AND ANOTHER THING
Why hunting, tolerance and democracy go together
PAUL JOHNSON
n Saturday morning the local foxhunt gathered for the last meet of the season in a field near our house in Somerset. All the neighbours were there from the nearby farms and hamlets. This is a truly rural parish: there are only eight houses, includ- ing ours, gathered near the church, and all the rest are scattered over many square miles. In our kind of community, the volun- tary principle is dominant. The Women's Institute flourishes. So does the British Legion. Whist drives, gardens open to the public, fund-raising teas and dances, cricket matches on our beautiful ground — these are the things which bring people together, and turn neighbours into friends. We even have a volunteer fire brigade, much needed here since the nearest full-time one is ten miles away.
The hunt fits into this voluntary pattern. It is one of the local integuments, self-gov- erning, self-supporting, enthusiastically backed by all the farmers, bringing together people of all ages and classes and both sexes. It is a riding academy and a matrimo- nial agency and, in its own way, a school where you learn about nature and the envi- ronment without any of the tiresome ideol- ogy which now infests the subject.
I chat with the local lads, a superannuat- ed colonel, a village maiden and a retired judge. The judge is very knowledgable about the hounds and he explains to me the different breeds which make up the pack as we fondle these beautiful dogs, the friendli- est creatures in the world, especially good with children. All their aggression goes towards the fox. Most of the pack are descended from the famous Heythrop strain but there are other blends and one hound has a touch, I notice, of the distinc- tive local sheepdog.
The talk is of the story in yesterday's Times that Tony Blair refused to include in the Labour manifesto a pledge to give gov- ernment time to allow the passage of an anti-bloodsports Bill. In the new parlia- ment such a private member's Bill will no doubt be carried on second reading. Blair's decision means that its chances of getting through committee will be poor, especially since the sporting organisations are now getting their case across and making even Labour's urban MPs conscious of how many voters are involved directly or indi- rectly in such activities.
Making hunting with hounds unlawful would have a devastating effect on areas like West Somerset. It would be another nail in the coffin of village life, already threatened from so many quarters. In our district alone, there are 14 different hunts, staghounds, beagles and harriers as well as foxhounds. Between them they have well over a thousand hounds, from whelps to tufters. These dogs are bred and trained to hunt. They do not make good farm animals or pets. They are big dogs when fully grown, with healthy appetites and expen- sive to keep. If parliament bans their raison d'être, the vast majority of them will have to be destroyed. Who is to do it or watch while it is done? I do not know how many people make their living from these field- sports, though the figure of 220,000 over all England has been mentioned. If they have to be sacked, most of these people will never again be able to get paid employ- ment.
I do not hunt and have not shot a bird for over 40 years. I now have such a passion for preserving life that I will not kill even an annoying housefly without three public warnings, as in all-in wrestling, and even then I usually contrive to get it out of the room. But I recognise that hunting is prob- ably the least cruel way of keeping down foxes, just as I am now persuaded that hunting is the only civilised way of culling our local red deer. Opposition to hunting is confined to fanatics and the ignorant. The fanatics have the same mentality as those who released hundreds of minks into the countryside, which have now multiplied and wiped out entire species of local mam- mals. They are not to be reasoned with and are not in the least interested in the facts. They can be, and often are, violent and they attract violent people from the big cities who want a scrap. I have seen in our 'A celebration party, for whom?' neighbourhood young thugs from Birming- ham and Bristol with shaved heads and combat uniforms posing as animal-lovers with balaclavas in their pockets ready to be dommed where they attack local hunt peo- ple. Such young men terrorise the country- side, not only by turning up at meets but by congregating at the summer all-night raves which city youth now hold in rural areas, often unlawfully. Of course if hunting is banned the boot will be on the other foot. I suspect that some embittered hunt-follow- ers will join the sabotage game in revenge, and will start to ruin urban activities, such as pop concerts and football matches. What happened at Saturday's Grand National shows how easy it is for a few unscrupulous grudge-bearers to ruin the pleasure of mil- lions.
It says a lot for Tony Blair's statesman- ship that he has grasped how important it is to preserve the spirit of tolerance in a soci- ety like ours. The Labour party used to have a powerful intolerant streak, which became unbridled in the 1970s and kept it out of office. Blair has been steadily remov- ing it from a wide variety of subjects, replacing it with a live-and-let-live approach. His politics are a mixture of rationalism and democracy. He says, 'Give me cogent arguments for doing something, or not doing something, and if they are good enough I will go along with you. Oth- erwise, let people make up their own minds.' He is strongly opposed to the old Labour dictum that 'the gentleman in Whitehall knows best' and still more to the socialist principle, most clearly formulated by Lenin, that a 'vanguard elite' has all the moral and practical answers and must impose them, by force if necessary, on the uninstructed multitude. The anti-hunting fanatics are part of this elitism, arrogantly confident in their belief that they know bet- ter how to run the countryside and preserve the balance of nature than the people who actually live there.
There is a final point arising out of this topic, obvious but worth making because it is often overlooked. Blair is accused of 'backing down' on this and other matters. The truth is, he tries to find out what most people actually want, and if this becomes overwhelmingly clear, he accepts it. People may call that backing down, I call it democ- racy. But Blair also has moral principles, to be stuck to whatever the clamour. We shall see him doing that too before long.
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