the 2023 epsom derby will feature on the front pages tomorrow.

​The Epsom Derby is 1-mile & 4-furlongs long. Alas, the story of Derby Day 2023 will take far longer to tell. 
It is a mad world when in order to do all that is possible to stage a legal event, land owners must fork-out five or six-figure sums of money to seek a court injunction against people who by simply stepping onto your land are breaking the law. Animal Rising have publicly informed the authorities of their intention to break the law today. The threat has been communicated on social media and carried by national newspapers. Yet nothing, seemingly, can be done in anticipation of the threat until the perpetrators have committed the unlawful act. As things stand, given the large acreage of Epsom Downs is common land and the softly-softly approach of the police, I cannot see how there will not be disruption to the Derby, can you?
I think the tactics of the police would be markedly different if the threat was against government property or a direct threat against the King’s property. I am afraid the truth is, as proved by the softly-softly approach to ‘Stop Oil’ protests – you need to drive an electric car for 100,000 miles, by the way, to get it to net zero given they are built using power from nuclear power-stations – out-of-control protests will be used by our government in the near future to cut a swathe through our freedom to protest peacefully or otherwise about anything. It is good publicity for their future aims to allow people in pink shirts to be seen on prime-time television climbing security fencing, fighting the police and disrupting public life.
That said. 
The B.H.A. made the wrong call in deciding to run the Derby at 1.30. They have known since before the disruption to the Grand National that Epsom, too, would be targeted by Animal Rising and yet put the financial gain of the World Pool before the safety of horses, jockeys and members of the public. The discretionary move, at least this time around, would have been to stage the race during the F.A. Cup Final, with a replay of the race shown either at half-time at Wembley or after the game, denying the protestors the limelight of a maximum amount of exposure to the maximum number of viewers.
By the by. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if the F.A.Cup Final is not interrupted through invasion by Stop Oil or Animal Rising protestors. 
It is time to stand firm. I hope Ed Chamberlain informs I.T.V. viewers of the large number of people employed directly or indirectly by the horse racing industry. Horse racing is a diverse society. It is not an entertainment for the mega-rich. It is not an upper-class sport. Horse racing is very much a working-class sport. Flat jockeys in particular tend to originate from working-class families, though more and more it seems our leading jockeys are sons of former jockeys. I doubt if anyone in the country, working in any industry, works a similar number of hours per week that a leading or workaday jockey must do.
But this issue is not about jockeys or owners but the equine stars of the show. I once had a letter published in either the Sporting Life or the Racing Post – I have a copy somewhere but you know time and bother – suggesting that the first rule of the sport should be the horse comes first. This was at a time when handicappers were campaigning to have all horses ridden out to the winning post irrespective if they were likely to be in the money or tailed-off. No one, seemingly, supported me as no letters for or against were later published.
All through the whip debate, there seemed little support for banning use of the whip altogether. Yet this is issue is the stick our objectors use to beat us with most frequently. Frankie Dettori is rightly spoken-of as one the world’s great jockeys. As is Ryan Moore. Yet both use their whips sparingly. It is body-strength and horsemanship that wins the day with both of them. Yet the sport decides to go with six aesthetically-pleasing strikes.
Charlotte Jones received a 12-ban at Cartmel for mistaking the winning post. Pat Cosgrave got a 28-day ban for stopping riding before the winning line and being pipped at the post. Yet jockeys still receive shorter bans for a whip offence. Right or wrong, the issue is how the public view the discrepancy. This is about the public licence to continue as a sport.
I have absolutely no doubt that racehorses are the best cared-for animals in this country. I cannot comment with honesty on the situation in other countries. Can the sport do more? Of course, it can, yet, criminally, we are always on the backfoot, playing catch-up. Horses will die on racecourses, on the gallops, while turned-out at grass and sometimes even in the comparative safety of their stable. Yet I know that as soon as a horse requires the attention of a vet all that can possibly be done to heal the injury or cure the illness is done promptly without recourse to thoughts of cost. 
There is so much cruelty and neglect in this world, yet Animal Rising choose to protest against an industry that puts an animal on a pedestal, that when reading the result of a race it is the name of the horse that comes first, not the jockey, trainer or owner.
Excepting our late Queen and Winston Churchill, racehorse owners of sound repute, there are more statues of horses in this country than there are of jockeys, trainers or owners. Animal Rising believe large areas of this country should be rewilded so that horses can run free where we can go to enjoy them. Of course, many will die in agony of broken legs, illness and the cold British climate, though, of course, rangers could be employed to monitor the thousands of equines patriated to wild, uncaring nature. Animal Rising, no doubt, also believe in fairies and unicorns.
Epsom today will be a battleground of ideology. The protestors will largely be young, no doubt the same people who take part in Stop Oil protests; people who ignore the 33 dire warnings by climate scientists since 1958 claiming the Arctic will be free of ice by 2000 or famine will ravish the Earth by 2005 and so on and on. What every claim of catastrophe has in common is that they have proved to be wrong. 
Animal Rising are not opposed to horse racing per se, they are using our sport and threatening the employment of many thousands of people to publicise their belief that the connection between animals and humans should be terminated. No domestic pets is also their goal.
We live in a government directed world of wokism, where people are allowed to believe that if they object to anything, they have the right to protest against it and strive to have it banished from society. I object to Animal Rising. Perhaps I should glue myself to one of its activists or invade a members’ garden or disrupt one of their gatherings by fair means or foul.