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oes the Countryside Alliance have a Plan B? It has done astonishingly well over the past seven years at engaging with public debate, mobilising opinion in the country and building a relationship with the government. But does it know what to do if, as the use of the Parliament Act for the hunting Bill would prove, it is confronted with Labour unreason? Already, as other, more militant people pop up on television claiming to speak for the countryside, you can feel power draining away from the Alliance, which is presumably what the government wants. It has to lead the campaign of peaceful civil disobedience. As one campaigner put it to me, 'We've had Chamberlain, now we need Churchill.
In the course of last week's excitements, I did a radio programmer with Billy Bragg, the singer, he for a hunting ban and 1 against. He struck me as a friendly man with no innate hostility to country people (indeed, he lives in Dorset) but, talking afterwards, we came up against the usual problem that he didn't know what actually happens out hunting. I invited him to come and have a look; he smiled, but said he wouldn't because he couldn't bear to see the cruelty. It reminded me of my brother aged five, who when asked whether he liked pizza said, 'No. What is it?' The theologians call it invincible ignorance, and it is a bad way to make laws.
Someone called Damian Green announced last week that he would rather return to the Conservative back benches than face the ignominy of becoming the party's constitutional affairs spokesman. It was a neat little encapsulation of the Tories' failure to understand what is happening that Mr Green thinks the subject beneath him. In the same week Peter Hain. the Leader of the House, seized the chance afforded by Otis Ferry and friends to say that somebody approved by the government should take charge of security in the Houses of Parliament. This is not a management issue, but a constitutional one. If the government decides how to run the security of Parliament, it is deciding, in effect. how to run Parliament. The 'men in tights' that Mr Blunkett has described as representing `rnediaevalism' actually represent the victory of the more modern view that Parliament should be sovereign. 'Security grounds' are always the reason given for preventing access to something, suspending normal rules, even for closing
something down altogether. This question — whether or not the government controls Parliament — caused our Civil War. But the Tories have barely noticed it.
So low has the reputation of Parliament sunk that it's hard to find people who are genuinely outraged by Otis and co. On balance, they did the hunting cause a good turn. The same cannot be said of the people who tried to block motorways, achieving nothing but justified irritation from the public. A more fruitful field of activity might be the new Right to Roam. Is one permitted to go for a walk across the fields to Chequers?
T n church last Sunday, our priest invited a
I lay speaker to show us his racial justice board in place of the usual homily. It was a 'xenophobia check', the man explained, consisting of four hands hanging from it, one black, one brown, one 'manila' and one white. The idea was that you could judge, by how you shook the hands, how much you suffered from racial prejudice. At least I think that is what it did, but I am not absolutely sure because I was serving at the altar that day and so was sitting behind the display. All I could see were the wooden struts which supported the board. On the middle strut was written, to help guide those assembling it, 'Rear leg of xenophobia'. What is the rear leg of xenophobia? I fell to wondering. I think it is asylum as at present constituted. Asylum used to be the aspect of immigration which people were most ready to accept — the offering of shelter to the persecuted. Now, because of its gigantic abuse, it typifies all the worst things about immigration — dishonesty, uncontrollable numbers, lack of integration, the exploitation of welfare and the disregard of the wishes of the indigenous. No one who has to live with the consequences of such a system could possibly welcome them, and so xenophobia finds a new breeding ground.
Amore moving religious occasion took place on Tuesday. Before the early evening hunting, hounds, riders and footfollowers gathered to be blessed by the local vicar. A weekday cub-hunting in the past would have attracted a mere 10 or 15 people; but Mr Blair has so galvanised the country that we had a mounted field of 40, including about ten young children, and a large crowd on foot. We gathered in warm sun on the slopes of a hill near the church, so archetypal a spot that we felt ready for the Sermon on the Mount. The Revd John Lambourne was brief, however. He prayed that the hounds should have 'strength, patience and long life' (I secretly wanted him to add 'nose, cry, drive, quality, pace', etc.) and blessed us all — hounds, dogs, horses and people. Next Tuesday the crusade moves to Brighton, among the unbelievers, and there is a queue of people ready to be martyrs.
Qne of the pleasures of Greg Dyke's unintentionally hilarious autobiography, Inside Story, published this week, is its sturdy preference for the cliche. The former director-general of the BBC, famously the author of a yellow card for his staff which said 'CUT THE CRAP!', shoots the stuff instead. Here is a Greg Dyke quiz. You have to fill in the missing words. Answers appear upside down, below.
A. The BBC Governors 'were behaving like frightened — caught in the '.
B. The acting Chairman issued 'the most — of apologies'.
C. Lord Hutton's findings were 'dismissed as a crude D. Greg's humane ideas of leadership were 'not exactly — E. Being, by his own admission, neither pompous nor self-important, Greg never wanted 'the — — treatment' given to his predecessors.
F. When he was asked to join the board of Manchester United it was the `— experience of his life.
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