Friday, 20 September, 2002

John Sheard complains that anti-hunting lobby smears on this weekend's countryside demonstration in London have obscured some of the real reasons why country folk are protesting.

A LADY reader wrote to me a couple of weeks ago to point out that not all people who live in the countryside are in favour of fox hunting (see Have your say). In this, she is perfectly correct.

It would be equally untrue to say that all urban dwellers are anti-hunting for, over the years, I have known many families from the towns and cities who have regularly driven into the countryside to hunt meets - particularly those on Boxing Day - so that their children can soak up some of the atmosphere of a centuries-old rural spectacle.

Liberty and Livelihood March

It just so happens, however, that when various opinion polls are taken, the antis usually represent over 70% of the sample. This also happens to be the figure by which townies outnumber countryfolk in the national population. However, these figures are regularly twisted by various politically correct anti-hunt campaigners to represent all country people as bloodthirsty morons and all townies as sophisticated, intelligent beings. These attributes give them, they believe, the absolute right to dictate to us how we should behave.

Now this is, of course, arrant nonsense, or why would millions of townies love to move to the country? But this weekend, with the Liberty and Livelihood March set to paralyse (organisers hope) London on Sunday, there are more sinister moves afoot.

For weeks now, the anti-hunting lobby has been campaigning to smear the march as a stunt dreamt up by the foxhunters solely in favour of their sport. That is a calculated, and vicious, lie.

Hunting may have become a symbol of rights of country folk to behave as they have behaved for centuries but there are many more serious problems in the countryside that are not being addressed by Government: closing schools, shops and pubs; rural unemployment way above the national average; tens of thousands of farmers facing bankruptcy; young people being driven from their ancestral villages by rich second-home owners; the list goes on and on.

What particularly annoys me is that this anti-hunt section of the chattering classes claim self-canonisation for their virtue in supporting the rights of minorities.

They will happily take up the cudgels for fashionable causes like gay rights, illegal immigrants, young muggers and burglars, single mothers who get pregnant in order to get a free council house, disruptive school pupils who ruin other children's education, and any other "victim" group they can possibly think of.

Now I am not opposed to helping any of the above groups - particularly if they can be persuaded to become contributing members of society - but surely the almost 30% of the population who live, and sometimes suffer greatly, in the countryside need support too.

Why are we country folk the only minority the PC Brigade want to oppress? Why should our protest in demand of jobs and services be smeared because some foxhunting people want to have their say too?

The reason, I fear, is ignorance. Governments, including Tory ones, have rarely understood the countryside. Their bureaucrats can't be bothered to learn: it would mean straying from the comfort of their Whitehall ivory towers.

Ignorance, it is said, breeds fear. And there are those in high places this weekend who fear that Sunday's march will be a stunning victory for the countryside. I hope their fears are proved correct!