Ill be marching on Sunday, along with hundreds of thousands of others. The march is officially about the need to defend the countryside from political prejudice. But the catalyst is our governments wish to introduce legislation that will ban hunting.
Hunting was my badge of membership in the village community where I grew up. I was practically born on a horse, with my parents hunting beside me, pulling me along on my pony with a thin piece of twine. This wasnt a substitute for a playground but an entry into the adult world. The hunting field introduced me, a shy four-year-old, to listening (rather than talking), cooperation and courage. It was the proof of love between me and my father, who was never more communicative than when explaining the different horn calls with which the huntsman would summon his hounds. It was the foundation of our domestic routines. The common need to groom and prepare for hunting imposed some order even in the life of a time-blind child. It was my entry into the local community, and through hunting I knew every farmers child for miles about, and formed lasting friendships that have proved more important than any that have succeeded them. I even met my husband through hunting, and it was the instinctive sense of community that comes through hunting side by side that broke the ice between us.
OK, that is all very subjective. But why not say it, since it is true? Why not point out what must surely be borne in mind by anyone who wishes to ban this innocent and society-forming pursuit, that it is not in fact a sport, even though it looks like one, but a way of life, a root planted in the earth, which you can tear up only by destroying the community that has grown from it? Communities under threat fight back. It is their right and their duty. And that is how I interpret the march: as a warning shot fired across the bow of a government that seems determined to destroy the community that made me and therefore to destroy what I most intimately love.
A time to say no
Rural people laugh dryly when they hear our rulers talk of an inclusive society; we know only too well that this is just a feel-good phrase for those in positions of power. Inclusive, for our rulers, means inclusive of those of whom we approve. We know that we dont fall into that category. Karen Bartlett of Charter 88, in her joint openDemocracy discussion with Richard Burge of the Countryside Alliance, suggests she knows a good many groups who also feel betrayed by the present government. But, lets face it, she too sees the abolition of hunting as a legitimate political cause and she too, when push comes to shove, is likely to forego all considerations of minority rights and constitutional safeguards, if the only victims are those whose life is shaped by hunting.
True, a ban on hunting wont precipitate revolution. But it will precipitate a law and order problem on a scale never seen before, since everyone marching feels that the government has no right to legislate on this issue. Why do we feel so bullish? Because hunting with hounds is already highly regulated and formalised and there is a governing system that accommodates new regulations when the need arises. The recent independent inquiry (under Lord Burns) into the practices of hunting found no animal welfare arguments that would justify a ban and many social and economic benefits that would argue against it. Legislation that destroys a community and its way of life has to be based on principle and argument. If not, then we have a duty to defy it. And I mean really defy it, by disobeying it blatantly.
For most people marching, it is indeed the sense of community that motivates them. This is why it is a countryside march and not just a march for hunting. Rural people generally, for whom the hunt is one part of the local order of things, have good reason to feel aggrieved by this government. Only eighteen months ago, the countryside was a smoke-filled inferno as the government ordered farm after farm to burn its animals. No ministerial squeamishness then about our relations with animals and country people from all walks of life took note. Since the foot and mouth crisis I, like many others marching, have seen the best farmers go under. I use best in the same way as the governments own environmental advisors might. Small farmers with pasture farms and livestock, some of whom were persuaded to enter into innovative partnerships, such as cooperative milk-selling or conversion to organic, have nevertheless been pushed over the brink, without the government attempting to lift a finger to save them.
So yes, this march is also about the countryside. But it takes more than that to get someone like me, who is not a born protestor, still less a woman made for the barricades, to attend a mass demonstration. It takes an attack on what I love, by people who despise it and therefore despise me. Not to defy them would be to betray everything that I am, and everything that I hope for.
