Location: Primrose Hill, London
Affiliations: North London Hunt Saboteurs
Giles is a zealous sab from Primrose Hill, one of London’s most expensive residential areas.
Giles has recently been caught on camera playing audio of hounds in cry from a speaker during a hunt. This tactic is deployed by sabs to deliberately confuse and redirect the hounds.
This is cruel and potentially extremely dangerous, as distracted hounds may run onto roads, such as the one directly behind Giles in the video. Is this what sabs mean when they say they are protecting animals?
Giles has given multiple talks about the disruptive activities of the North London Hunt Saboteurs, including at events such as VegFest, which claims to be “making veganism fun since 2003”. In these talks he portrays himself as a kind of local hero throwing himself in harm’s way, putting himself “between the hunt and their prey”.
But these talks aren’t as popular as Giles would like. Twice the posters for his speaking events have been torn down in the local area. The first time that happened, Giles had said, “There are a lot of posters up. They all remained untouched – it was only ours that were ripped down”.
This just goes to show that despite the claims from sab groups of their popularity and widespread support, most ordinary people are hostile to the preaching of these so-called ‘animal lovers’.
In March 2024 Giles complained that Hatfield Park was hosting the closing meet of the Cambridgeshire Hunt with Enfield Chace. Giles told the Welwyn Hatfield Times that illegal foxhunting had occurred. He notably provided no evidence to back up these spurious claims.
Giles also complained about the fact that the hunt passed through Hatfield House’s private land – although as we’ve reported plenty of times, many sabs are more than happy to indulge in a spot of trespassing. In fact, Hatfield Park told the paper that some sabs had chosen “to seek unlawful access to Hatfield Park and sought to disrupt an otherwise peaceful day."
Giles himself has described trespassing as just “walking across a field” – something many farmers whose crops are destroyed in the process may take issue with.
Giles then partook in the classic sab pastime of trying to pressurise (often local, independent) businesses into bending to the demands of the sab community to cease any association whatsoever with hunts or individuals who hunt. After the above events at Hatfield Park, he tried to press Vegan Market Co into ceasing its relationship with Hatfield House, where it was set to host a market. At Behind The Masks, we know how devastating this kind of malicious pressure is to small independent businesses.