MAX HASTINGS
This week several hundred thousand of us expected to be trooping through London on the Countryside March — which is why the editor asked me to write the Diary. It is a symptom of the paranoia rampant in rural parts that, in the three weeks since the march was cancelled, some otherwise perfectly sensible friends have suggested that the outbreak of foot-and-mouth has been very, very convenient for the government, and isn't there a possibility that . . . well. . . you know?
The Hunting Bill has roused greater passion in the countryside than any measure from a Labour regime since the 1940s. If Gordon Brown increased the marginal tax rate to 50 per cent, people wouldn't like it, but they would recognise it as the sort of thing Labour governments do. In the 21st century, they know that the rural community can no longer expect to wield the sort of political and economic power it possessed until almost the end of the 20th. Sensible farmers accept that production subsidy must be shifted to social and environmental purposes. But with the haemorrhage of farming jobs and the ejection of hereditaries from the House of Lords, the transfer of power to urban and suburban Britain is complete. Anybody trying to make a living from the land belongs to an endangered species. So why even now, they demand bitterly, is New Labour pursuing them into their fastnesses, striking directly at their way of life?
John Prescott used to seem cuddly. He brought a welcome comic touch to politics. One thought of him alongside Kenneth Williams and Kenneth Connor as a star of Cony On Governing. Bernard Levin remarked that Willie Whitelaw needed only a sprig of holly in his hair to be mistaken for a Christmas pudding. Prescott looks incomplete without a custard pie. But the joke thinned as he steered the rail and Tube systems towards collapse. It faded completely when he made that vicious old class-war speech to last year's Labour party conference, denouncing the Countryside Alliance protesters 'with their contorted faces'. Prescott often rings up newspapers to complain about their coverage of him. He ended a recent tirade about transport to a broadsheet editor with the triumphant pay-off: And we're still going to ban hunting!'
If I want to feed my own fervour against a hunting ban, I go back to Surtees. An hour or two with Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour or Mr Facey Roinford's Hounds reminds any reader of all the reasons for preserving that wonderfully barmy culture. The DNB is dismis sive of Surtees, whose writing it finds coarse. 'Without the original illustrations,' the Dictionary, declares loftily, 'the works have very small interest.' Nonsense. My father, prone to hyperbole, used to claim that if Dickens had not existed Surtees would be recognised as the greatest portraitist of Victorian rural England. In truth, of course, the author is limited by the fact that all his characters are knaves, villains or grotesques. But he created a brilliantly original world. I am amazed that more modern hunting — and non-hunting — types don't read him.
Country people resist regimentation, so the bosses of the Countryside Alliance have hard lives. John Jackson, the chairman, and Richard Burge, the director, face guerrilla attack from a dotty minority of fox-hunters who accuse them of being trimmers and crypto-socialists. This faction attacks Burge for his own Labour sympathies, and denounces any deal with the government as a sell-out. In principle, it is indeed grotesque for country sports to become subject to government regulation. But most of us recognise that, given the political realities, some sort of deal to preserve fox-hunting by licensing is the best we are going to get. If there is no compromise, we shall end up with a ban.
Walking our dogs on the roads is not much fun, but with footpaths closed it is the only way. Paddy and Stanley (my wife calls
him Rinaldo, but that is another story) know exactly what is expected when a pheasant falls in front of them. They are less sound on the Highway Code. We die a thousand deaths as they potter carelessly across the path of cars doing 50 mph. Make them walk to heel, you will say. Put them on leads. The trouble is, they don't do much abluting that way. The way we live now, they have better outings in Hyde Park.
Missing a pigeon the other day, I thought ruefully: as I get older, I shoot worse. Thirty years ago, I did not get a lot of good pheasant days. Standing alongside middle-aged veterans, who were hitting everything. I used to mutter: when I am their age and get as much practice as they do, I too will shoot that well. Nowadays, however, I have to look in the mirror and admit: this is as good as it gets. One day in January I shot alongside Charles Moore. I performed spectacularly badly. Charles did better, though he fires far fewer cartridges in a season. When I write about the countryside, I try to defuse mockery by declaring myself the shop steward of sporting duffers. But I still blush to remember that pigeon.
My wife refuses on principle to hoard meat or pay extravagant prices, so we are eating a lot of frozen game. Most country households are reluctant to serve pheasants, of which they see a surfeit. We shudder at the roast variety: but are happy to eat any number that have been braised, carved to remove every single bone, then cooked in cream and about a third of a bottle of Madeira to two birds. They're terrific.
Our literary editor passed me a reprint of a 1938 A.G. Macdonell novel I had never read, Autobiography of a Cad. 'You'll enjoy it,' he said, 'it's the memoirs of Alan Clark.' Sure enough, it is great stuff, reflecting Macdonell's rage towards the excesses of the Edwardian rich, which persisted through the first world war. Alan was more fun than Macdonell's anti-hero, but it always seemed absurd that he thought of himself as a gent. In the most recently published volume of his Diaries, Clark takes a poke at Richard Needham's alleged proletarian habits. He heard Needham in the Commons tearoom talking about the bag at a shoot. The great diarist observes that even the most jumped-up stockbroker knows that pheasants are counted in brace. Of course he was wrong. The despised Needham got it right. Alan was a notable entertainer, but the only loyalty he failed to betray was to his own interest. Read Macdonell in the excellent new Prion edition for a whiff of an Edwardian squire of Saltwood.
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