Hunting down the answers
HUNTING is surviving, nearly four years after a ban on foxhunting.
However, hunting as a rural way of life has a somewhat uncertain future, due to hopes that the ban, made law in February 2005, will be overturned at some stage in the future.
-
Countryside Alliance chief executive and Conservative parliamentary candidate Simon Hart hopes a change of government could lead to a repeal of the ban. He said: "We set ourselves three targets back in 2004 — to do our best to expose the Act for the social retribution it was, to make sure the whole infrastructure remained intact and to try to get the motion of repealing this Act on the agenda.
"Whether you oppose or support hunting, most people will feel that the Hunting Act wasn't the best."
He felt that the Act of 2004, which passed into law in February 2005, had actually galvanised support for hunting, saying: "People are getting annoyed as a result of people's lives getting interfered with."
He added: "There were not the number of people that there are now, or the wall-to-wall publicity over the past few years.
"The public always supports the underdog.
"More and more people seem to be hacked off with 'if the Government isn't banning one thing it's banning another'."
He said that, post-Act, hunting had survived, but that was partly a false impression, explaining: "The support and help is exclusively down to the hope that there will be a change in the law before too long."
Mr Hart added: "Overall, it's been miles better than I could've hoped for. But it's a temporary position.
"As long as repeal is on the horizon, we can stem the worst of that, but there are much bigger economic clouds on the horizon — it's a case of hanging on."
The most common replacement for foxhunting — drag hunting — where hunters follow an artificial scent, had received mixed support, Mr Hart said.
"Drag hunting's artificial — it's a bit of a curate's egg — good in parts.
"To a keen hunting community, it's all a bit of a farce — it's an adequate substitution in the interim.
"To the outside world it looks and sounds like the original hunting — it's still got the original elements — the horses, the people and the paraphernalia."
He added: "What really matters is whether people are capable of making up their own minds — I would say that about any government, it creates division that's not needed."
League Against Cruel Sports representative, Whitland-based Mike Sharratt, said: "We find it very gratifying how the 2004 Act is going.
"The hunt say they are not breaking the law, but are getting more people.
"The law doesn't stop the killing of foxes — the only thing that is stopped is the pursuing of wildlife for fun.
"We're happy that it's working out so well.
"If it's working as the hunts say it's working, then it is working extremely well.
"They are saying they have more people going hunting — could that be because people were repulsed by the chasing of foxes?"
2 Comments
by Sarah Jeffery, Pembrokeshire
Sunday, January 11 2009, 4:33PM
“The ban should be overturned.”
by Simon Hacker, Wotton-under-Edge
Thursday, January 08 2009, 9:01AM
“Surely the "underdog" is the fox in this context, not the privileged, monied class who believe they can pick and mix which laws they like and which "interfere". There are laws that "interfere" with the lives of murderers, child and animal abusers; at least most of them accept their legal position. The Countryside Alliance is Britain's best example of denial as groupthink. It HAS to believe in repeal if it isn't going to implode. But they can't have it both ways - either support for the sanitised, more palatable blood-free hunting grows bigger than ever, or they are fibbing about numbers.
For Hart to say drag hunting is "good in parts", however, is honest of him: the parts missing are the digging out of an animal, tormenting it with terriers, the smearing of blood on initiates' faces and the tearing apart of a sentient animal (though the shooting of their beloved hounds once they have served their best years - around six - continues). How disgusting is the original bloodsport? "Accidental" examples of it can be seen today - have a look at the film of the Ledbury Hunt's near-kill on You Tube, captured only this November.
The Countryside Alliance, it's also worth noting, has a lie in its very title. In line with urban figures, far, far more country people support the Hunting Act than those who oppose it (check MORI's most recent poll). So their very definition is a myth. Hart finds the Act "unworkable"; how so? If you don't seek to inflict pointless cruelty for fun, it works perfectly.”