BY JOHN MUSGRAVE
John Musgrave spells out the importance of this winter’s hunting season.
The last two weeks of October see the opening of the Hunting Season 2026/27. This may well prove the most important for the future of Britain. Packs of foxhounds, beagles and bassets take to the Field of Honour as torchbearers of resistance against the woke-joke authoritarians stamping down on the face of once-Great Britain.
No less a personage than Defra minister Jennifer Riddell-Carpenter MP inadvertently spelled this out in detail: “The next election is going to be fought on a battle line of nature and rural affairs.” Agreed.
With glee the press picked up on her subsequent remarks about pubs, labradors and hunting. “Black Labs Matter” went the cry. It’s a vision of Britain the Riddler claims doesn’t exist. Bleary-eyed topers valiantly helping pubs ward off government-induced bankruptcy disagreed.
The Suffolk-Coastal MP’s remarks crystallise what we long suspected. Labour wants to degrade the countryside. The Riddler is unaware that millions of people identify with the countryside in some way or other. Jennifer-Juniper does not understand this.
The campaign for the countryside is in fact a de facto fight for the right to liberty, self-expression, the sanctity of the individual, free speech and freedom of assembly. Country-comfort includes the right to criticise religion — even that one — to affirm the value of Britain’s Judaeo-Christian heritage and to live under a regime of fiscal probity.
In the Book of Common Prayer intercession is sought for the monarch that under him “we may be godly and quietly governed.” Yeah right: Christ has been taken out of the equation and anarchy prevails.
Already this summer unbridled immigration has given rise to an influx of Iranian terrorists. Apparently the security services arrested 50 of them. The American air force is pulling its bombers out of Britain because they are not safe here.
Meanwhile the UK’s slow-motion financial car crash continues. The Government borrowed £18.3 billion in August alone, 20% up on last year. Analysts say the Labour administration will borrow 80 per cent more over the course of this parliament, with four-fifths of that amount being spent on debt interest repayment. Note that is simply paying off the interest owing, not the actual debt itself. Burnham and his economic ants have no idea how to actually pay off the debt.
An economically illiterate government can no longer protect Britain from terror, debt or invasion. On our streets the same people we see sabbing fox hunts turn out dressed in black uniforms, masked up and brandishing Hamas and Iranian flags. Check their media.
Yet all is not lost. The Charge of the Charitable Brigade sweeps forward, pushing back enemy carrion picking too soon over a vision of Britain they claim never was.
The Red-Green fedayeen may jeer at us pitchfork-populists, dog-botherers and neo-barxists. Ours is the last laugh: what they have achieved is a unity of purpose betwixt all who plough, herd and harvest, between all who hunt with rod, hound and gun, between the Lincolnshire poacher and the Welsh hill farmer. Suburban allotment holders, ferret-boys and lab-assistants join together. From lonely croft to Summer Country prairie we march as one.
Troops of common purpose all, the sound of the horn and the cry of the hound have become canticles of liberty. The cry of “mine” and the bird-lifting hand clap are prayers for an end to the regime of woke-to-broke necromancy.
Stephen Fry once said he thought the term “countryside” referred to the idea of assassinating Piers Morgan. Witty but horrible, nevertheless the joke has a wider provenance now. It is the countryside that rides to the rescue this autumn.
It is the countryside, not any purblind Green Party, that wants to rid British meadows and moors of half-mile-high wind turbines and acres of mirror-finish solar panels. Ours the privilege to save this green and pleasant land from chains of power lines, pylons and pill-box substations.
It is outdoor folk from town and tilth alike who will save Britain from ecological disaster.
Here are three actions all can take to win back Great Britain:
ONE: SUPPORT your local hunt — turn out as often as you can, never mind the weather. Line the streets and cheer. Follow on foot or bike, but follow. Go to as many social events as possible. There is nothing better after a day’s hunting than sitting in a wood-lined bar with a mug of cellar-temperature beer discussing the chase with garrulous infantry and cavalry. A black Labrador snoozes on the hearth and the huntsman in red jacket props up the bar.
TWO: ARGUE. Never dodge the question: How do you spend your weekends? What brings you to rural Leicestershire or Cumberland or Sussex?
“I’m here to hunt.”
“I go out with a pack of hounds.”
In my case: “I’m a trail layer for the local fox hunt.”
“I’m shooting with a few friends.”
Usually such admission elicits a wry smile. “I never realised… I thought… the ban.” Meet this with a gentle rejoinder: “We never gave up, we never will. Hunting is our culture, our tribe, our identity. To me it is integral to what it means to be British, to be free.”
THREE: ENGAGE in politics, distasteful though that be. The reason we are in this mess is because we had 30 years of leaving politics to others. Non-entities many of them, and yet they govern in our name. No action is taken against the terrorist supporters who regularly disrupt hunts and shoots, trample all over farmland and cause inevitable distress to livestock. Get involved in local politics. Country folk are usually too busy — but change your take on this. Join school boards, parish councils, everything. Put the Case for the Countryside. At a national level only one party has said clearly it will reverse any anti-hunting and anti-shooting legislation this government brings in. No party is perfect and all have bad apples. Engage, argue and support.
We shall win this war, battle by battle, from the Field of Honour to the Houses of Parliament. Be of good cheer. To all who ride and run this season, stay strong. May hounds find the trail and your sight the target. Kick on….. Tallyho!
John Musgrave is a writer and trail layer based in the West Country. His pro-hunting books, “Secrets of the Chase” and “Corsica Girl,” are available on Amazon. Coming soon: new novel, “Secret Chord.”