Country life
Stick to your guns
Leanda de Lisle
Foxhunters have long warned that if their sport was banned, the next target would be pheasant shooting. But they were wrong. Neither the government nor the animal-rights lobby is prepared to wait that long. And if the shooting fraternity imagine that they can leave foxhunters to campaign for fieldsports on their own, they should be warned that hunting people are sick and tired of getting on coaches and waving placards.
Last week, the government announced new restrictions on shotgun ownership. An Animal Aid report claiming that pheasant shooting results in 75,000 tons of poisonous lead shot falling on the countryside also received wide publicity. But the Country- side Alliance had shot its bolt at the Labour party conference the week before. The marches, as usual, were largely organ- ised and filled by hunting people. But there is a new mood that is worth describing. Our local hunt sent three coaches last year. This time only one coachload could summon the enthusiasm for the trip.
We met at the kennels at 6.30 a.m. Angela, who follows the hunt by car, greet- ed us with a smile. She is one of the rea- sons that the Alliance has grown so powerful. Hunt followers have the passion of opera-lovers and years of experience in organising events such as point-to-point meetings, to raise money for the sport. Angela could have made a success of the Dome, but instead she delivered reluctant protesters to Brighton. On the seafront, `Hold on a minute, . . . its custard.' our fellow marchers looked resigned behind the collars of their fleece jackets. We watched a cavalcade of police drive by with the Thunderbirds theme tune 'Interna- tional Rescue' blaring from the loudspeak- ers on their vans. There seemed to be a hell of a lot of them.
Hundreds of police, not only in vans but on motorcycles and horses, were there to manage perhaps 3,000 people who could have been plucked at random from any market square. The crowd patted the police horses and handed round stickers reading 'Hunting for Tolerance', 'Angling for Liberty' and 'Aiming at Fairness'. A few sold whistles hanging from ribbons in the Rastafarian colours of red, yellow and green as tractors prepared to pull floats along the road. One was adorned with a coffin labelled Blair's Countryside': anoth- er bore a prison containing a hunting mechanic, a nurse, a shepherd, a city gent and a dinner lady.
The march began with an elderly woman hobbling along on my right, a stick taking some of the pressure off her twisted spine. `You can see why they needed the riot police,' I thought. A passing lorry tooted support and we were outside the Grand, with its knots of sour-faced delegates watching from the steps. Looking round, I recognised Simon Hart, a spokesman for the Campaign for Hunting. How had things been? About 10,000 people had come dur- ing four days from different parts of the country, but Mr Hart was upset. After a Labour MP had said at a fringe meeting that in a civilised society people didn't kill animals for fun, Mr Hart had asked him where he stood on shooting and fishing. The MP's reply had been: 'You and your kind can f— off to where you've come from.' I was surprised that he was sur- prised.
The crowd started to sing 'God Save the Queen' under the phalanx of police cam- eras lined up on the Grand's balcony. Then a farmer from Gloucestershire came to the tannoy. Come the general election, Tony Blair would be spending more time with his family, he said. 'Boring, isn't it?' a cor- duroy-clad man with a cigarette in his mouth commented. Were hunting people fed up with these rallies in his part of the world? 'Everyone will come out for a big one, but there seems to be a mini rally every month,' he complained. 'Blair, Blair, Blair, out, out, out,' the crowd chanted half-heartedly. It was time to return home. We ambled back to the coaches boxed in on all sides by police.
Mr Blair can't be a unifier without hav- ing enemies to unite against. They include those who will be shooting this season, as well as the middle-aged hunting ladies who keep the Alliance on the road. The guns shouldn't leave Angela to cope with all the skirmishes ahead.
Leanda de Lisle's column returns in a fortnight.
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