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LETTER FROM LONDON |
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The fight over banning fox hunts has renewed the class wars in merry old England. |
I'm not a fox! I'm just a squirrel on steroids!" |
Whatever you do,
don’t mention the foxes
of TheColumnists.com
England, Scotland and Wales have their knickers in
a twist over what to do about wild foxes in their chicken coops.
Are foxes cute and cuddly animals or are they pests and vermin?
Should they be protected or hunted down with dogs and torn to
bits?
Opinion differs. Oh, boy, does it differ.
Scotland (which has its own legal system) is ahead of the English and Welsh, having already banned organized hunts and just finished a court case that tested the law. The English and Welsh are facing a ban as of February 18, and the hunters are gearing up to resist. Some relish a violent clash with police. Other are preaching civil disobedience. We will probably get a little of both.
What makes the Scottish court decision so interesting is the lawyers’ favourite pastime -- playing with the meaning of words. The hunter in question got off Scot-free by arguing that he and his dogs and his friends on horseback were not “hunting” foxes, they were “searching” for foxes. The hunter said all he wanted to do was root out a fox so his friends on horses could shoot it. The judge said, in effect, “Oh well, in that case, go ahead.”
No, this is not a skit from Monty Python with John Cleese in robes and a wig, although you could be forgiven for thinking so,
This argument over foxes has been going on for decades, ever since the English class system started to crumble around the edges. Some say we are now witnessing the last gasp of that war, for the hunters are largely upper-class people with enough money to keep horses and to buy the regalia that goes with the hunt. The animal rights people who oppose the hunts tend to turn up in windbreakers and cloth coats.
I saw my first fox just a few weeks ago while walking home at midnight. The animal was perched on the hood of a car, and he looked up at me, almost as surprised as I was. In the moonlight he was a beautiful creature. I reached out to pet him but he sprang to the street and trotted up the road in search of dinner.
Apparently it is not that unusual to see foxes in London. If you are a bit nocturnal yourself, I’m told, you will spot them occasionally in Hyde Park or Regent’s Park, prowling around cautiously. The one in my neighbourhood lives on the edge of a playground and comes out in the wee hours to check on leftovers in the rubbish bins. He stops to rest on the hoods of the more expensive cars.
In the countryside, however, there is little sympathy for foxes. Farmers complain of missing chickens, and the wilder foxes wreak havoc with livestock. Hunters on horseback with baying hounds say they help maintain ecological balance by holding down the number of foxes.
Animal rights activists, equally well organized, are just as sure of themselves in the opposite direction. They have long made themselves felt by interfering in the hunting ritual and pleading the case of the fox population. Now they have achieved Parliamentary backing.
Finally last month, in
a combination of polemic, sophistry and general claptrap, the
House of Commons invoked a rarely used maneuver called the Parliament
Act to override opposition from the House of Lords and criminalize
fox hunting in England and Wales as of next February. The hunters
vow to ignore the ban, and the police doubt it can be enforced.
The Countryside Alliance has already launched its challenge in
the High Court over the legality of the ban. Further action may
follow at the European level on the human rights implications.
All that is certain is that the clashes will come, and another
desperate struggle to preserve ancient English rituals will lose
out to modernity. Some 700 hunt employes and a lot of dogs will
have to go, and none of this will happen quietly.
What the dispute is really about is the rapidly eroding power of the landed classes. In England, as always, it is still ownership of land that confers privilege. And the landed classes are ready to fight for their own way of life.
Aristocratic writer Peregrine Worsthorne, former editor of the Sunday Telegraph, was perhaps premature with his quip some years ago that “The class war is over. We Won.” In fact the Labour Party has been in power for seven years and still more or less speaks for the working man, Tony Blair’s accent and education aside.
Loath to admit that class
and privilege are at stake, the pro-hunt Alliance wants personal
freedom and rural vermin (the foxes) to be the main issues. A
spokeswoman at the Alliance says the hunters feel trampled upon
by the current Labour-led Parliament. Acknowledging that the
hunters are a minority, she tells me a democracy does not give
the majority the right to “stomp on the rights of the minority.”
The passions in this spectacle have prompted heated rhetoric
rarely heard in civilized England. The anti-hunt forces accuse
the hunters of chasing and mutilating foxes for entertainment.
But Janet George of the Alliance says her organization intends
to fight.
"If Tony Blair wants war, he can have war. Iraq obviously
wasn't enough for him,” she said.
But Phyllis Campbell-McRae, the UK Director of the International
Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), is feeling good. The ban will
change the landscape of animal welfare in the UK and worldwide.
“Our campaign has always focused on ending wanton cruelty
to Britain's wild mammals--perpetrated in the name of sport.”
Meanwhile, my neighborhood fox is looking strangely smug. He
also relishes a fight.
©2004 by Michael Johnson. The cartoon is from IMSI's Master
Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506,
USA.
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