I have entered the fox-hunting debate twice on these forums, the first time when we were on Channel 4's forum and the second time on one of our own incarnations. I have always mentioned that I am ambivalent on the subject, that I have friends (and close relatives!on both sides and that I have no love at all for the extreme fundamentalists in either of the camps. Today, for the first time, I read an article that is closest to my opinion on everything surrounding the issue and it is by Tony Wright, who is the Labour MP for Cannock Chase and Chairman of the Public Administration Select Committee.
This is the worst form of hypocrisy
It would be madness for us to die in the ditch for a ban on hunting
Tony Wright
Tuesday October 12, 2004
The Guardian
How on earth did we get into this mess? It is difficult for many of us to get very worked up about foxhunting, but it is easy to get worked up about the idiocy that has brought us to where we are now.
It was obvious from the start that it would end badly. The loss of proportion is staggering. Whatever progressive politics is about, or worth taking on opposing interests for, it is not about views on alternative methods of pest control. Talk of invoking the Parliament Act is like declaring a state of emergency because of a patch of fog on the M4.
I dislike the idea of blood sports. Some of the people who engage in them seem especially unlovely. Unseating the toffocracy is appealing. The trouble comes when we start converting personal prejudices into state action. Not only do we stir up all sorts of unnecessary trouble, we wander into a bog of hypocrisies, inconsistencies and contradictions.
Many of my colleagues have a passion for the issue that is in inverse proportion to its significance. Others have allowed themselves to be imprisoned by pressure groups. Some (including Tony Blair and most of the cabinet, I suspect) would just like it to go away.
It is the last stand of a kind of gesture politics that Labour has taken much trouble to banish on other fronts. The alarm bells first rang for me a few years ago when a packed meeting of Labour MPs howled down the suggestion of an independent inquiry on the issue. The government did set up an inquiry, but it need not have bothered. Minds were already made up.
A similar fate awaited the elaborate hearings conducted by poor Alun Michael. The compromise bill he constructed was dead even before it reached the Commons. It was a triumph for deaf absolutism.
Hunting is cruel, but so are the alternatives. That was the Burns report finding. A sensible fox, asked to state a preference between being hunted, shot, snared or gassed, would tick the "none of the above" box. A further finding was that, particularly in upland areas, hunting with dogs is an effective way of controlling fox populations. Yet the House of Commons now seriously proposes to criminalise a farmer in the fells who takes out a pack of hounds to hunt the fox that killed his chickens. As Oscar Wilde might have said, this is the unpersuadable in pursuit of the unpoliceable.
The fact is that we routinely do unspeakable things to animals; hunting is scarcely up there with our ordinary cruelties. I have just watched a local council pest control officer on television explaining how he kills rats by giving them a poison that stops their blood clotting until they eventually die. I have yet to hear such practices denounced from the Commons benches. If sport is the issue, then why not ban all killing of animals, birds and fish for pleasure? Exchanging substance for symbolism is the worst form of hypocrisy.
Nor can it be a matter of political and moral sensibility. Robin Cook opposes a ban, Ann Widdicombe supports one. Hitler famously loved animals, but hated Jews. We should at least try to stick to the merits of the issue and avoid the rival moral frenzies. Instead, we have allowed the fundamentalists (on both sides) to take over, with predictable consequences. When this happens, reason and compromise are the first casualties, and we end up with our own homely version of civil war.
It is being waged in the name of democracy. A majority in the elected house has voted emphatically and repeatedly in favour of a total ban. For some, that is the end of the argument. But this is crude majoritarianism, not liberal democracy. That was previously our complaint against the governing style of Margaret Thatcher - pushing half-baked measures through the Commons, refusing all compromise, simply because she had the majority to do so. A mature liberal democracy should always try to find as much common ground as possible, especially on measures that arouse rival passions and where agreement is necessary to make them work.
There is no difficulty in constructing a sensible compromise. We could strengthen the laws that outlaw unnecessary animal cruelty, and force hunting to justify itself in relation to them. The Lords would approve it, the hunters would have to put up with it, most people would find it satisfactory, and a small advance for civilisation would have been made.
An outbreak of sanity is now needed. It would be a final madness for my parliamentary colleagues to prefer to die in the ditch for an unenforceable ban than to secure an achievable, if partial, victory. Having had a good run, it is time for this issue to go to ground.
wrightt@parliament.uk
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