due to a difference in tactics. He went on to found the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports (NSACS).
1948 – Actress Yvonne Arnaud became the League's President until 1951.
1960 – League patron, Sir Patrick Moore, introduced an anti-hunting motion to the RSPCA's AGM but it was defeated.
1967 – Reverend Lord Donald Soper became President of the League a position held for 30 years, until his death in 1997.
1975 – An anti-hare coursing Bill, supported by the League, passed through the House of Commons, but failed in the House of Lords.
1978 – The League helped establish legal protection for otters, which numbers were declining, by making it illegal to kill them.
1989 – As part of a "Safe Setts" campaign, the League joined forces with the RSPCA, WWF, RSNC and NFBG to push for further protection for badgers. The previous legislation covered the actual animals, but not the setts, which were said to be still being destroyed.
2001 – The Sunday Telegraph reported that one of the League's then press officers had previously been arrested for violent disorder at Hillgrove Farm which bred cats for scientific research. More than 1,000 protesters converged on the farm and many, including this person, fought pitched battles with 400 police, some in riot gear, drafted in from five forces. He had been sentenced to three months imprisonment for his actions. Also in 2001 controversially, Graham Sirl resigned his position with the League, saying that he no longer believed a complete ban on hunting was in the best interests of wildlife. Sirl stated: "I now believe hunting with hounds plays an integral part in the management system of deer on Exmoor and the Quantock Hills."

2003 – Actress Annette Crosbie was named President of the League. In a January 10, 2003 interview with David Edwards, Crosbie told the Daily Mirror that she felt the human race to be "the nastiest species of animal on the planet". In the same interview she describes herself as "impatient, intolerant, judgmental, tactless – I'm not very nice, I'm really not. And if you don't do it my way, by God you'll be sorry."
2005 – With the commencement of the Hunting Act, fox hunting with dogs became illegal in England and Wales. "We are delighted that 80 years of peaceful, legal campaigning has paid off and that hunters will not be permitted to inflict suffering on wild mammals for their entertainment," a spokesman for the League Against Cruel Sports told BBC News.
2006 – A huntsman with the Exmoor Foxhounds, was found guilty of illegal hunting foxes with dogs in a private prosecution taken out by the League. (In 2009, the huntsman's appeal was upheld by the High Court, and the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to contest that ruling.) The League continued to monitor hunts so that evidence of law breaking could be brought before the Magistrates' Courts.
2007 – A second successful prosecution was brought by the League against two members of the Quantock Staghounds after they were filmed chasing a deer for more than an hour.
2008 – the League is successful in a third Hunting Act private prosecution. The League moves from London to new offices in Godalming.
2009 – announced a new campaign against dogfighting, amidst news reports that there is an increase in dogfighting in London.
2010 – the League rebrands and launches a new image and new logo "to better equip for the campaigning challenges ahead."