SOCIETY-BRITAIN: Medieval Matters Rock Britain

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Samanta Sen

LONDON, Jan 29 2001 (IPS) - Britain is facing up to an unusual revolution when its aristocratic classes take to the streets this March to protest against a move by Parliament to ban fox-hunting with hounds.

The House of Commons voted overwhelmingly on Jan 18 for an outright ban on fox-hunting with hounds. The bill does not cover shooting foxes.

The hunting gentry now plans to march upon Parliament with guarantees of greater support from the hereditary peers within the House of Lords.

Most lords have said they will oppose the Commons vote. But their opposition can only bring delay, not denial.

The Countryside Alliance which is leading the fight to preserve fox-hunting plans to fight all the way to the European court to build a “tolerant society” that will let them hunt.

It is a new round in a new battle: Commons versus Lords, British law vs European law, Labour vs Conservatives, country vs town, medieval vs modern.

The hunting classes have turned this into a minority issue on the ground that it’s only a minority that hunt. The protest on March 18 is intended to show the government in Britain “that minorities should not be treated with contempt or prejudice” a spokesperson for the Alliance told IPS.

“Hundreds of people are willing to go to prison over this issue,” he said. Rallies were held in 1997 and in 1998 in support of the “rural way of life” but this rally on March 18 will be “judgment day”, the Alliance has declared.

The Daily Telegraph has reported that European farmers will join the London protest to save the EU from such legislation.

“There are plans to light a string of beacons across Europe in support of the rally on March 18,” the paper reports. A British revolution could become the beginning of a European ‘revolution’.

The protest in London is scheduled just before Parliament breaks for a general election expected in May. The Countryside Alliance is driving in the point that protesters are also voters.

A campaign has been launched among supporters already to write to MPs in support of hunting. The message to Prime Minister Tony Blair is clear:push the Bill and lose the village vote.

Tony Blair says he supports a total ban on fox-hunting with hounds. But so far he has spoken against the practice but not voted against it.

He was not in Parliament to vote on the Bill on January 18. Nor did he vote on two occasions earlier when a bill came up to ban fox-hunting with hounds. “Foxy Mr Blair goes to ground,” said a headline in the Evening Standard.

Hunting foxes with hounds is a sport widely practised in France, Romania and in many other countries in Europe, and in the United States, a spokeswoman for the League Against Cruel Sports told IPS. “We hope this will set a precedent for similar laws to be introduced in other places.”

This kind of hunting “is a medieval pastime and has no place in modern day Britain,” she said. “It’s hardly appropriate to be chasing animals for sport and ripping them apart.”

The debate over the fox has divided Britain more than many issues that involve humans. The debate is a part of a “British obsession with animals,” Prof Stanley Cohen from the sociology department at the London School of Economics told IPS.

“You don’t see the same passions over child abuse or violence towards human beings,” he said. “There is apathy towards human beings everywhere, and this whole debate on both sides is out of all proportion, and reflects a distorted sense of values.”

The debate has led to serious divisions within the academic world too. “I don’t see this as a case of modernism versus medievalism,” Dr. Rodney Barker from the department of politics at the LSE said.

“You can talk post-modernism here and argue that if some people in pink coats (the traditional dress of fox hunters) want to chase animals in the countryside, it is their business.”

The League Against Cruel Sports has argued that this form of fox-hunting is a particularly cruel sport. Hunters on horseback bring packs of hounds into chasing foxes in the countryside. The fox can run faster than the hound, but the hound has more stamina.

The fox eventually exhausts itself to be overtaken and ripped apart by the hounds. The sport was described by Oscar Wilde as “the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.”

The field is set a day in advance when hunters block hiding holes for the foxes. If a fox does find a hole, smaller terriers are brought in to kill the fox in its hole. The chase often kills the hounds and even horses through injuries.

The Countryside Alliance which is supporting a continuation of the sport says the opposition comes from city dwellers who do not understand the village way of life.

Ann Mallalieu, president of the Countryside Alliance who has been a judge, says: “Hunting is often described as a sport. But to those of us who have heard the music of the hounds and love it, it is far more than that.

“Hunting is our music, it is our poetry, it is our art, it is our pleasure. It is where many of our best friendships are made, it is our community. It is our whole way of life. We will fight for these things with all the strength and dedication we possess because we love them.”

The Alliance is seeking to defend the sport on the ground that it preseves rural economy and keeps the fox population down to desired levels.

The League and the Alliance are engaged in a long debate over the details of the fox population, and how foxes come to die. It’s a debate that has often been violent, with several attacks reported on supporters of hunting.

“All of us are potential targets,” an Alliance spokesperson told IPS. “To be the subject of daily threats of death and danger is the sort of pressure that no one in the UK should have to put up with.”

A note to supporters says: “It will be a period of hand-to-hand fighting, and there will be many moments when we will all feel that our number is up.” But the spokesman said the Alliance will fight to win.

The hunters are, at times, becoming the hounded.