A Dorset man was unfairly dismissed from his job at a garden centre because of his anti-hunting beliefs, an employment tribunal has ruled.
Joe Hashman was fired from Orchard Park in Gillingham after acting as a witness in two hunting prosecutions.
He took his claim for unfair dismissal to a tribunal after a judge ruled earlier this year that his views on fox-hunting and hare-coursing constituted a “philosophical belief in the sanctity of animal life”. This meant that, legally, they should be treated in the same way as religious beliefs.
Hashman told the hearing in Southampton that “hunt supporter” Andrew Prater had been employed by Orchard Park’s owners as manager and that he had seen him at a number of hunt protests.
But the real problems began when, in July 2009, Hashman stood as a witness for the prosecution against two landowners charged under the Hunting Act 2004. He wrote about the proceedings in his blog, while at the same time criticising the Gillingham and Shaftesbury Agricultural Show for its “hunting influences”.
Prater had died in an accident at the event, but on the day of his funeral on 3 September that year, Hasman was asked not to return to work because his employer said that the vegetable patch he was working on was being cut back.
A “defamatory memo” was subsequently circulated to his colleagues about him, Prater said. Two days earlier, he had attended a second court case in Scarborough, which involved celebrity chef, Clarissa Dickson-Wright.
After hearing the evidence, the tribunal returned a unanimous verdict of unfair dismissal. Hashman has accepted an undisclosed financial settlement from his former employer along with a public apology for the memo.
He told the BBC: “I am proud to have established in law my philosophical belief in the sanctity of life – including fervent anti-fox-hunting and hare-coursing beliefs.”
One Response
When will people learn???
It’s always due to the ‘defamatory memo’…