'N 0 BAN' said the letters of
burning straw, though I was nut convinced that people in the flat land below could read them. On Monday night, about 40 of us were up above the Long Man of Wilmington, the ancient chalk giant on the South Downs. Thc bales were brought up on a fork-lift and then rolled out into letters, primed and lit. Several slightly singed men stood by and admired their handiwork. We watched the blue lights of the fire engines which, despite earlier
notification and agreement, still came out and moved irresolutely to the lower slopes before turning back. Hunting horns were blown. I remembered lighting something similar six and a half years ago, for the first Countryside March. It is astonishing how long this battle has gone on, and how one side has won all the arguments. The key concession by the government was to commission the Burns committee to establish the facts of the matter. Its key error has been to permit its
backbenchers to ignore those facts. Now it is making time to give that ignorance the force of law, When Mr Blair agreed to see pro-hunt demonstrators at Chequers at the weekend, he told them that he had no personal desire for a ban but that the feeling for it was very strong. I think he thinks this shows what a moderate and sensible fellow he is, Actually, it shows him to be a cynic. He knows he is making bad law and that he will divide the country by doing so. There will be a heavy price, but no one yet knows who will have to pay it.
Here are two basic errors which keep coming up in the hunting debate: (a) The people who defend hunters didn't defend miners.' Broadly true, though many ex-miners hunt. The difference is that the state paid for coalmining. It was its responsibility to see whether the money was spent well. The state pays nothing for hunting. (b) 'Hunting is cruel because the fox is torn apart alive.' He isn't, and therefore it isn't. The fox is torn apart dead, as a reward for the hounds. He is killed by a single bite to the back of the neck by the lead hound, I've seen it and it takes in the region of five seconds. Amazing what a pyramid of rage has been built on this fiction.
By the way, when 362 MPs voted for a ban last year. 36 of them sat for seats
in Scotland, which has its own laws about hunting, so they should have had no say in what happens in England and Wales. In England and Wales, 162 of the pro-ban MPs sat for urban seats where there is no hunting. That leaves 164 pro-ban MPs with any standing in the matter at all, just under a quarter of the whole House of Commons.
Qn the whole, I subscribe to the modern view that children should be hugged and kissed by their parents, and I feel sorry for those in past generations who missed out on this. But it is worth remembering that some children, particularly boys, just do not like such attention. Here's a passage from an excellent book called A Victorian Boyhood by L.E. Jones, recently given to me by a friend: Tor myself, I disliked physical contacts of all kinds, except kissing a kitten's forehead or rubbing against my cheek the smooth, cool curves of an ivory paperknife. To be caressed by a grown-up person turned me sour; and I am convinced that serious damage may be done to young affections by lack of respect for bodily aloofness.' For many boys, such aloofness creates the space necessary for growing up. It struck me that when Lord Spencer, in the funeral oration for his sister,
passionately invited Prince William and Prince Harry to 'sing openly', that must have been the last thing on earth that they wished to do,
The Right Nation, the new book by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge,
is a very useful guide to the growing success of conservatism in America. It makes the point that American conservatives are far better than British ones at placing themselves on the side of hope, optimism and the future. They support growth, and therefore they experience it. The Tories, the authors rightly say, must do the same. But the authors do underrate the fact that American conservatism is also, for want of a better word, conservative. Its optimism is not utopian or rationalistic. It arises from historical experience, from a long-standing and robust idea of what it is to be American. In this, the idea of national independence, the importance of States' rights and the respect felt for the Constitution are all key factors. There is a conservative narrative of American history which commands confidence. It is not that American conservatives don't look back — they do — but they do so in order better to look forward. It is the difference between living tradition and mere nostalgia. There used to be a comparable conservative narrative about British history, but it has been severely weakened by many things, of which central state control of education, the cultural dominance of the BBC and our ever closer union in the EU are the main elements. The Tories need to refashion this narrative rather than reject it. Modernise, yes: forget, no.
please could people stop saying, It isn't rocket science', and stop inviting one another to 'sing from the same hymnsheet'?
T n these pages last week, Bruce
1 Anderson criticised the chairman of the Labour party, Ian McCartney, because he is 'about 5ft tall. He has no neck and a Glaswegian accent... '.A couple of weeks earlier, he attacked General Sir Mike Jackson for having had a cosmetic operation on the wrinkles round his eyes. In last week's paper. General Jackson explained that he had the operation, which removed 'surplus flesh', not for the sake of vanity but 'to improve my vision'. Those who have met Bruce Anderson may feel that there is an element of pot and kettle in Bruce criticising people for their personal appearance, but I disagree. After all, no one could accuse Bruce of being Mt tall, or of contemplating an operation to remove surplus flesh.
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