Dec 26 2009
Hunting and repeal?
Just as expected, Labour’s class warriors are out early on the day after Christmas. We can expect a detoffication agenda through to the election, if Mr Brown has his way. “Banning” hunting with hounds was always the flagship measure of this approach. It caused rancour when legislated. Now Labour hope to rekindle the passions and emotions of that debate at the expense of their Tory opponents.
So let’s shine a little light into these dark areas of spin. The first thing to grasp is the Conservative Opposition is not pledged to repeal this Law if elected to power. Conservatives have always regarded it as a free vote issue, not one for party whips to insist. If there is a Conservative majority government there will be no government flagship Bill to change hunting arrangements. The main immediate task facing any new government will be to grapple with the deficit and sort out value for money in the public services. There will be many other Labour laws that would be better repealed, which could save us real money. We have often talked about them on this site. The Opposition has merely said it will provide time in the Parliamentary timetable sometime in the ensuing five years if backbench MPs of all parties wish to look again at the Hunting Act.
The present legislation was an unhappy compromise in a very dificult area. Banners of foxhunting are disappointed, because many people still ride out to hounds. If anything the “Hunt” is better followed today than before the measure was enacted. Supporters of foxhunting are angry, because their sport is now enmeshed with legal constraints on what the dogs can do and how the humans can direct them. Class warriors are angry because men in red coats and with top hats still ride around the countryside for fun. Farmers are unhappy because more foxes now roam, able to kill their chickens and raid their farms.
So why after all these anti hunting Labour years is the law still in this state? There are two main reasons. The first is the class warriors really wanted to stop well off well dressed people riding, but felt they had to tackle the killing of the fox instead. The second is there are limits to how far you can make people responsible for animals whose instinct is to kill other animals.
We have never been faced in Parliament with an attempt to legislate to control the serial killing cats many people keep as pets, because MPs realise it is difficult to make owners repsonsible for their animals to that extent. Rats and even mice have less appeal as victims worthy of help than foxes, to urban dwellers brought up on picture books stories of apparently furry and cuddly, cheeky and intelligent foxes.
As Parliament struggled with the wish of the majority of MPs to limit or ban fox hunting, the following became the parameters of the debate:
1. You could not stop people wearing top hats and red coats.
2. You could not stop people riding horses.
3. You could not stop people owning hounds and wishing to exercise them.
4. You could not prosecute an individual hound or its owner if the hound tackled a fox without the owner’s approval
This left the law in the position where Parliament had to make the offence organising the hounds to follow the scent of a live fox and encouraging them to do so. This is the compromise which some accept and many dislike from their very different vantage points.
This piece of legislation is destined to become the fulcrum of Labour’s atttempted class war. Labour still hasn’t found a way legitimate way to ban people riding around in red coats and top hats, so there is still an animus for a true class warrior.Indeed, there is also a vulnerability for Labour in highlighting this, as it reminds all those who do want the Hunt banned that in many respects it lives on even after all Labour’s huffing and puffing.
One of the best cartoons I saw at the end of the Fox hunting debates was of an urban fox. He was asked if he was celebrating now that fox hunting had been banned. He replied that he wasn’t because urban foxes never faced the hunt. Asked why he wasn’t happy for his country cousins, he replied he had no sympathy for them because they were so stuck up.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Only a socialist could conclude that the burning issue of today is………the manner in which a handful of foxes die. Forget looming national bankruptcy, state sanctioned counterfitting, endless wars, violent crime out of all control, bankrupt welfare programs, nope the issue today is Foxes!
I can’t believe anyone will be fooled by this nonsense
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I liked the joke at the end.
The class war is being fought in various guises:
- limiting the size of wheelie bins in the name of environmentalism
- destroying the grammar school system, skewing university applications
- taxation
- redistribution of wealth through welfare anomolies
- the refusal to assimilate incoming cultures
The biggest guise of all is the territory on which elections are fought. The left have managed to drag debate way over into the red – so that even when a Tory wins his manifesto satisfies the left. So heads the left wins – and tails the left wins …
…and even where the jury is out such as on global warming or the EU and there is a debate going on, the leftist programme is still being persued with vigour.
I’m afraid David Cameron has gone all wishy-washy on us over the economy in recent speeches. Now, all of a sudden, it’s all beer and skittles again – AND football ! (All with-it politicians must never forget the football – this connects with the proles you see.)
I shall call him Wavey-Davey from now on.
If a politician insists on living by the soundbite …
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My first reaction to seeing this in the news today was ‘Wasn’t this done about 3 years ago?’ While I have some sympathy with both sides the way I see it now is that foxes aren’t being deliberately hunted and killed in what many see as in an inhumane manner but people can still gather and ride as a social activity and keep a little bit of British tradition going at the same time.
A poor compromise to the two ‘extremes’ of the debate it may well be but I fear Labour will find no great empathy in the public at large with this debate. The public school rallying cry fell flat and I’d expect this also to disappear without trace.
They really must be scraping the bottom of the barrel in the Labour press advisor corps if this is the sort of line they are going to be pinning their election hopes on.
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We are seeing more and more urban foxes, and they are getting more audacious. They no longer seem to fear humans. Sooner or later pets and young children will start getting hurt, possibly a baby in a pram might get killed and then there will be a total change in the public conception of foxes
But, as you say, the most important thing for any incoming government is to sort out the financial mess that the country is in at the present time and not do what Labour has done, spent most of its Parliamentary time on relatively small issues where they can get big headlines.
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Alan Wheatley Reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I have already seen one incident reported of a child in a house being attacked by an urban fox.
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“Labour still hasn’t found a way legitimate way to ban people riding around in red coats and top hats”
Give them time John, give them time!
And I can’t see any loosening of ‘orders from on high’ with the Tories, what with David Cameron already dictating what we, the public, can and cannot vote on – ie EU membership.
All political parties should remember one thing: Since when did the elected tell the electors? Surely it is the other way round?
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I think it is more important for the Countryside Alliance and Government of the day to start an ‘education programme’ about real environmentalism. As part of which the role of hunting eg foxes, deer, can be shown. Then, when the time is right, this Bill, enacted out of hatred and stupidity, can be put to a free-vote.
Until then, I agree, there is much else to be sorted, enacted and repealed – and hopefully the brave Hunts can continue for a while as they are: winning support and gathering evidence for how letting foxes running loose in numbers is bad for the environment.
When this Bill, the Human Rights Act, the Equality Bill, and numerous other hatred Bills are eventually consigned to the bonfire of socialist history, England will have welcomed Common Sense back to our shores – perhaps we can then put her back on our coinage!!
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I have always been far more interested in horse power in the four-wheeled form, so I observe the hunting debate from the sidelines. Given that the survival of the natural world depends upon the violent deaths of animals of all sorts at the hands of other animals, it does seem that Parliament, stimulated by New Labour, devoted an excessively large effort to Fox hunting. Indeed, for some it seemed to be not so much the interests of the fox as the revenge of the miners.
But irrespective of the class war aspects, fox hunting for me is an example of a much wider issue; one group telling another group what they can and can not do simply because they find a particular behaviour unacceptable. I think a successful democracy has to exercise a considerable degree of toleration, especially where a particular activity has a long history and the only harm is to some peoples’ sensitivities.
We are being regulated and controlled to the point of suffocation, and we could do with a renaissance of free thinking and reasoned argument to give a better balance.
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I found this a slippery article which tries to deflect from the cruelty against fellow creatures to a party political pound. I take the point about a free vote but surely the tory party should stand against animal cruelty perpetuated by human beings, as a party policy. It is not, at it’s core, class war but a position of compassion and it is wrong of you to try and cheapen and diminish that principle.
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Stuart Fairney Reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
So you saw Hilary Benn place the story, JR respond and you concluded it was the ~ tories who were being party political…..
Excellent analysis!
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Sam Dale Reply:
December 27th, 2009 at 1:24 am
Well yes that is my anaylsis because the ‘class war’ point is meant to detract from the cruelty. It is wrong to say class is the reason for backing the ban. Hilary Benn takes a position of principle and JR takes one of calculation.
It is a rather excellent analysis, thankyou.
Reply: I was not taking a position on the issue, but trying to explain the politics of it and explain the complexities of framing a law which works for a society divided on the matter. Good criminal laws are easier to draft because the overwhelming majority of people agree that for example burglary and murder should be crimes and the criminals should be punished.
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Stuart Fairney Reply:
December 27th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Right, so you are saying that a minister with responsibility for the subject and a parliamentary majority who will support him, with pre-existing legislation on the statute books, needs a petition “as a matter of principle” eh?
We have differing definitions of the concept of a “rather excellent (sic) analysis”
Mike Stallard Reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
In East Anglia, there has never been much fox hunting – certainly not in red coats. Here, we shoot foxes and always have done. When my wife, who comes from here, saw a Ripon, Yorks, hunt and asked me, naively, what they were doing, she was horrified and went into very quiet mode for a couple of hours.
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Eddyh Reply:
December 27th, 2009 at 11:32 am
When a pack of hounds catches a fox it is killed in seconds. If fox control is by shooting there will be a lot of wounded foxes dying an agonising death from gangrene. Of course, in East Anglia, the shooters never miss!
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Mike Stallard Reply:
December 28th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
You see, we knew where the foxed lived. The other trick was popping a ferret down a rabbit hole and then digging them out with long spades. My little red hen was found in one fox’s lair.
It would not be difficult to repeal the hunting act, perhaps ten minutes and it would go a little way to showing that a “government” cannot bind it’s successors. What we have is another instance of cowardice, “let’s not cause waves it might upset that nice G. Brown”, oh dear. It is clear that Cameron really doesn’t want to win, perhaps he dpoes not want to be the first “provincial governer”.
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It is important to remain focused and not be diverted by the political conjurers. The appalling state of the economy and the horrendous debt levels should be exercising the minds of our political leaders.
In that regard, I was dismayed to read a few days ago that David Willetts said that a Conservative government would provide a special one off fund that would create an extra 10,000 university places this summer at a cost of around £300 million. Is he trying to outdo Brown and Balls? Sounds rather like ‘Debt crisis, what debt crisis?’ As for the Conservatives’ chances of winning a majority at the general election they don’t look too bright, if you read, as I do occasionally, comments on their own Blue Blog website. The recent one from the Chairman Pickles, entitled ‘How you can help us win in 2010′, produced many comments which were very critical of what your party is offering the electorate. I doubt if these comments are taken seriously by CCHQ but they should be as they illustrate that the “deal” with traditional Conservative voters is far from being sealed yet, let alone with the others.
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A.Sedgwick Reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Quite, there are too many muddled thinkers on the opposition front bench and too many clear thinkers on the back benches.
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Mike Stallard Reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Aleluia! The truth spoken here!
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At 2.00 a.m. a few nights ago I was watching four urban foxes hunt a local cat who likes to tour the gardens of our flats. His presence is welcome, he has seen off the flock of pigeons who were doing so much damage. I wondered if I should take up a stick and have a go at the foxes (who incidentally are causing mayhem around the local rubbish bins, so much for recycling). Would I have been prosecuted or simply taken away had I been running round chasing foxes and bellowing “woof woof” and such like. Tally ho!
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Can you legislate for socialist class warriors called Prescott playing croquet? Surely croquet is another thing that is class ridden and played by toffs? Also, can you legislate against socialist MPs called Diane sending their kids to fee-paying schools? Surely fee-paying schools are for the well off
To be honest, the vast majority of the public couldn’t care one way or the other about fox hunting. They are more concerned with the economy and being able to afford their mortgages. They are more concerned with being protected by police on the streets, not in offices meeting Labour’s targets. They are more concerned with their kids getting a decent education whether they go to a state school or a fee-paying school.
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New Labour has learned nothing and has forgotten nothing over the course of twelve and a half years in government.
In 1997 Blair promised that the next Labour election manifesto would have an illustration of the magnificently successful Millenium Dome on its front cover. Of course this did not happen. I wonder why?
It would now appear that the Hunting with Dogs act and its associated, unstated, class warfare tremors are to be the frontispiece of the 2010 manifesto. For a party that saw itself as the natural party of government only a decade ago this is ‘ancien regime’ politics indeed.
Labour and The Third Way has provided nothing except spin and the destruction of so many pillars of our society.
Seven hundred hours of parliamentary time were spent discussing the bills on fox hunting. The result was a law that was poorly drafted, unenforceable and destructive. It has contributed nothing of value to the country.
Seven hundred hours is also the approximate amount of time of the full election campaign from dissolution to vote. No further comment is needed !
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I am just back from walking into town to see the traditional Hunt Boxing Day meeting. The adjacent roads were full of parked cars and the market square was packed with people. The Hunt Master called for support for the repeal of the Hunting Act, to which those assembled showed their support. Many of us dispersed for a pleasant drink and a spot of lunch in one of the local hostelries. A good time was had by all.
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Worth having a read of what Brian May has said on this topic over at brianmay.com, not that I agree with much of what he says, but shows how many animal loving city folk think about this, really the conservatives should aim to keep opinion formers like Brian reasonably happy, because more people read what he says than read any political web sites or news, although Brian is a bit extreme and seems to think all animal experiments are bad and by deduction all diabetics should be dead, but these are the opinion formers in the modern world
As for class war stuff I am very pro conservative but I really think the leadership could easily say they want more folk born onto council estates who went to bad state schools who have managed to make a success of their lifes in the modern parliamentary party, I really don’t think this is such a big ask, trying to pretend that such high proportions of public school and Oxbridge reflects anything like a meritocracy just looks mad, bad and dangerous
Anyways gook luck in the New Year
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Mike Stallard Reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
How naive we all are not seeing that the Balls, Gordon, the Home Secretary, Harriet Harman, Mr Blair and many, many other Labour people not only went either to Grammar School or else went to Oxbridge and very superior Public Schools. Now, of course, they are pretty well all millionaires with several houses, just like their “working class” BBC colleagues.
This is no class contest.
Comprehensive Schools which are “bog standard” do not produce many leaders or “working class” people, I find. And that makes me very determined to do something about it when the Conservatives are elected.
Polly Toynbee failed the 11+ and was immediately sent to one of the very best Comprehensives in the land.
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Mark Reply:
December 28th, 2009 at 10:45 am
…and then she got to Oxford (her grandfather was a professor there), only to drop out after 18 months…
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Having Become “New Labour” then gone to WAR as oftern as possable & with the blood of 1 Million Iraq men, women & children on their hands they have the afront to try this.
Rather like the ban of speed boats on Lake Windermere……Why?
Because “Rich Bastards” do it………..& we can’t afford to……so rather then work harder, invest….plan build a furture…….just get fat watching “X-factor” since “Location.location,location” & “Changing rooms” are now off the agenda ref the collaspe house ramping.
My, they going to be pissed with Labour, no house price bubble, no chance Gordon!
Mike
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Labour just make you sick they have bankrupted the coutry and all they can find to talk about is more ways to control people.
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On another subject:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhoIOcNnevE&feature=related
Mike
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Little to do with class war and poncing about on horses in ludicrous clothes by toffs while the peasants run in front and alongside. The main point is that in modern times people should be allowed to rip wild animals apart for fun. It doesn’t matter whether you could or could not care less for the fox. Got that bit? Do you disagree? The vermin control part is a red herring. The gamekeeper would just be flogged for more work in killing foxes if there was no fun in chasing and killing the fox.
1. You could not stop people wearing leathers and a crash helmet.
2. You could not stop people riding motorbikes.
3. You could not stop people owning motorbikes and wishing to test them.
4. You could not prosecute an individual motorcycle or its owner if the motorbike reached extreme and excessive speed without the owner’s approval.
The bikes has over 150 horsepower at the rear wheel and only weighs around 550 odd ponds. Just ran away with me your Honour!? My mates had the same problem too.
See how far that one gets you in a court of law.
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Mike Stallard Reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Oddly enough my daughter, the fruit of a Public School, who made it into being a vet would add to this.
She loves horses – always has – because she is very “posh” having been trained in dressage in Norfolk by two scions of the aristocracy (Captain and Mrs Latham of Cawston, Norfolk).
She gets livid when she sees the way hunt horses are treated by people from the cities who have never ridden much, but like dressing up and going huntin’.
They ride their hired mounts through brambles. They cut their stomachs when they force them over hedges. Bones on these horses are quite often broken.
The days when the real toffs used hunts as a training ground for the cavalry, she says, are very long gone now.
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The amount of spin here is unbelievable. Mr. Redwood just needs to watch the videos of Hague and Herbert on u-Tube to see that the Tories consider a repeal of the hunting act as a major year one issue. The commentary about foxes killing babies is even more ridiculous. The only ‘alleged’ case just happened to come from a family who owned a pit bull terrior. You can guess the rest. Where foxes are pests, they can be shot accurately and humanely as farmers across this country will tell you.
Drag hunting is legal. The sense of community, heritage, pageantry, and the jobs are all still intact. No one is trying to ban any of these things and yet this disgraceful group of people can’t manage to enjoy themselves unless they are terrifying and killing animals.
We are running a campaign to uphold the hunting ban (not Labour based) and have scores of right wing voters (including many Tories), farmers, ex-hunters. These are intelligent people who know the difference between killing and prolonged suffering. Please visit our site and sign the register at: http://www.campaignfordecency.org.uk
Caring for our wildlife is not exclusively a left-wing activity.
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It would just need a couple of foxes to die of suspected rabies
after coming into contact with domestic pets and the electorate would be clamouring for the Government to start a fox extermination programme.
I don’t hunt; never have and never will. I think hunting should be permitted but properly regulated. Labour will try to turn this into a class war issue – complete with pictures of cuddly foxy loxy. What’s the betting they’ll ‘recruit’ Basil Brush for a campaign ad.
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This debate proves just one thing to me:
Humbuggery is the true “vice Anglaise”.
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Given the poor state of our public services that cost a lot of money and yet never seem to deliver improvements for the service user in proportion to the extra funds invested since 1997 why has Parliament spent so much time on Fox Hunting ?
We need Bills to be ratified that remove as much of Labour’s over-regulation as possible so that democracy & freedom from the Client State are upheld.I do not think that Class War and the spiteful old socialist us & them mentality is that helpful.I prefer to think that we are all in it together in the One Nation Tory Tradition.
If private sector workers are facing poor pensions,job cuts and pay freezes to keep their jobs with fewer opportunities to go sick then so should the private sector.Employer contributions to public sector pensions need to be cut,some of the one million added to the state sector payroll need to go with public sector pay & recruitment frozen for a year.The first days sick leave in the state sector should be unpaid.If you have less over-regulation then you need fewer people to administer it.
Rather than this childish nonsense involving fox hunting I would have preferred as a private sector worker on a modest wage to know how public spending will be reduced to curb the fiscal deficit without higher taxes.Sharing the proceeds of growth is rubbish when we have low growth and a vast budget deficit that will need to be cut.
If you cut the size of government & public borrowing then you ensure an economic recovery as private investment is no longer crowded out.
The VAT increase at an inconvenient time will hit demand in the economy and thus help cause a double dip slump as small business face an extra burden of changing all their prices.
Rather than dressing up class based hate as animal welfare it would have been better to have not raised VAT from January 1st.Rather it could have been cut to 10% from January the 8th until April 8th.I know it would have mean’t another £9 billion in public borrowing but having a mini-sales boom in the retail sector could have boosted the economic recovery.Likewise stamp duty could have been ended on property sales until April 2010.That would have got the housing market going.
Labour could have engineered an economic upswing by making those two tax changes by helping the retail sector & housing market.Had they announced £25 billion in public spending cuts and a 5% VAT hike taking it to 22.5% from April 2011(raising £25 billion) then the fiscal deficit could have been cut by £50 billion in one go in 2011-12.
So we could have had a short-term stimulus and a longer term cut in public borrowing-instead of which Mr Benn gave us an exercise in pandering to the hard-left Labour core vote.It shows you that Labour are not a one-nation party for everyone.Rather they are a sectarian outfit only concerned with implementing socialism regardless of the fact that history proves it does not work.This fox hunting rubbish and the economically bizarre PBR prove that Labour have lost their moral authority as a government.
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For me the priority is to extricate the UK from the EU, everything else will then fall back into place without external interference in our internal affairs.
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Urban foxes are already almost all infected with distemper in the same way that rural badgers are full of TB. Both in due time will have to be controlled. You cannot hunt in towns so some urban method of fox control will have to be found.
So far as fox hunting is concerned the vast majority killed are the old and sick with the result that the country fox is much fitter than the urban variety. Although born and raised in a fox hunting district I am not personally interested in hunting but I am interested in stopping the government from running the detail of our lives.
Only two European governments have banned fox hunting. Brown’s Nu Labour and Hitlers Germany. Neither had the capacity to tolerate a different point of view.
I would like to see a piece of general repeal legislation passed to which a commons committee could attach any piece of legislation on the recommendation of a minister. It would then be repealed quickly. It would give more relevance to such committees.
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For the Snark was a Boojum you see.
What I tell you three times is true.
They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.
But while he was seeking with thimbles and care,
A Bandersnatch swiftly drew nigh
And grabbed at the Banker, who shrieked in despair,
For he knew it was useless to fly.
Down he sank in a chair — ran his hands through his hair –
And chanted in mimsiest tones
Words whose utter inanity proved his insanity,
While he rattled a couple of bones.
I think Lewis Carroll had premonitions, don’t you?
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re “Comprehensive Schools which are “bog standard” do not produce many leaders or “working class” people” oh yes they do, and you spout this nonsense and you ruin the conservatives position
they may not be as visible, and many are forced to go abroad, but they are there, and whats more many are conservative supporters
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Mike Stallard Reply:
December 28th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Super Top Class Comprehensives produce all sorts of “working class” people. That is why people struggle to get into them. At the bottom of the pile, though, are sink, or “bog standard” Comprehensives which people struggle to get out of. Every January, those who are sacked from ordinary Comprehensives arrive in the “bog standard” ones.
Of my two sons, one was chucked out, at the earliest opportunity, from a Secondary Modern, the other from a “bog standard” Comprehensive in the countryside. Both have made it in the real world. Success at education is not success at life.
And, I agree, both that there are an awful lot of “proles” from top public schools in the Labour Party, and that there are an awful lot of Conservative Comprehensive people around. What stinks is that you now have to purchase a real chance for a head start in life. Money talks in a way that it never used to and society loses a lot of very talented people as a result.
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no one Reply:
December 28th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
purchase by being able to live in the right location served by the better state schools
really in camerons position on winning the election i would call a national emergency regarding the state schools serving the inner cities and council estates, i would literally put tanks on the lawns and force change big time
and so much more
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In my view I hope that there is less class warfare dressed up as animal welfare and more action to protect public services while cutting the fiscal deficit.Labour have wasted so much time in Parliament on this when they ought to have been repealing excess business regulations and getting credit flowing so that private companies can be the engine of economic recovery.
Most people want the job losses ended and the fiscal deficit reduced.This fox hunting nonsense helps not one jot.This is Brown’s core vote strategy – he is ignoring the real problems and pandering to the hard-left.
Surely the Tories can eject Brown from office as Labour are not governing in the national interest but are already acting like an opposition with their no Tory cuts slogan ?
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Should wild animals be ripped apart for fun? This is where this debate begins and ends. If anyone has more to add I would be more interested in the fate of Mr Fox.
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As an activity, fox hunting leaves me cold. However, if foxes are pests their numbers have to be controlled somehow. With hunting, the only danger is to the people who VOLUNTARILY take part. Presumably, the alternative is shooting them, in which case there is a risk (however small) that innocent bystanders may get shot.
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