Another voice

A man and his dog

Auberon Waugh

Of all the letters which have appeared in The Times since the Home Policy Committee of the Labour Party proposed that Labour's election manifesto should promise to forbid blood sports, one of the most eloquent came from Lord Ferrier. He is a seventy-eight-year-old former Bombay hand who accepted a life peerage in 1958, before life peers became the figures of fun they are today:

'Sir, I imagine that I am not alone in being somewhat surprised that letters and articles about the current threat to hunting and shooting contain so, few references to the age-old relationship between man and his dog...'

There is something unbearably poignant at the thought of Lord Ferrier, seventyeight, being alone, but I must admit that it had not occurred to me to be surprised that so few people in the great blood sports debate had referred to the age-old relationship between man and his dog.

Lord Ferrier continues: 'No one who has hot at least whipped in to hounds or brought up a dog as his companion in venery can know of the skills and emotions entailed.'

Those of us who have whipped in to hounds must, indeed, form a tiny proportion of the total adult population. When he speaks of bringing up a dog as Vs companion in venery he is, of course, using 'venery' in its dignified if archaic meaning of hunting. So far as its more usual meaning — the pursuit of sexual pleasure — is concerned, I know of only one man who was ever given to this practice, the controversial C.R.M.F. Cruttwell, one time Principal of Hertfotd College, Oxford, but he died, unmarried and insane, in 1941, and is in no position to tell us of the skills and emotions entailed. It was from this unfortunate man that the word 'Crutwellism' was coined to describe the abominable vice of sodomy with a dog, but his peculiarity dated from experiences in the trenches of the Great War, and I cannot believe it is really very prevalent today. I have been told that a carpet of his is preserved in Hertford College, covered with indescribable stains, but if he is remembered at all in the world outside, it is usually with pity. Nobody spares a thought for his dogs.

Perhaps it is time we did. Bui. that is not the point Lord Ferrier is making. He asks us to regard this age-old relationship in the perspective of the national economy: 'Incidentally, the breeding and training of hounds and gun-dogs involves a considerable measure of employment and con

tributes by exports to the country's balance of payments —over and above sport, itself. I am, Sir, yours etc.

FERRIER House of Lords' Unfortunately, I don't know the exact proportion of our national export effort which is taken up in the breeding and training of hounds and gun-dogs, so I am in no position to join the economic aspect of the debate. But I worked for many years as a political correspondent in and around Westminster, so I may be in a position to assess the political weight which is likely to attach to his Lordship's argument. And that, of course, is precisely nil. I wonder if economic arguments are really the ones most likely to be'effective.

• If the blood sports proposal is accepted by Labour's National Executive, and if Labour wins the election — neither eventuality seems impossible — tens of thousands of people in this country are going to find their lives in ruins. They will have nothing else to live for. This may seem an exaggerated statement, even an absurd one, but it happens to be the truth. Jorrocks is speaking for the entire hunting fraternity when he remarks: "tinting is all that's worth living for — all time is lost wot is not spent in 'unting — it is like the hair we breathe —if we have it not we die. .

The tragedy is that hunting people seem too shy, or too well-mannered, or too inarticulate, to convey the enormity of their loss. They assume that the 'don't-knows' will be influenced by piffling considerations like profit and loss on the external trading account, by valid but strangely unconvincing arguments about conservation of the countryside, by preposterous and contradictory claims about the survival of foxes on the one hand — apparently they have entirely disappeared from areas where they are not hunted — and humane control of their numbers on the other, as if foxes would take over the country if man relented from his struggle.

Mr Vic Finlayson, the Labour prospective parliamentary candidate for Devizes, describes the issue as being one of town versus country rather than left versus right, and in an important sense this is true. Hunting people, in their dismay, see Labour's proposals almost entirely in terms of the class war, and this interpretation may be useful in attracting the support of nonhunting right-wingers, but they have got it wrong. No doubt there are elements of class vindictiveness, envy and simple sadism in the political decision, but the decision also reflects a widespread and entirely non political horror of killing animals. This was well expressed by another correspondent. Mr Alan Long, of the Vegetarian Society of the United Kingdom, who wrote of 'the cardinal doctrine of liberty, to live and let live.'

It would be comforting to suppose that these confused notions flourish only in the town, while the country is single-minded is its loyalty to the hunting fraternity. But I ant terribly afraid Mr Finlayson has made as electoral miscalculation, ignoring the extent to which the countryside has been infiltrated by retired folk who come to bat' ten off its welfare services and sit around 10

their custom-built bungalows grinding their false teeth at poor, caged budgerigars as they await alike th'inevitable hour. If Mf Finlayson were a less honourable or admiv able man, Devizes is exactly the sort of cow stituency where Labour's proposals

hunting might have made a difference. Is October 1974, it divided 42 per cent TorYr, 30 per cent Labour, 27 per cent Liberal. 11

one allows for the fact that people with anti-hunting views often hold them yell strongly indeed, and retired folk who would otherwise vote Conservative often becoinc obsessive about such things, and if one allows also for that very large Liberal vote which is now up for grabs, I would not be lo the least surprised if there were three

thousand votes going begging on the issue' The same would be true of Taunton and many, if not most, of the agricultural West Country constituencies now swamped in the geriatric invasion. Which rather takes us back to CO templating the age-old relationship bel: ween man and his dog and it is here, I feel' that the answer may lie — as well as in the newer relationships developing betweell

man and his budgerigar. However one looks

at it, the general election is unlikely to be, won or lost on the blood sports issue, all' there is a decent chance that Mrs Thatcher will win. It is tempting to plan elabora!,e revenges in the class war — she cots': respond to popular feeling against football hooligans by banning all football matches and converting the pools to a National LA tery. But I fear that the Tories lack my tale aggressive spirit — and indeed, the fule aggressive spirit of the Labour left. There is no chance of converting anirnal" lovers to the cause of blood sports, and the

only hone is to shut them up and put the°

on the defensive. Urban dog-owners are already the focus of considerable resent' ment, and urban dog-shit contriburest nothing towards badly needed exports. Le us propose a £50 dog licence for no,ir working dogs. Next, to add that 'fits: concerting element of moral outrage to ott' campaign, let us crusade against the sal° and ownership of caged birds:

'A purple Budgie in a Cage Puts all Heaven in a Rage.'

But it may need a rabies epidemic to rentirldd us that the partnership between a man 00 his dog has never been an equal one.