STAG ON THE ROOF
The press: Paul Johnson
looks at a case of rural misreporting
NATIONAL newspapers are curiously neglectful of the countryside. More and more people want to live there, or in fact do live there, to judge by the rise in house prices in East Anglia, the Cotswolds and the West Country. Not only is the centre of gravity of Britain's population shifting from the industrial north and midlands to the rural south but the influx is far more widely scattered as modern technology demands green-field sites. But the mental- ity of the national newspaper is still geared firmly to the big city and the preoccupations and prejudices of urban man.
In terms of output-value, agriculture is easily our biggest industry but agricultural correspondents rate low on the scale: grudgingly conceded space, first to be cut, seldom if ever allowed a front-page splash. Country matters are something quaint or eccentric rather like the Chess feature, tucked away down-column on a back page and treated as a concession to a minority interest. Newspapers have not changed much, in this respect, since Evelyn Waugh wrote Scoop; rural writers are still rather as the foreign editor of the Beast imagined William Boot — as a remote, old- fashioned creature speaking with a strong Somerset accent and demanding cider.
Somerset, as it happens, is where I now live part of the time, and I am becoming conscious of the curious suspicion, not to say hostility,with which the national press still treats rural England. Nowhere is the gap more evident than on the subject of hunting. Like fishing, hunting is now ac- quiring something of the nature of a mass sport. No exact figures are available, but it is believed more people turn out for Boxing Day hunts than for football match- es. In my part of Somerset there are at least 13 active hunts: seven packs of foxhounds, three of staghounds, two har- riers and a pack of beagles. Their follow- ings are impressive. It is not uncommon for staghounds to bring out 200 riders, plus a multitude of followers on foot and by car. Farmers form the core of the hunts, but they seem to attract in one capacity or another people of all classes, occupations, ages and certainly both sexes. Traditional types are still to be found: at the meet of the local staghounds last week I saw a brick-faced veteran who looked exactly like John Leech's rendering of Lord Scam- perdale in Surtees's Mr Facey Romford's Hounds. But most of those who follow the hounds are now very ordinary people, and presumably ordinary newspaper readers too.
Yet the nationals still treat hunting as an upper-class conspiracy against beautiful, defenceless animals, and almost invariably misreport it. Earlier this month, for inst- ance, several gave prominence to a photo- graph of a hunted stag which had taken refuge on a roof in the village of Porlock. With the ferocious hounds and their hu- man accomplices baying for its blood, the terrified animal had apparently performed the extraordinary feat of leaping ten yards into the air to get on the roof, where its life was saved by a brave, angry woman. When a huntsman strode forward with his gun and told her to get out of the way the woman placed herself in front of the stag and said: 'If you wish to kill this poor animal, you must kill me first.'
Some nationals gave various accounts of `So you used to do weather forecasts. I was on financial.' this incident, including the point of view of the hunt. But I had to turn to the West Somerset Free Press to discover more or less what happened. The Press, I should add, reflects all aspects of local opinion, which is very divided on the subject, though mainly pro-hunting. Last week it printed a letter from a Porlock resident, Julia Parker-Critchley, arguing that 'if hunting is not stopped in the manner in which it is presently carried out' the stag would become 'extinct', and asking: 'There are after all numerous supermarkets stack- ed full of meat, so why kill an innocent species which is trying to survive in a tiny corner of England?' Another furious resi- dent, Mrs Vera Adams, witnessed the stag clambering onto the roof, but added: `What happened after that I don't know as I came down my garden and gave the hunt and followers the length of my tongue.' She went on to describe the hunt as 'looking like a flock of vultures' and warned: 'The hunt should know by now that I watch their every move.... All incidents are reported to the League Against Cruel Sports.'
Alongside this was a letter from a farmer, Ron Westcott, who, in his own words, 'was the person most closely con- cerned' and had been 'horrified by the reporting of the incident'. He said the stag had been picked to be hunted 'by the harbourer' because 'it was a bad specimen and should not be kept in the herd'. When he saw the stag on the edge of the village he stopped the hounds hunting. 'I dis- mounted, carrying the hunt gun, which is an approved firearm. It is carried on the horse folded and in a holster. I removed the gun from the holster for security reasons, as I must by law have the gun with me at all times.' When he walked towards the stag, a lady shouted: 'Don't shoot it.' It was at this point that the stag began a scramble over lean-to sheds which took it onto a roof of a cottage: 'There was no question of the stag leaping up onto the roof.' He said he saw a man hitting two of the hounds with a spade, injuring one of them: 'All the hounds were taken away by the huntsman and the stag came off the roof of its own accord. At no time was the gun loaded. At no time did I aim at the stag. At no time did I speak to the lady or gentleman or suggest that they move.' He added that, as a farmer, 'I live and work with the deer every day of my life and I am as concerned about the well-being of the Exmoor red deer as anyone else.'
Some will say that Mr Westcott is not telling the truth, but I believe him. Anyone who has studied the history of forest law will know that, by one of the most ancient of paradoxes, those who hunt animals are the ones who love them most realistically, and therefore wisely, and are the most successful at defending their long-term interests. It is a paradox which urbanites, not least those who run national newspap- ers, simply do not grasp.
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