Country life
Scenting danger
Leanda de Lisle
The phoney war is over. With the publi- cation of the Burns report and the announcement of a government bill on hunting with hounds, the Iong-awaited bat- tle has begun. The message from the Coun- tryside Alliance was positively Churchillian in tone: 'As of now a sustained and escalat- ing campaign of action begins. It will be relentless, implacable and prolonged ... Supporters, individuals or groups are asked to stand by. A "call to arms" may be at short notice.'
The local kennels will have to wait for any repairs they may need. Hunts up and down the country are committing their financial reserves to the fight. The sums may be puny when compared to the vast wealth of those foreign 'animal welfare' organisations that advertise their views in our magazines and newspapers, but the emptying of coffers reflects a determina- tion to stand to the last ditch. Those who fear their courage may fail them should take heart in the passionate support they are set to get from all sorts of people who have never hunted in their lives.
For some supporters of the hunting com- munity their enemy's enemy is their friend. My husband, who as you may recall is a Master of Foxhounds, has received a pile of hastily typed faxes from farmers saying, `We want to help.' Meanwhile, as The Spec- tator's 'Country life' columnist, I've had let- ters and cards from urban Tories who tell me that they are looking forward ,to the next Countryside rally in London (one which the Alliance promises will be 'the biggest peacetime march that London has ever seen'). But the hunting debate also invites the wider public to teach New Labour a very particular lesson and I don't expect they will pass up the opportunity. What then is this lesson? Tony Blair and his Cabinet know that the vast majority of British people disapproves of hunting ani- mals with dogs; that's why the whole damn ban thing seemed like a good idea in the first place. However, they scent danger ahead. They were taken aback by the scale of the earlier Countryside rallies and by the level of support from liberal, non-hunting journalists. But, like Pontius Pilate, Jack Straw has washed his hands of the matter and passed the hard decisions on to the backbench mob. It was only recently, with the contemptuous response given to Tony Blair's speech by the Women's Institute, that the government saw how a mooted hunting ban might really play with voters.
People resent being used as either props or pawns in the rolling marketing campaign that promotes New Labour. They are tired of being given spin over substance. Recog- nising this, Tony Blair has asked Alastair Campbell to keep a lower profile. But the whole fox-hunting debate is going to remain a high-profile reminder of what is worst about New Labour. Tony Blair has produced a dome, kicked a few hereditary peers out of the House of Lords, devolved Scotland and, er, done nothing to improve the lot of the average tax-payer. As my col- league Bruce Anderson so rightly pointed out last week, voters see the hunting issue as a silly distraction from bread-and-butter matters like education and health. They would prefer bread to circuses, particularly when the entertainment is as crude as this one.
A 21st-century electorate is far too sophisticated to clap or hiss at clichés. In the Commons Jack Straw's bill promises a pantomime in an era of reverential, ironic commercial advertising. As the months pass, Cabinet members are going to find themselves being pelted by verbal tomatoes and there is nothing they can do about it. They opened the show and no amount of buck-passing will save them from the indig- nities they face. Meanwhile, the country- side is putting on Henry V. 'I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,/Straining upon the start. The game's afoot./Follow your spirit, and upon this charge/Cry, "God for Harry! England and Saint George!" ' Whatever happens to hunting, rural romantics are going to give the cynical Mr Blair a wound from which he will never recover.
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