Get a move on
Leanda de Lisle
The countdown to the Countryside Alliance's March for Liberty and Livelihood has begun. Plans are afoot for it to be led by children of parents whose jobs and businesses are at risk. Behind them 3,000 members of the National Gamekeepers Organisation are expected to march en masse in tweed, while John Bickersteth, the retired bishop of Bath and Wells, is coming with six other rural bishops all carrying their pastoral staffs. There will be models and miners, polo players and plumbers, me and — I hope — all of you.
Both my club and my husband's are already full for the night of Saturday, 17 March, so I am grateful to have managed to have squeezed myself into the minimalist hotel Blake's, the place for the cool countryside marcher, of which there will be plenty. The Liberty and Livelihood banner has brought together the most unlikely people. Working-class terrier men will find themselves hand in hand with urban ladies who have no interest in hunting but who feel strongly that there is a battle on for the soul of their country: one in which toleration is in a deadly struggle with vindictiveness, spite and thuggery.
For years the police have allowed masked thugs to roam the countryside wielding staves and attacking hunt follow
ers without fear of legal retribution. In consequence they have upped the ante. We now have fish and chip shops being bombed. The effect has been to spread the paralysing poison of fear through the veins of more and more citizens. I know of celebrities who support the Alliance in private but who are afraid to do so in public. I know of country lifestyle magazines that won't carry the Alliance's hard-hitting advertisements. This is the denial of freedom of speech. What may follow? Will people be bullied away from the march? Perhaps so. The threats and innuendo have already begun.
The Independent printed a spurious story claiming the Alliance leadership was worried that there will be pro-hunt violence on the march. Mothers then began calling the Alliance wondering whether they should take their children. The fact is that entire classrooms of children are coming. I myself am walking with children and grandparents. We must be careful not to be taken in by black propaganda. There is some hot and flustered talk about what people may do in the event of a hunting ban, but the march will be a day for extended families in which the sheer weight of numbers (and the potentially negative publicity) will keep the men with the staves away.
It was with some difficulty that I have managed to book a table for lunch on the route and I suggest that those of you who have not yet made such plans get cracking. Spare bedrooms in friends' houses are filling up and if you want to make it a day trip be aware that Railtrack are carrying out work on 18 March. You will experience some minor difficulties travelling on South West trains and a major nervous breakdown if you come from Norwich. It may be better to get a place on a coach. To do that you need to contact your Alliance regional director. His number can be found on the website www.march-info.org. As a last resort you may telephone the overworked staff at the Alliance's London Office and ask them on 020 7840 9212.
If you want to book your own coach arrange a password with the company you book it from, otherwise you may find it has mysteriously been cancelled. Once you have made your arrangements (including, perhaps, helping others to come to the march) you should register with the Alliance by telephoning 0906 788 1680. It costs a pound which doesn't quite cover the Alliance's own costs for the handling service, so if you hear any complaints you might mention that. The line is also a busy one, but when you do get through you can register as many people as you want to on the one call.
In a month's time hundreds of thousands of people will be noted by professional sheep counters as they pass by. Will you be one of those walking for the protection of the countryside and the toleration of diversity, or one of the goats that chose to stay behind?
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