Baroness Mallalieu:
We must not let animal activists use social media to fight a class war against our rural communities
On this Boxing Day, around 300 hunts will meet in every corner of the countryside. From town squares in Cornwall to working men’s clubs in South Wales, from stately homes in Leicestershire to village pubs in Cumbria, groups of people from a few dozen to many thousands will come together to celebrate Christmas, their communities and their hunts.
Though Theresa May will reportedly abandon the Conservative manifesto pledge to reverse the 2004 ban early next year, hunting is not a “controversial” activity among those who live and work in the countryside. Some like it, some don’t, but the idea that this traditional and slightly odd activity should have become a national political issue is fairly ludicrous wherever you are viewing it from. The fact that, somewhere in the 20th century, the eradication of hunts and the 40,000-odd people who follow them became, in the words of a leading Labour politician, “totemic to the Labour Party”, is utterly bizarre.
The ban has little to do with animals or their welfare. The chairman of the government inquiry into hunting with hounds in 2000 stated very clearly that hunting was not cruel, and it remains perfectly legal to shoot a fox, trap a fox or snare a fox. In fact, research has shown a big drop in the UK’S fox population since the ban on hunting came into force. The one thing we can be absolutely certain of is that the fox is no better off as a result of the ban.
There can be no logical justification for such a ridiculous law, so what was the real motivation for the ban? If that was not already obvious, the admission of one MP, as soon as the law was passed, that it was “class war”, and the subsequent continuing campaigns against hunts that are no longer hunting foxes, can leave only one conclusion. The anti-hunting movement is not really about the welfare of animals, it is about a hatred of people, and so it continues its obsessive pursuit of hunts.
Meanwhile, in the countryside, support for hunting remains undimmed. More women and young people continue to take up hunting as it remains open and accessible to everyone. Hunting prevails in some of the most marginal of rural communities. In many remote rural areas, hunts play an important social role in times of challenge and change.
The real shame is that this issue continues to soak up so much energy that could be used for something positive, not least given the huge challenges facing the countryside in the coming years.
Our ever-growing population puts more pressure on green spaces as the demand for housing and infrastructure grows, and when the absolute priority should be to ensure that Brexit works for the countryside it remains bizarre that issues like hunting remain so high on the agendas of some politicians.
The reason why it does so, though, is clear. Ask a candidate who stood at the last election what issues they had most correspondence about and they are likely to mention hunting. Why? The answer lies in the tide of e-petitions, automatically generated emails and social media posts on hunting which reinforce our understanding that there is a small proportion of the population that is fixated with animal rights issues, for reasons that have little to do with animals.
Yet is this really the political issue that mattered most? That decided the general election? The short answer is of course not. Research has shown that hunting and badger culling were among the least influential issues when it came to how people voted in the 2017 general election, as they were in 2015 and 2010.
Even so, that small fixated group, armed with social media, has shown how powerful it can be. No wonder, then, that in the present political climate, with a minority Government and an overwhelming focus on Brexit, changing the law on hunting is clearly not top of the political agenda. Michael Gove, the new Environment Secretary, has rightly committed to address outstanding animal welfare and environmental issues, such as sentencing for animal cruelty, the sale of ivory, and disposable plastics. However, no one should confuse measures that address important environmental problems throughout the world with the prejudice politics of the animal rights movement.
If ever there was an example of exactly this sort of pointless animal rights issue, hunting is it. All the hours of parliamentary debate, the millions of words and endless media scrutiny have achieved exactly nothing. There has been no benefit to the huntsman or the fox, but, worse than that, hundreds of hours of police time and thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money continue to be wasted. Yet the image of huntsman, hounds and countryside – repeated endlessly on pub signs and in paintings – endures. If anything really deserves the word “totemic” it is this, and as long as hounds meet on Boxing Day the countryside will be better for it.