So, barring a last minute fudge, it looks as if you will no longer be able to ride to hounds in England any more, that is if you had any mind to. John Peel, with his coat so gay, may be turning in his grave and countryfolk threatening illegal meets and yet another green wellie march on London, but is it really any great loss?
On the other hand, why such a ‘pother banning foxhunting in the first place? Hasn’t the British parliament and the great British public got better things to do than put a stop to the recreation of a rural minority at the urging of an urban majority, who don’t like the thought of what they see as a bunch of well-heeled Hooray Henrys having fun, charging across the countryside on horseback, all in the unlikely event they’ll kill a fox.
Is England any the poorer without the undoubtedly picturesque sight of men, women and children dressed in elegant black habits, in the pink and the green, well-mounted and like as not well-sozzled, in full flight across the landscape to the sound of a baying pack, whips a-cracking, whippers-in speaking in unknown tongues, horns a-blowing and a View-Halloo in the morning? Or is the nation well rid of an activity where people get their rocks off killing animals?
In which case, why not put a stop to all other forms of hunting? Shooting and fishing for a start. Nobody’s really killing these animals to eat are they? That’s incidental. C’mon, it’s the fun, in’it?
I think the silliest reason I ever heard seriously advanced by the foxhunting lobby was that it was an efficient way of killing foxes. Anyone who knows anything about hunting and the fox population of Britain knows what a silly argument that is. Riding to hounds is a risky business, much more dangerous to the people who do it and their mounts than ever it is to the fox. You’ve only to attend a Hunt Ball and see those chaps in pink and wheelchairs to see that. And if you think horses don’t enjoy the chase you’d be dead wrong.
Much of the argument against foxhunting is flawed too. Foxes are not exactly an endangered species. As and when a foxhunt is actually successful, the ravenous pack do not tear the poor creature to bits, the fox is quickly dispatched by the lead dog with a bite to the neck. Compare that to a slow death by poisoning, snaring and shooting, which is what foxes will continue to face now. If your aim is to stop cruelty to animals there are plenty of better places to start than by banning foxhunting. You have only to visit any industrial farm raising livestock for slaughter to know that. And if you’ve the stomach for it, go see an abattoir. Perhaps we all should do that and be a bit more conscious of what we eat.
Are we then to believe that the majority of Britons, obsessed by the fact that a despised class of rural and wannabe rural folk, who like dressing up and chasing foxes on horseback, are so incensed that they are prepared to back decades of parliamentary debate on the subject while the country and the world goes to hell in a basket? A majority may indeed find it distasteful, but I hardly think the nation is that exercised about it. So what’s really going on?
It’s a bit like those ridiculous licensing laws governing the sale and consumption of alcohol that made Britain such a dreary place to dine out in for so many years. The good Bishop of Chichester declared in the House of Lords, back in the 1860’s when the temperance lobby of the day was vainly trying to introduce legislation restricting the sale of liquor, that “By God,” he’d “rather see England free, than England sober”. The laws restricting the sale of alcohol only really came into force in 1916 during the Great War because it was felt that too many of the munitions workers were getting sloshed down the pub at lunchtime. Why then were these laws not repealed when the war ended? Why, sixty years on could you not go into a restaurant and have a glass of wine with your meal after 2.00 pm on a Sunday afternoon? It all got blamed on the Lord’s Day Observance Society, the temperance zealots, the tradtional Labour non-conformists and other well meaning killjoys, who made up a tiny fraction of the nation.
A likely story. Believe that an’ you’ll believe anything. Try instead the Beerage, the great grandees of the day who owned the breweries and all the pubs. What a marvelous restrictive practice. In return for an 8-hour day selling only liquor without all the fuss of having to dish up even passable food, you get to stop any restaurant, café or liquor store in the country serving wine, beer or spirits outside of pub licensing hours. That more than anything else explains the lamentable reputation of food in Britain and why for so long it remained a pub versus a cafe society. But that’s all history now, and the Bishop may rest in peace safe in the knowledge that England is as sottish as ever it was in his day.
So it is with foxhunting. Britons aren’t generally such a mean spirited lot that they want to stop other people having fun simply because they don’t like them. Apart from any assumed moral superiority, who actually gains from banning hunting?
Not so long ago foxhunting was a rural and communal activity. In a classic hunt all sections of the community participated, from the great land magnates, the landed gentry, parsons, professional men, tradespeople and townsmen and, most important, as well as the backbone of it all, farmers and tenant farmers.
That world has mostly gone. The great landowners are still there of course, lording it over 90% of the country. The landed gentry have largely disappeared, to be replaced by second home-owners from the cities. Tradespeople in country towns have been displaced by Tescos and other supermarket chains. But the real killer has been the demise of the small farmer, succeeded by industrial agricultural combines in league with the great landowners farming huge tracts of the countryside and changing it irreversibly. These people never saw a hedgerow they didn’t want flattened or see public access they’d not like to deny. Do you believe for one second, that with all their cash and political clout, they give a stuff about foxes or actually liked to have rowdy groups of horsemen charging all over their well-ordered domains?
Not on your nelly, it’s now an immoral anachronism and must go.
Such people see very clearly that traditional countryfolk present the biggest focus of resistance to their destruction of a traditional and diverse rural life and landscape in a small island like Britain. To be profitable in EC terms, the countryside needed to become an industrial agricultural zone for big biz with tiny bits of it zoned as expensive real estate for wealthy weekend city folk and a theme park for holidaymakers. All this and farming subsidies too.
As a boy and young man I grew up in the country mostly and was, I have to admit, quite horsey. I used to ride with the Blackmore Vale, a good working hunt in England’s West Country, I enjoyed the cross-country aspect of 3-day eventing and even did some steeplechasing (try that for a bone-crunching adrenalin rush). I very soon found that I disliked shooting animals in cold blood and stopped. I never had the patience or skill for fishing. As the years have gone by I’ve found my affection for animals is such that I like just being with them or observing them, rather than killing them. So foxhunting for me is not an issue or something I have any burning need to do any more, but that doesn’t mean I’d like to make sure nobody else does it.
I guess it’s all relative. What I dislike more than anything else is the degradation, disrespect and mistreatment of animals. That’s why I don’t eat meat. I don’t like the way billions of animals are industrially raised with no other purpose than to be slaughtered and eaten. I do not say people should not eat meat. Merely that the animals they eat should not be mistreated and people should be conscious of what they do, or have done in their name. Either they should hunt, kill and butcher the animal themselves or, if that is impractical, eat a lot less of it. That or pay enough so the animal they eat can live a natural, even if short life. Much better for the animal, much better for them, and much better for the planet.
As for my erstwhile countrymen and women who wish to ride with the hounds and all those who wish to make like John Peel, may I suggest they take the ‘plane for Ireland, where you can still enjoy a great day out.
