20 years on the Hunting Act remains an attack on the rural working class

Yahoo

22-02-2025

When I was young there was a gas meter reader who lived at the end of the lane. Her husband was disabled and what little she had she spent on her horse. When I think of foxhunting I think of her.
She wasn't some sort of oddity among a group of rich, titled people, she was exactly the sort of person you might come across at a hunt meet anywhere in Britain, a member of the rural working class with a passion for hounds, a passion for horses, and a love of open country.
Perhaps the greatest disgrace about the hunting ban, which came into force 20 years ago this week, is that Labour were kicking the very people they purport to defend. When a hunt packs up, wealthy followers can do any number of other things but for the rural working class a hole is left. They aren't going to shoot pheasants or go on skiing holidays.
Heading along, usually without a horse, to follow the hunt on foot is often a core part of people's social life and without it, as Tony Blair conceded after the grubby deed was done, so much is lost.
Hunting, following the ban, has continued in various forms but efforts to destroy what remains of it have continued too.
Currently, in Scotland, any 'hunt' must be licensed by 'Scottish Natural Heritage' who have recently been sending monitors along to make sure everything is done in a way that satisfies puritanical urbanites. There can be only two hounds, the hunt must be a last resort (they'd rather you tried keeping foxes out with fences), and a friend who witnessed such a day recently tells me that any drinking now feels wholly inappropriate.
What were once occasions for great revelry and joy have become sombre affairs.
On this side of the border, Keir Starmer's Government is looking to follow the Scots' lead. Trail hunting, which sees hounds following an artificial trail, is to be banned and seemingly not content with having distanced the countryside enough with the family farm tax, Labour is currently also looking at banning farmers from keeping guns at home.
The claim, in regards to firearms, is that they are responding to events like the Plymouth shooting in 2021. Except that in reality that incident occurred because of a moronic policing error. The plod returned a weapon to somebody who should frankly have never had a gun in the first place. He was a nutter, not a farmer, and they failed.
It might seem odd to conflate these two things but they are both symptomatic of how little Labour understands the countryside and of how little they seem to care. When hunts go, people lose something that is integral to their lives and when Starmer insists that farmers have to keep their guns at some central location, farmer shoots will become more difficult too. Let's not just look back on what Blair's government did to hunting. We need to be aware of what Starmer's is going to do.
I often think of various practices around the world that might be considered cruel. In Spain they fight bulls and in Siberia tribal people worship bears by hunting them and eating them. We could insist that those practices are banned.
In fact, why don't we insist that all tribal people come up to Starmer's mark? I'm sure the SNP would happily send missionaries to make sure foreigners aren't having too much fun. Or maybe people could stop insisting, at home and abroad, that everything is homogenised and made dull in pursuit of some sort of tedious grey righteousness.
Patrick Galbraith's Uncommon Ground: Rethinking our relationship with the Countryside will be published by William Collins in April
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