On November 6th I was listening to the State opening of Parliament on the radio when the veteran Labour MP Dennis ‘The Beast of Bolsover’ Skinner suddenly shouted out “Who killed the harriers?” as the Queen walked in. The puzzled radio commentator asked aloud, ” ‘Who shot the haggis’, did he say?” and moved swiftly on without any more discussion. Had the commentator had any interest in conservation he would have known exactly what Dennis Skinner was referring to: the shooting dead of two of Britain’s rarest birds of prey, Hen Harriers, on October 24th by “someone” firing from the Queen’s estate at Sandringham into Dersingham nature reserve in Norfolk. He would also have known that on the night of the 5th nearly two weeks after the Hen Harriers were shot, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had confirmed that “Prince Harry, third in line to the throne, had been interviewed as an official suspect by police, along with William van Cutsem, 28, a family friend, and David Clarke, 58, a Sandringham gamekeeper“, and that despite “an intensive police inquiry, no charges could be brought because ‘the bodies of the Hen Harriers have not been found’.”

The story goes like this. Three witnesses, including a warden for Natural England, say they saw two Hen Harriers shot out of the sky over the Queen’s Sandringham estate, whilst they were out actually out watching them through binoculars. The warden immediately contacted the police, who discovered that the only people who were out shooting that night were Prince Harry and his friends. Curiously these toffs said that even though they’d been in the area they hadn’t shot the birds and had no idea who had, a Clarence House spokesman saying: “Because Prince Harry and a friend were both in the area at the time the police have been in contact with them and asked them if they have any information that could help. Unfortunately, they had no knowledge of the alleged incident.” Strange, given that they are basically saying that “someone” was out armed with a shotgun on the Queen’s Estate at THE SAME TIME as the normally coddled and well-protected 23 year old and that no-one thought to track down this potential danger to the “third-in-line” or get him out of any potential harm’s way as quickly as possible. (Have you ever tried to get within shotgun range of the Royal family? I haven’t, but I’m pretty certain that it’s not as easy as this incident suggests - and if it is, well, Harry and the rest of his blue-blooded bunch should watch their backs because there are some pretty enraged birders and conservationists in the UK at the moment.)

The prosecution of the ‘Sandringham Three’ eventually failed because the bodies of the birds weren’t found. “Someone” had not only blasted two extremely rare birds out of the sky - offences which carry a six-month jail sentence or a £5,000 fine - they’d then removed the bodies to stop any chances of forensic evidence being gathered. In a statement of the most forelock-tugging obsequiousness I’ve read in a long-time Marcus O’Lone, the Queen’s estate manager, claimed the failure to find the birds’ bodies suggested they had never actually been shot. “I just can’t believe it will have happened. At the end of the day these are allegations. The police are investigating it and we will have to await the results of their inquiries.” Yes, Marcus, hard to believe that a couple of arrogant youths with guns could have done such a thing: after all the Royal Family - the Queen is a patron of the RSPB and the unloved Prince Philip is Patron of WWF - love wildlife.

Unless, of course, we believe this from Stephen Bates, writing in The Guardian on November 1st: “We can go right back to 1066, when William the Conqueror declared all wild animals in his new kingdom to be his property. Edward VII once chased a deer all the way from Harrow to Paddington Station before killing it, but generally preferred the half-tame and portly pheasants specially bred to flop before his gun at Sandringham. But it was his son, George V, who was really trigger happy, once killing 1,000 pheasants in a day. The Queen’s father, George VI, spent his last day alive shooting rabbits on the same estate and Her Majesty herself was quite capable of bringing down stags with a rifle when she was younger - so much for the sentimentality over a dead deer in the film The Queen.” Oh, yes, they love wildlife - particularly when they’re gunning it down on the vast acreage of land their ancestors stole off the rest of us.

The CPS however, in a statement on November 5th, said it had no doubt that the birds had been shot. And, it revealed, the prince and his companions were also questioned over the illegal use of lead shot over the nature reserve - an inquiry hampered by the removal of ducks which Harry had definitely shot.

The illegal use of lead-shot? Shooting into a nature reserve? Surely Harry as a “modern Royal” - one who ‘experimented with marijuana, who once dressed-up as a Nazi for a fancy-dress party and who regularly stumbles drunk out of the sort of nightclubs only fabulously-wealthy and hugely privileged chaps like him can get into - wouldn’t have anything to do with this sort of stuff? Despite the fact that Princess Diana, his mother, was notably anti-hunting he does seem to enjoy the company of people who do enjoy killing animals. His much-googled girlfriend Chelsy Davy came under fire from animal rights campaigners after attending a convention to promote big game hunting in Africa earlier this year. The oddly-named Chelsy, whose father is allegedly close to dictator and madman Robert Mugabe and has made millions operating a safari in Zimbabwe, attended a Safari Club International Event in Nevada, USA: the Safari Club is a non-profit organisation that prides itself on being the “leader in protecting the freedom to hunt”.

How proud she would have been the night of October 24th if Harry HAD been the mystery gunman…

Well, we’ll never know of course. Had the suspects been Romanian immigrants or asylum-seekers our unbiased and politically-neutral press here in the UK might have gone after the truth with a little more resolve (something along the lines of “Let’s Get The Freeloading Scum Who Target Our Rare Birds” perhaps), but as it involved Harry a media investigation was a non-starter.

The police undoubtedly tried their best to find out who had killed the Harriers, but all three suspects denied any knowledge of the incident, there was no eyewitness testimony of who had fired the fatal shots, and there were no corpses, so the case was closed. Andrew Baxter, a senior CPS lawyer, said: “I am satisfied the police investigation has been thorough and there are no other areas of investigation which can be pursued.” Tellingly, though, the CPS added that no-one else was being sought: which translates as, “WE know they did it, we just can’t prove it.”

A spokesman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which both counts the Queen as its patron and is currently campaigning against the continued slaughter of Hen Harriers, said: “We’re under no doubt that a crime was committed. The fact that no bodies could be found is extremely disappointing. For nobody to be brought to book for the deaths of two Hen Harriers is also extremely disappointing. We’re concerned, but not surprised, that no evidence could be found.” The RSPB is in an awkward position no doubt, but Harry won’t be quaking in his boots at such soft words….

Does it really matter though that a couple of Hen Harriers - birds loathed by the hunting community who routinely accuse them of taking “their” gamebirds from “their” estates - were shot. Yes it does. There are now thought to be just 20 breeding pairs of Hen Harriers left in England, compared to 500 elsewhere in the UK, and it is one of only two birds of prey on the “red list” of endangered species.

The chairman of Natural England, Sir Martin Doughty, is quoted as saying that “This form of illegal persecution was “the greatest threat” to the bird’s long-term survival. Every year Hen Harriers are killed illegally … but successful prosecutions are incredibly rare.” He went on to say that Natural England would re-double its efforts to protect Hen Harriers. He’s going to have a Hell of a job doing that though, because you have to ask what message getting away with the killing of these two Hen Harriers on Sandringham will send to shooting estates around Britain? I can only imagine that a whole bunch of thoroughly dislikeable people who consider wild birds to be nothing more than trophies, pests, or target practice will laugh into their sherries and get their guns ready for whatever unfortunate raptor finds its way onto “their” estates in the coming months. This disgraceful episode has given a green light to the rich and powerful to ignore laws protecting our birds, because they know that they’re going to get away with it if they pick up the bodies of the birds they shoot and dispose of them.

So “Who killed the harriers”? I’ll tell you who Dennis. A pathetic privileged child who isn’t man enough to admit he did something morally indefensible, who is unconcerned about the Law because he thinks he’s above it, and who is so protected by wealth and history that he couldn’t give a toss about what the rest of us think anyway.