Posted on 12/28/2004 11:30:18 AM PST by neverdem
Our local hunt met yesterday, as it always does at this time, on the site of the Battle of Hastings. This year, the crowd of supporters was so great that traffic stopped altogether and horses and hounds had to cram against the gates of the abbey to make room. A few yards away, on the frosty ground, is the site where Harold fell, shot through the eye, and our nation was born.
If a new Bayeux tapestry were now being weaved to depict the battle of hunting, what would it show for 2005? A great conflict on Feb 19 – the first meets after the ban becomes law – in which angry country people and unwilling policemen fight one another on more than 200 battlegrounds in England and Wales? A weird stillness, in which the fields are deserted in obedience to the law, and piles of dead hounds and horses testify to its effectiveness? Or a scene of almost complete confusion in which law enforcers stare bewildered as hunting people disappear into the middle distance without saying a word and leave it to the authorities to prove, in the absence of evidence that a court would accept, that they are committing crimes?
I'll try to answer my own question a bit later. It worries me, though, that pro-hunting people are still so politically innocent. Last week, the Government let it be known that it would not contest an injunction delaying introduction of the hunting ban until the Countryside Alliance's court challenge to the Act is complete.
This was immediately spun as a "reprieve" for hunting. It is not, because a British Government, thank goodness, still has no power to give or withhold an injunction – that is a matter for the court, and so there might well not be any injunction at all.
Besides, an injunction in this case would not delay the introduction of the ban beyond November at the latest. No, the point of the Government's little hint was to fool pro-hunting people that all might be well. Above all, it was a device to take the heat out of protest this winter, because the sole concern for Mr Blair from now on is the next election, and protest could mean electoral trouble for him.
The chairman of the Countryside Alliance, John Jackson, was therefore mistaken in welcoming the Government's words so warmly. Hunting people need to understand that the ban has been passed, and only another Act of Parliament can reverse its implementation, even if a court case is won. There are therefore no more deals to be done with the Government that introduced this Bill. Protest, ridicule, "testing" the law are what is needed. All over England and Wales, hunt committees have been meeting at night in farm-houses, almost like members of the French Resistance trying to rally from defeat in 1940. Like the maquis, they lack the firepower and technology of the occupiers, but, again like the resisters, they are superior in local knowledge, local loyalty, and their own dedication.
They believe that the ban is so stupid and so unworkable that it will be temporary, but the sensible ones – and most of them are sensible – realise the struggle to overturn it might take a long time. The Liberation, after all, took four years.
These meetings buzz with cunning plans for getting round the law, much encouraged by the way the ban in Scotland has proved unenforceable.
Here are some of the ideas. One is that hunts should turn up with a falcon, since the law permits hounds to flush out for hawking. Another is that they should take advantage of the permission for two hounds to flush out a fox on to guns, shoot the fox and use his fresh carcass as a drag. Mink hounds will become "rat-packs" (the unloved rat is not protected by the new law); beagles will, in theory, chase the rabbit. And so on, the essential point being that, in the mêlée of these legal activities, if hounds chase a fox or a hare, who can prove that the hunt meant this to happen?
I gather that senior police officers are already asking hunts how it is possible to tell whether hounds are chasing a quarry which is within or outside the law. I'm sure the hunts will explain to them that they don't know.
The additional merit of this tactic of what schoolmasters used to call "dumb insolence" is that it allows hunts to continue as legal entities. If they have no provable purpose of hunting banned quarry, they are legal.
They can therefore continue to organise and to provide services such as picking up fallen stock for farmers. They can pay their staff and keep their buildings, and get insurance. Farmers who allow hunts on to their land will not risk legal action because they will not be asked to give permission for illegality: indeed, there are plans to arm them all with letters explicitly denying such permission.
There are two big problems in all of this, of course. The first is that, if they are too goody-goody, the hunts could find themselves doing the antis' work for them, for it has always been the fantasy of those in favour of a ban that everyone can just go drag-hunting instead. The purpose of the strategy is not to make the law work in the least painful way: it is to expose the fact that the law cannot work, in order to get it changed.
The second is one of morale. The commitment of hunting people is stronger than almost any other social/ sporting/service-providing activity in this country, and it is as strong as it has ever been. But a ban will, of course, make life very difficult for the right training of hounds.
It will mean that some people drop away. To minimise all this, the resistance has to be huge on February 19. Even more important, though, it must be planned to continue for as long as it takes.
From the land of Holland and Holland.
Yes, the persistence to resist for a long time is the key. It is important for the resisters to actively fight the attempt to delegitimize them. That is what we have learned in America with Gun Ownership, and we have the advantage of our Constitution.
Hee Hee! I really couldn't give a toss one way or the other on fox hunting (seems like I'm about the only one in the country who feels that way sometimes), but I have to say I'm really looking forward to this blowing up in the next few months. Looks like a traditional British farce, I can hardly wait!
On the other hand, there was a thread on here yesterday about Brits moving to America so they can continue to hunt.
Assuming they've actually learned their lesson about Gummint tyranny and aren't just going to come here to preserve their fiefdom the way a lot of American shotgunners do, but will help us defeat anti-hunting and anti-gun legislation generally, I'd love to have 'em. People who have fled tyranny are often the best assets one can have in resisting it.
read later
You seem to under a misapprehension that this is about guns. In England the term hunting means with dogs, it is distinct from shooting (e.g., of grouse, pheasants, partiridge); indeed one of the proposed tactics is to take guns to claim that the hounds are merely to flush the fox onto the guns who can shoot it.
Pretty much all of us with some connexion to the Countryside movement acknowledge that shooting is next on the list for the animal-rights groups, and so shooting groups have stood with hunting groups. But the Hunting Act concerns solely the use of dogs to hunt wild animals.
Hope you are right, but I have a feeling most will be bitching about paying for health care before you know it.
There's a club in Brenham, Texas that organizes English-style hunts for coyotes. Horses, hounds, red jackets, the works.
Sounds more like a horseback sport.
Not at all. It just seems to be a very similar mindless attack of the left on freedom of action and association.
It appears to me that this is more about Urban leftists wishing to put a sharp stick in the eye of rural conservatives than about any care for foxes.
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