Blooded by Blair

THIS TIME LAST YEAR, Tony Blair became the first European head of government since Adolf Hitler to abolish foxhunting.

The ban came after decades of debate in England about, ostensibly, whether it is cruel for foxes to be torn apart by a pack of hounds after a chase. By the time this activity was banned, the debate had ceased to be about anything of the sort. It was more about the hatred that many people, in Britain's still class-based society, feel about what they regard as the sporting pursuits of the wealthy and landed. It had also, though, become a symbol of the utter incomprehensibility of rural life to those who live in the great centers of population in urban England.

I write "England" because, under Britain's system of devolved government, hunting was banned in Scotland nearly three years ago. The arguments there were identical, and the political motivations the same. Scotland is run by a predominantly left-wing devolved government. With one or two honorable exceptions, it is central to the creed of the British left that they will oppose hunting.

However, once the ban was implemented in Scotland, the chase carried on as before. All that changed was that, when the fox was cornered, it was killed by men armed with 12-bore shotguns while the dogs were kept at a distance. Those who agitated for the ban in Scotland now see as many foxes killed as before. The "toffs " as they call the hunters, still get their sport. A prosecution brought against a hunt for killing a fox failed. It has been an utterly pointless exercise.

The ban came into effect in England last February, about five weeks before the end of the hunting season in most parts of the country. Hunts reported that, in the last weeks of the season, as many foxes were killed as before. So symbolic has the ban become of an arrogant and ignorant government that, on the first Saturday on which the ban was in force, tens of thousands of hunt followers turned out at meets all over England to show their support. It played a small part, but a part nonetheless, in the decline in the Labour party's vote in many rural areas in last year's elections.

It looks as though the ban will be as unenforceable in England as it has proved in Scotland. The country's overstretched police forces simply lack the resources and the manpower to see whether a piece of vermin is, or is not, being killed by a hound. Rural England is gravely under policed: Villages that used to have their own bobby lost him 10 or 20 years ago. If a burglar alarm goes off in a house in rural England, it can take an hour for anyone to turn up to see what is going on, especially if the incident occurs on a weekend.

Since the beginning of the latest season, animal-rights activists have sought to provide evidence of offenses under the new law, and urged prosecutions. But any such cases are sure to provoke unrest, anger, and further division at a time when the Labour government is already low in public esteem, and sinking. For years, there was no organized lobby in England to defend hunting. Those who did it simply failed to believe that a government could ever be so motivated against them as to want to abolish their sport. After all, they knew that foxes were vermin that wrought huge destruction of livestock and game in the countryside. No one could possibly object to their being killed, could they? And anyone who had actually hunted knew that, once the hounds caught the fox, death was instantaneous. The alternative methods--shooting, trapping or poisoning--were far less reliable and less humane.

Apart from making the mistake of not arguing their case in an organized way, the pro-hunters failed to see that this was not about foxes at all, or about wider issues of animal welfare, but about them. In the 1920s and '30s there was a set, of which the then-Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) was the most prominent member, who hunted more or less all the time. They bought or rented houses around towns like Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, the heart of England's prime hunting country, and from October until March might ride to hounds four or five days a week.

The very fact that such people did not seem to have to work for a living at a time when the world's advanced economies were in a slump, and poverty and hardship were rife, provided fuel for socialist levelers. But that was 80 years ago. Sadly, the image and stereotype have not passed. A few rich people do hunt, and some of them hunt a lot. But most hunts are populated by farmers, many of them tenants rather than landowners, and other non landed country people or townies who hire horses to have a day's sport.

Many of what Labour would call "our people"--members of the rural working class--are involved in some way with the hunt. Some of them have a horse and ride to hounds; countless others enjoy the spectacle and the camaraderie and follow on foot. Above all, throughout England, thousands of skilled and semi skilled workers depend on the hunt for a living--blacksmiths, farriers, huntsmen, kennel maids, saddlers, and grooms--and these natural Labour voters are at grave risk of being thrown out of work by the hunting ban.

Once the hunting fraternity realized its way of life was under threat, and groups such as the Countryside Alliance were formed to give an organized response to it, something remarkable happened. The anti-hunting lobby found itself slipping in public estimation. A poll carried out at the end of 2003 found that 59 percent of respondents favored the continuation of foxhunting. The anti-hunters were exposed as knowing little about what actually goes on in the hunting field, or deliberately misrepresenting it for political reasons.

An argument, on their part, that had relied heavily on sentiment and prejudice was now being effectively countered by fact. However, the anti-hunters were too far gone down their particular road to be swayed by that. Above all, it was proved to the English public that even if class hatred were the basis for seeking a ban, the anti-hunters had found the wrong target. The hunters were not a collection of braying, idle, vicious toffs. Nonetheless, with a majority of nearly 160 in the 659-seat House of Commons, Labour could effectively end hunting whenever it chose to do so.

Tony Blair had made promises that the sport would be banned even before he came to power in 1997. However, it soon became clear that he had said this not out of personal conviction, but because it was an easy means of appeasing the old left of his party, who naturally disliked him. His wife, too, was well-known to hate hunting, and was widely reported as having put him under pressure to bring in a ban. As Blair struggled to get measures reforming the governance of state-run hospitals and the funding of higher education through the Commons, the bone of a hunting ban was thrown to his backbenchers. They joyfully grabbed it.

Blair, though, was more aware than they were of the organized opposition to a ban that had suddenly grown up. He was aware, especially, of the difficulties a wealthy and increasingly angry lobby of sophisticated people could pose to the government of the day, and the potential for conflict and division. He sought means to put the genie back in the bottle, but he failed. And although the House of Lords rejected the ban, under British law they could delay it only for one session of parliament. Therefore, the ban was passed, and given royal assent by a Queen whose family continued to enjoy the sport right up to the end.

Hunting is an important part of British culture. Not only does it feature in the novels of such writers as Anthony Trollope and Henry Fielding, it was the very basis of the celebrated series of "Jorrocks" novels by R.S. Surtees. Prints and paintings of hunting scenes do not merely adorn our stately homes and grander houses, but are to be found on the walls of cottages and village pubs. They are to be found on chocolate boxes and biscuit tins. ("Gone to earth," "hunting with the pack," and "being blooded" are just some of the phrases from the sport that have passed into the language.) Above all, much of our countryside looks like it does in order to facilitate the sport. It would have been far more economical for many farmers to cut woodlands down and grow cash crops on them had they not wanted to preserve cover. Similarly, hedgerows, obstructive and time-consuming, would all have vanished long ago.

There is a strong element in the Labour party that wants to destroy rural culture because it is so thoroughly alien to the urban soul. Above all, it represents many things--peace, quiet, space, clean air, nature--that some urban socialists resent not having had themselves, and which they therefore would like to take away from as many other people as possible. In having parliament ban foxhunting, these elements feel they have struck the greatest possible blow for their cause, short of nationalizing land.

Agriculture in England is suffering terribly because of such ignorance about how the countryside works, and what it is actually for. On this crowded island, the precious and dwindling resource of rural England needs to be protected; but the government does quite the opposite. Its disregard for the livestock industry, as exemplified in its careless handling of the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in 2001, has already put many farmers out of business. Many arable farmers are living off European Union subsidies. To many in the Labour party, food comes from supermarkets, and the countryside is a theme park for the use of anyone from the town who wishes to visit it.

There are plans to build over a million new houses in the countryside, plans shaped with utter disregard for the landscape, for country dwellers, or for population projections. The Blair government's only concept of something called "rural England" is that it is becoming an irrelevance. This desire to standardize Britain, to disregard history as being backward-looking and to show contempt for those who seek to offer any alternative to the ruthlessly urban view, remains embedded in the modern, authoritarian, anti democratic Labour party.

The war, however, is not over. The latest hunting season has shown the difficulties of enforcing the ban, and at what social and political cost. It is also likely that, should a Conservative government be returned to power at the next election in 2009 or 2010, it will overturn the ban as part of an attempt to recover various liberties confiscated by the Blair administration.

In rural England, the sheer vindictiveness, hypocrisy, and ignorance of the decision to ban hunting still rankle deeply. The fight has some way to go yet.

Simon Heffer writes for the Daily Mail in London.