Hunting’s popularity exposes a foolish law
Tens of thousands of people took part in yesterday’s hunts or turned out to support them. Not only were they enjoying a colourful Boxing Day tradition, but many also wanted to signal their opposition to the ban on foxhunting. For many in the countryside, the prohibition represents bad law imposed to satisfy urban prejudice.
Tracey Crouch, the Sports Minister, will therefore have caused enormous dismay when she said hunting was a “pursuit from the past” that should be “consigned to history”. She also stated that the current legislation needs better enforcement and that the repeal of it should not be a Government priority, contradicting the promise of a parliamentary vote made in the Tory manifesto earlier this year. Ms Crouch could point to surveys that show strong national support for the ban, and plainly some opponents of hunting have concerns about animal welfare that are doubtless wellintentioned and heartfelt. But the supposed popularity of a law cannot be its sole justification. Facts and practical details matter, too.
The origins of the ban reveal a great deal about what motivated it. Tony Blair, then prime minister, used the offer of a hunting ban to mollify some of his more Left-wing MPs. A matter of pest control, transformed by centuries-old pageantry into a leisure activity, suddenly became a political football. Mr Blair himself realised the injustice of the situation and confessed in his memoirs that he sought a compromise in which hunting was “banned and not quite banned at the same time”. Drag hunting has largely replaced the pursuit of foxes – although foxes still do get caught – and the hunts have flourished. Prosecutions rose, peaked and then declined. The Countryside Alliance reports that not a single registered hunt has been prosecuted successfully this year.
The result is that the ban has triggered a renaissance of hunting – an unexpected paradox that exposes just how silly and out-of-touch this legislation is. A good test of law is enforceability, and this law is unenforceable because it is unreasonable and wrong. Ms Crouch may want to see hunting consigned to history but, rather more importantly, Britain’s rural community does not. And so long as so many people are prepared to find a way around the ban, the message ought to reach Parliament that the law, in this case, is very much an ass.
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