BY SARAH GREENWOOD

A response to ‘Labour wants to fully ban fox hunting’ as seen in the newspapers of late.

Obviously, the Labour Party hasn’t learned any lessons from its recent history and appears hellbent on making the same mistake that Tony Blair made and came to regret. It appears only Blair regrets anything, because the current wannabe cabinet possesses what they say they don’t want to have – a self-satisfied urban mindset.

Steve Reed, the Shadow Environment Secretary, previously a long-time councillor in that well known rural parish of Lambeth before becoming an MP for that equally well-known rural constituency of Croydon, now feels fit to rule the countryside because he played in it as a kid. Reed thinks that he won’t be ‘judged on the seats he represents, but on what Labour is offering voters’.

^{Steve Reed MP (on the left)}

The interview of him in the Times has him extolling the need for ‘eliminating foxhunting’, because ‘country people’ don’t want it. Apparently, country people ‘don’t want hunting to continue…. This {a ban} is something country people want brought in’. Apparently, ‘the majority of voters in the countryside support a ban on the sport’. Hunts ‘go into gardens, killing cats, and ripping flocks apart’.

Ripping flocks apart! What’s he even talking about?

‘Loopholes continue to allow drag hunting to continue’ and along with trail hunting Reed pledges to ban them. I think this statement in itself shows how much Mr Reed knows about hunting. He has so little interest in the activity he hasn’t even bothered to research what either term means, or indeed to investigate exactly what numbers of hunts and hunting people are involved. He obviously hasn’t seen the staggering figures of the attendees at both Boxing Day and New Year’s Day meets. There are currently about 300 packs of hounds in the UK, so on average, if 100 followers attended each Saturday meet, that means that about 30,000 are out, but this doesn’t include all the supporters who can’t get out for various reasons.  

Figures suggest that 2000 plus mounted followers attended Boxing Day meets in 2023, with an estimated 250,000 supporters on foot attending the traditional meets (while this number is only a tenth of Gareth Wyn Jones’ YouTube audience it represents 14 times that of Chris Packham’s). The demographic of those who hunt has changed as more people, very often young people, take up hunting as horse ownership has grown with more people being able to afford to keep one. So Mr Reed and Labour might want to take these numbers into account because not all hunting people vote Tory.

This ‘country people want this, country people want that’ line comes from a poll which found that ‘country people’ want hunting banned. I’m a country person, born, bred and living on a farm, but nobody asked me. I doubt whether any other country people I know, of the same ilk, were asked either. The poll sounds like one of those LACS made-up affairs. In any case, despite the fact that hunting people are a minority does this mean that our traditions should be banned by outsiders?

According to the European Court of Human Rights the hallmarks of democracy are pluralism and the tolerance of different outlooks and philosophies. Also, that minority groups, culture and traditions are acknowledged to be of importance and are respected. This attitude respects the rights of groups of people to act in a way which is morally authentic to them. If there was only one outlook it would imply that there are experts who dogmatically know what is good for everyone and could enforce fixed behaviours and penalise transgressions of these prescribed behaviours. This would restrict freedom of choice, and this restriction to an individual’s values, choice and way of life by any government or group is to try and impose another’s morality. This morality is about power – the tyranny of the majority, which is not conducive to the promotion of tolerance and harmony commensurate with a democratic society. It has already started with creeping urban colonialism from the influx of new ‘country’ dwellers on rural and farming practices.

People of Great Britain, this is not ‘Democracy’. What Labour proposes is in no way democratic. Do countrysiders get a vote on whether the many fox assassins employed by London councils should be banned?

The ‘country people’ Labour are alluding to, and who played a starring role in the poll, seem to be people who live in the countryside because they’ve moved there from an urban conurbation, so obviously they know all about the complexities of the countryside because they’ve seen it on ‘Countryfile’.

Labour has signally failed to recognise the difference between ‘country people’ i.e. rural land workers, and those who affiliate with them, literally at a grassroots level, and failed to understand that viable land and livestock management involves a degree of pest control. These folk are completely different to the people who live in the countryside, increasingly in the big new build estates that have been foisted on small towns and villages to service the nation’s housing needs, and who haven’t got a clue about the land management of a rural working entity. Neither do they fully understand trail hunting, part of a rural tradition that can only be enacted by the permission of the farming community.

Labour is in effect pandering to countryside-based townies.

Interestingly, these very same ‘country people’ will be ignored because green energy seems to be a preoccupation for Labour, ostensibly to increase farmers’ incomes. By ‘boosting energy security’ to allow farmers greater freedom to apply for alternative power source projects (solar farms), whilst at the same time ignoring the local population because ‘aesthetic concerns cannot override the need to boost the local economy’. So, Labour giveth with one hand by wanting to ban hunting because it suits their ambition to cynically get into power by giving a sop to the ‘country people’, but Labour taketh away by cynically ignoring the same ‘country people’ who don’t want unsightly green energy plants in their backyard.

It is quite telling about Labour’s ambitions for the rural green industrial revolution that they are pushing for energy security but make no mention of the need for food security. At a time of war this isn’t mentioned by Reed at all. He says that ‘a lot of farmers are interested in generating green energy, whether that’s solar or wind……. so, they {farmers} want to speed up the planning process, it helps their business diversify…’

No, Mr Reed, what farmers want is to farm their land with a fair price paid for their produce that covers their costs, pays a bit of wage and gives them a bit to invest in keeping their businesses up to date and efficient. This would enable more employment and encourage more young people to come into agriculture, keeping food on Britons’ plates. They also want to cut red tape. Listen to British country folk and, in particular, farmers and you might actually get some rural votes, as Lord Mandelson suggested.

Sarah Greenwood has farmed in Yorkshire all her life, has a general interest in field sports, but particularly in hunting. She runs Phoenix Aid working in Bosnia and Kosovo.