Country life
Good companions
Leanda de Lisle
There are very few bridle paths near us, and hunting offers my children their only opportunity to gallop over open country- side. I'm sure my eldest son will enjoy it as much as his pony does, but I do hope they'll be safe. I'm told the 'antis' went round gates and fences setting up trip-wires before the last children's meet. If they `Oh, I'm in the middle of writing my mem- oirs. What's your name?' hadn't been found before the hunt began, a pony or a child might have been killed. I do understand and respect the view that tak- ing pleasure in the killing of any living creature is wrong. However, this is not the basis of most anti-hunting sentiment — as is made clear by the coarse fisherman and MP, Mike Foster. Like the trip-wires at the children's meet, his Bill to abolish hunting with hounds is an act of malice aimed not so much at fox 'haters' as at horse and hound lovers.
The humblest man looks and feels like a king when he's on a horse, and some of those who look up at them from the ground can't bear that. This antipathy is exacerbated by a visceral fear of those who can harness such brute power. They have the same fear of those who manage hounds, for dogs cease to be mere pets when they are in a pack. Perhaps the sight of uniformed men sitting on the nearest thing we have to chargers, with hunting dogs at their command, conjures up folk memories of serfs being chased by knights on horseback, the Peterloo massacre and other such incidents. It would explain why the antis insist hunting people are all toffs, why they are often violent and why, despite their supposed love of animals, that vio- lence is often turned against ponies and dogs. It would also explain why Foster's Bill is more concerned with the use of hors- es and hounds, than the efficient disposal of vermin.
There is a rather revealing section in Mike Foster's Bill which refers to the Welsh gun packs. These packs would be allowed to continue to operate on foot. They could use hounds to flush out foxes, which would then be shot. The animals that consequently run off, wounded, could then be pursued and killed by one hound, in close control. It must be obvious that a pack of hounds would do a much more effective and therefore a much more humane job. But Mike Foster isn't so much in favour of humane killing as of killing by humans. It's what he feels at home with.
Personally, I'm not frightened by herds of horses, or packs of dogs, but by mobs of people. It's that mixture of sentimentality and viciousness that chills the blood. A mob will identify with someone or some- thing and turn on his/her/its 'enemy' as if their life depended on it, They weep over the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and damn the Palace. They weep for a teenage nanny and damn the mother of the baby who died in her care. (I look forward to a Private Eye spoof headline along the lines of 'Kill a Baby and Earn a Million — The Louise Woodward Story'.) They weep for the hunted fox and damn the hunters.
I hope that Pedigree Chum dog food will ensure a fitter and thus longer life for the fox in my father-in-law's yard. But I hear the baying of the mob in the Bill that would protect him from the hounds. If only we could fulfil their worst fears, turn our hors- es on them and run them down.
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