Preserving Tradition; Preserving Liberty

I was out on the Boxing Day hunt, the first time this great occasion on the hunting calendar has been unmarred by the weather for two years past. I was out with an estimated 300,000 people, attending 300 hundred hunts across the country. Some were there as riders; others just to enjoy the spectacle. I say the event was unspoiled by the weather; it was also unspoiled by the killjoys and snoopers, the dirty mac brigade who have marred previous occasions.

Of course we are no longer allowed by law to pursue the fox itself, ever since the ghastly Labour government of the ghastly Tony Blair (oh, how I would like to hunt him!) introduced the Hunting with Dogs Act in 2004, a piece of legislative spite based on the worst forms of inverted snobbery and incomprehension. Instead we now have to pursue an artificial trail, a ‘drag hunt’, a bit of a drag, really.

Oh, foxes are still killed aright, but they are fortunate if they are killed ‘accidentally’, getting in the path of the hunt. Otherwise these animals, defined as vermin, a danger to the rural economy, have to be killed in a variety of ways, including snaring and gassing, which only serves to prolong their suffering, a ‘mercy’ inflicted on them by those canting hypocrites who pride themselves on their dislike of animal cruelty.

The government of David Cameron is committed to holding a free vote on the possible repeal of the 2004 Act, when ‘time allows’. I rather fear that it’s not going to be allowed in the present Parliament. One understands that there are other priorities just at the moment, but one also has the feeling that the – foxy – Liberal Democrat tail is wagging the Conservative dog, or at least wagging Cameron.

In the meantime I’m delighted to see that George Freeman, a Tory MP, has come out suggesting that a parliamentary inquiry should be held to prove the case for repeal. Reported in the Telegraph he said;

I am pleased that the Government has committed to a free vote on the ban in its Coalition Agreement. But before we have that vote let’s set up a parliamentary inquiry to find out what effect the ban is really having. All the anecdotal evidence is that the ban is bad for animal welfare, bad for the countryside, bad for the rural economy and a waste of police resources. Let’s look at the evidence properly so we can decide on repeal on the basis of the facts rather than political bigotry and class war against the countryside.

Yes, let’s.

Anyway, my meet was a real John Peel occasion. It was such a delighted to be there, riding with mother and father and the other person who is closest to me in the whole the world. Yes, it was absolutely thrilling, to ride, to chase, to hunt, to be young and to be alive. I will continue to ride with the wind, to enjoy the freedom of the English countryside, to preserve an ancient tradition, to preserve liberty itself.

Trollope Ho!

I very recently entered what I'm calling my Anthony Trollope period. I have them all lined up in the shelf next to my bed, the six Palliser novels ands the six Chronicles of Barsetshire, tome-like in their mute appearance, a formidable wall of books containing an ocean of words!

I’m now reading Can You Forgive Her?, the first in the Palliser series of political novels. The author has an interesting style, much more controlled than Charles Dickens, his contemporary, and much less exuberant, though with subtle comic overtones. Like Dickens he offers a fascinating insight into the habits, attitudes and mores of Victorian England, though clearly the social milieu he prefers to look at is quite different.

He also offers himself, at least a part of himself. In Can You Forgive Her? he makes an appearance as Mr Pollock ‘the heavyweight sporting literary gentleman.’ I was delighted to discover that Trollope was indeed a keen huntsman. It shows particularly strongly in Chapter XVII of the novel, the one headed Edgehill, which describes a hunt meet and all the vagaries that arise from a hunt meet. The chapter begins so beautifully;

Of all the sights in the world there is, I think none more beautiful than that of a pack of fox-hounds seated, on a winter morning, round the huntsman, if the place of the meeting has been chosen with anything of artistic skill. It should be in a grassy field, and the field should be small. It should not be absolutely away from all buildings, and the hedgerows should not have been clipped and pared, and made straight with reference to modern agricultural economy. There should be trees near, and the ground should be a little uneven, so as to mark some certain small space as the exact spot where the dogs and servants of the hunt meet.

The whole chapter in some ways reminds me of Tolstoy’s description of a wolf hunt, one of the highlights of War and Peace, though at a far more intimate, a far more English level. I’m not sure if this makes sense, but I’m thinking of the difference between epic grandeur, the sort of thing that becomes the wide-open spaces of Russia, and the more circumscribed social and physical geography of nineteenth century rural England.

Edgehill is a chapter that could only ever have been written by a rider and a hunter. Trollope captures perfectly the highs and the lows, the anticipation and disappointment that so often accompany a hunt. He knows his way and he knows his people.

They are still there, the amateurs who want to be up with the hounds, who jump every hedge and fence, who want to be in at the end, only to find that their horses are blown far too early. And then there are the experienced hunters, people who know the lie of the land and the capability of their horses; who know when to jump and when to look for ways through, who know the ditches and obstacles to be avoided. There are people who in general do not, at the close of the day, end up walking for miles, leading exhausted mounts! These are also the people who know how to keep on the good side of the hunt master, who rules the proceedings a little like Captain Bligh ruled the Bounty. Good reading; good hunting!

Badgers, Foxes and Yahoos

Anyone know knows anything at all about the countryside, about hunting and about pest control, will understood exactly the point John Holliday was making in his recent column in Horse and Hound (Biting Back at Blair). Apparently a spokesman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), appearing on Farming Today, a show broadcast on BBC Radio 4, argued against any change to the present policy on the control of tuberculosis in cattle, which would allow the licensed shooting of badgers in certain areas. Why? “Because it would lead to wounded animals, who would then suffer a slow and painful demise.”

It’s a fair point, is it not? Nobody wants to see any creature suffer unnecessarily. It’s not the sentiment that one has to challenge, it’s the naked hypocrisy. For when it comes to suffering all animals are equal but some are more equal than others. The RSPCA can be moved by the potential suffering of badgers but not, apparently, by the actual suffering of foxes. At least I assume not, because the organisation actually advocated shooting as a method of controlling the population at the time of the hunt ban. Seemingly it’s easier to miss a badger than a fox. This organisation, full of pious and bogus sentiment, is, I believe, one of the most politically motivated charities in the country, an umbrella for all sorts of anti-rural interests.

Holliday also touches on the recent flying visit of Tony Blair to this country to promote his awful memoir: he came, he had eggs thrown at him, he went away again. I already knew that he had described the Hunting Act as the one big mistake of his premiership, though purely by second hand, on the basis of reviews, extracts and comments; I simply refuse to buy it, most awfully remiss of me, I know, but there you are. Apparently, as Holliday, says, when it came to hunting he suffered a lapse of his “political instinct”, that he didn’t “feel it.” I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, or what he was supposed to ‘feel’, but when one remembers the hours of Parliamentary time and the acres of Hansard devoted to the question of hunting with hounds his dissimulation and pretended ignorance is quite simply stunning.

Blair writes of the subsequent legislation on fox hunting that “It was banned in such a way that, provided certain steps are taken to avoid cruelty when the fox is killed, it isn’t banned at all.” That is just so much stupid cant; it makes me so angry. Blair knows nothing and has not the sense to admit that he knows nothing. He is as big a hypocrite and a fantasist as the RSPCA man, because there is nothing less cruel about a fox being shot, poisoned, gassed or caught in a snare. All this, one has to remember, all this effort over the destruction of an ancient way of life while the country was being drawn into one of the most unnecessary and cruel wars in its history; that innocent Iraqis seemed somehow to matter less than foxes. There is something here, something so disturbing, that it seems to defy all satire. Faced with Blair and the government of the Yahoos even Jonathan Swift may very well have lapsed into silence

Burning Blair’s Book

I’m thinking of organising my own book burning session, of walking in the footsteps of the Reverend Terry Jones, that intellectual giant, defender of mom, apple pie and the American way. But my particular animus is not directed against the Koran, no; it’s another book altogether: it’s Tony Blair’s A Journey.

The offences committed by this dreadful magnum opus are too many to mention, offences principally against good English usage. What makes me so angry here, what most reviewers seem to have missed, is that Blair’s testament is the worst kind of insincere pastiche, the People’s Book by the People’s Prime Minister who invented the People’s Princess. As I said on a Facebook site, this ghastly testament is written neither from the heart nor the head. It’s little more than a set of prefabricated clichés and stale ideas, a savage insult to those who died in Blair’s wars. It should burn, though, and burn well.

But even the worst kind of confessions usually have some tincture of simple honesty. Is there nothing in A Journey, nothing that could be offered in mitigation? On reflection I suppose there is, though on further reflection I think the mitigation compounds the general offence.

At a time when this country was facing serious domestic and international problems Blair and his wretched government set off in pursuit of a fox. Rather, they set off in pursuit of fox hunters, determined in a mood of urban spite to stop hunting with hounds, to end an ancient rural custom. I don’t imagine one in ten Labour MPs gave a damn about the welfare of the fox. They were like the seventeenth century puritans who, as T. B. Macaulay said, hated bear baiting, not because it gave pain to the bears, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

I happen to love fox hunting. I’ve been riding to hounds since I was twelve years old, a wonderful Boxing Day meet in Surrey that I will never forget. People who know nothing about the sport have all sorts of absurd preconceptions, not least of which that the hunters are all ‘toffs’, all upper class rural stereotypes. In fact I have met all sorts of people over the years. One is just as likely to ride alongside butchers, bakers and candlestick makers as lords, ladies and gentlemen.

Now Blair says that the 2004 Hunting with Dogs Act was a mistake. Now on his Journey he says of fox hunters “I started to realise that this wasn’t a small clique of weirdo inbreds delighting in cruelty, but a tradition, deeply imbedded by history and profound community and social liens, that was integral to a way of life.”

I could say that there is more joy in heaven and so on but this man is such a hypocrite that I would accept absolutely nothing he says as a simple and sincere truth. The legislation itself is a measure of his hypocrisy, a bone to the urban dogs of the Labour Party, a bone to that clique of weirdo inbreds delighting in stupidity. Those of you who know anything about it will understand that it is all sound and fury signifying nothing. It’s hopeless legislation, impossible to understand even more impossible to enforce, so much so that the police don’t even bother.

In a way I don’t really suppose it matters if the present administration of David Cameron repeals the ban or not. Things will go on pretty much as they do already; hunters will hunt and foxes will ‘accidentally’ be killed in the process. If they are ‘accidentally’ killed I can assure you that it is far, far more humane than the pest control methods substituted in ignorance by ‘animal lovers’ and other urban troglodytes, methods I find too horrible even to think about.

Actually, I may not bother with the Blair Book Burning. Instead I might send Journey on a journey, a scented trail for the dogs. I’m a bit worried though: they may just turn up their noses in disgust, dogs being a lot less gullible than the book-buying public.

Foxy Lady

Our bright new coalition government is still less than two weeks old. I’m still full of optimistic goodwill. It’s such a delight to see the face of David Cameron when a story about the Prime Minister is announced on the television news, not that frightful old ogre Gordon Brown.

Still, I have some concerns and it would be wrong to keep quiet about them. The mistaken attempt to ‘co-opt’ the 1922 Committee, long the voice of independent back-bench Conservatism, would seem to be a stab at appeasing our Liberal Democrat partners. After all, this is a committee that takes its name from the time when a successful Tory coup was mounted against Lloyd George, the last prime minister with any Liberal associations! But my biggest concern by far is over the issue of a free vote on hunting with hounds, one of the Tory manifesto promises.

I know there are big issues to be faced, issues of more immediate concern than fox hunting. I accept this ancient country pursuit, one for which I have huge affection, will slip down the government’s political and legislative agenda, for the time being. But it’s going to have to be addressed before the end of this Parliament if David Cameron is to retain any credibility in rural England. Just as important, it’s going to have to be addressed if he is to retain any credibility among many of his back-benchers, some of whom have the feeling that their interests and the interests of the party are set to be sacrificed to a collection of tree huggers.

There was an excellent editorial in The Times last Thursday on this very issue. The point was made that a failure to address this topic is likely to be a mistake for the simple reason that Cameron will have to demonstrate at some point that the coalition does not involve the suffocation of Tory instincts. I will add that failure to do so would be a demonstration of his personal weakness, a demonstration that the ‘new politics’ is just so much froth and fluff, unable to tolerate any kind of stand on the most basic of principles.

What has he got to lose, I ask myself? As The Times says, all that the Tory manifesto promised was a free vote. What would be more in keeping with the new political mood than a free vote on an issue of civil liberties? A vote on this issue is also likely to quell discontent among Tory loyalists, all those who wished the campaign had been fought around solid issues, issues that people could relate to, like Europe, taxation and immigration, not the vacuous nonsense of the Big Society. Those who represent rural constituencies will be able to tell voters that the party still cares about their concerns, concerns that will not be drowned in soft-soap liberalism. The Times leader concluded as follows;

Eleven million people voted Conservative. Many hoped for a government based on fundamental Conservative principles. Mr Clegg’s remarks about “rebalancing the tax system” and protecting the Human Rights Act suggest that the Conservatives will have to fight hard for those principles in the coalition.

Foxhunting is a small but symbolic part of that battle...The Conservative Party is a leading partner in this coalition. Certainly, compromise will be essential. But the Tories should not run scared of their instincts.

Yes, make a stand, make it clear what it is we want and what it is we are. I did not vote Cameron to get Clegg; I did not vote for rural rights only to get yuman rights.

Daughters of Diana

I love hunting, I have since I rode to hounds for the fist time when I was twelve years old. I’ve also enjoyed a spot of rough shooting now and then, small game. It’s just a thrill; I offer no excuse or justification beyond that; I have absolutely no guilt or regrets. I like to think of myself as one of the daughters of Artemis, Diana, if you prefer, one of strigae, the wild women who followed the goddess in the hunt. But through the ages, at least until modern times, the practice of hunting has been seen as the preserve of men. It pleased me to read a nice corrective to this assumption, an article by Richard Almond entitled The Medieval Huntress in the latest issue of the BBC History Magazine.

Although hunting in the medieval period was universally popular among men, there is little or no mention of female hunters in the texts that have survived from the period. But taking a wider view, looking at illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, paintings, carvings, engravings and prints, women, women from all social classes, can be seen taking part in all sorts of sport. There, at one level, are the great ladies of court, pursuing deer on horseback or shooting driven game, while at the other level peasant women net birds, ferreted rabbits and even poach venison.

Most often these women are depicted alongside male companions but they can also been seen hunting or hawking on their own or with other women. In a miniature from The Romance of Alexander, held in the Bodleian Library, women are depicted hunting on foot. On the left two are shown hunting hart with dogs, one with a hunting horn, the other thrusting a cross-hilted spear into a beast caught by one of her hounds. One the right another two are shown hawking, one recalls her bird with the aid of a lure, while two further hawks swoop down on a duck.

Perhaps the greatest Renaissance huntress was Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henry II of France, who was portrayed as Diana herself, reclining on a hart with one of her favourite hounds in marble as The Diana of Anet. There are other depictions of her as the goddess in several portraits of the period.

Certeine wicked women following sathans prouocations being seduced by the illusions of diuels, beleeve and professe, that in the night times they ride abroad with Diana, the goddesse of the Pagans, or else with Herodias, with an innumerable multitude...

Great is Diana of the Ephesians; greater still is Diana of the huntress. :-)

A Hunting We Will Go!

The new hunting season is now underway, the last, one hopes under the Hunting Act, a piece of crass legislative spite; bad law by a dreadful government. The Countryside Alliance, made up of people who actually understand rural pursuits and pastimes, is reporting a record increase in the number of people urging that this stupid and unworkable law is repealed at the earliest opportunity.

Just think about it; just think how much effort Blair and his cronies put in to the Hunting Act, seven hundred hours of Parliamentary time, that’s more than the war in Iraq! What has this achieved? Why, there have been exactly three successful prosecutions against hunts in the five years it has been in force, the last of which was in January, 2007. It has done absolutely nothing to diminish interest in hunting, which grows by the season.

Hunting to hounds is part of an ancient English tradition that this government tried to kill. Well, it hasn’t and it won’t, another mark in our commitment to basic liberties, our right not to be preached at by a shabby shower of political opportunists who have not the first clue about rural England. Yes, it’s true; the ban on hunting was driven by class politics and prejudice, not animal welfare, as Simon Hart, the chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, recently remarked. He went on;

Getting rid of the Hunting Act would be a public benefit. It has wasted thousands of hours of police time and millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. Opinion polls show that less than three in ten people think that the Hunting Act is working.

David Cameron has consistently repeated the commitment to a free vote on a government bill in government time to repeal the Hunting Act and almost all Conservative MPs and candidates in marginal seats support repeal. Meanwhile increasing numbers of Labour and Lib Dem MPs accept the Hunting Act has failed.

“Horse and Hound” noted in a recent issue support for hunting remains as strong as ever. The evidence for this is overwhelming. During the Hunting Newcomers Week last month some 5000 first-timers joined their local hunts, and, believe me, these people come from all sections of the community, not just the traditional hunting classes. Yes, our time returns. :-)

OH! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!

Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Girl

I’ve been riding for most of my life now, taking my first lesson when I was six years old. I love it all, everything associated with horses. I’ve taken part in county show-jumping events, though fewer and fewer recently because of other pressures on my time, and my favourite form of relaxation is a nice long hack, something I do most Sundays. I’m now experimenting with bareback riding, at the stables where Annette, my horse, is liveried, on the suggestion of someone I me on a social network, a fellow rider. I’m getting better at it!

However, the thing that gives me most excitement or, rather, used to give me most excitement is fox-hunting. I will explain why I use the past tense in a moment or two.

I went on my first hunt in Surrey with my mother and father on Boxing Day-the day after Christmas-in 1998. I was twelve at the time, and by now a very good rider. The whole thing was just so thrilling; the chase, the rituals, the company, the sounds of the horn, and the pursuit of the quarry. Yes, the fox was torn to pieces by the hounds, but it was over in seconds. I do not believe it to be cruel; I have never believed it to be cruel, though some of those who read this may hate me for saying so. Well, if you are a plastic-shoed, artificial fibre-wearing vegan, not a vegetarian, a vegan, only then might you be justified in your displeasure. Otherwise it’s all hypocrisy. For the vegan ascetic I would simply remind you that, cliché or not, nature is indeed red in tooth and claw, and demonstrates a far, far higher tolerance of all forms of cruelty.

So, why the past tense, why do I no longer-ahem-pursue foxes as such? Well, because the practice of hunting with hounds was banned by our Labour Government in 2004, in part an act of class spite, in part the incomprehension so often displayed by city politicians towards country pursuits. It was so sad, because fox-hunting was part of an ancient English tradition, and because yet another of our freedoms was allowed to die.

I still go out with the hunt, though I missed the Boxing Day meet this year because I was in Morocco . Now we pursue an artificial trail. The company is just as good, the riding just as exhilarating, but some of the magic has gone.