Labour must end its strange obsession with hunting

This piece by Lord Herbert, Chairman of the Countryside Alliance, was originally published in The Telegraph. 

So now, it seems, we know: Tony Blair’s government pursued a hunting ban after an animal rights group bunged the Labour Party a mere £1 million. Lord Mandelson let the fox out of the bag recently, saying that the debate had got “pretty transactional” and that Labour then went “too far” in promising a ban in its manifesto.

We could rehearse the hours of parliamentary time wasted, the Lords overridden by the Parliament Act, the huge rural protests contemptuously swept aside. We could lament the loss of liberty, or document – as the author Charlie Pye-Smith has done brilliantly in his new book, Rural Wrongs – the unintended consequences of bad law.

Foxes are now treated as vermin, persecuted by high powered rifles all year round, including in their breeding season. Hares have been wiped away from farmland by poachers. The hunters, paradoxical guardians of their quarry, no longer stand watch.

But in their years out of office Labour have reflected on none of these things. They haven’t troubled to review the effect of the legislation they passed, and they haven’t fully understood the chasm which they drove between their party and rural voters.

Lord Mandelson, with an experienced eye on what it takes to win challenging elections, has been more clearsighted. Earlier this year he used a platform at the Future Countryside conference to warn his party of the dangers of picking an unnecessary fight with rural voters.

There have been signs that his words have had some effect. Labour seems to have gone quiet on its anti-shooting policies. It is reported to have reversed its confrontational policy to create a right to roam. Keir Starmer even ventured out of Islington to appear in Country Life, claiming that he wanted to restore the bond of respect with the countryside.

Yet one major impediment to rebuilding trust with rural communities remains.

Like a snarling dog with a bone, Labour simply won’t let go of hunting. No matter that it’s been banned for nearly two decades.

Hunts are still going out, only now they’re hunting a trail – a scented rag dragged by a human being – rather than live quarry. And although this activity is benign, the mere sight of horses and hounds in rural England is still offensive to Labour’s urban-rooted class warriors.

So now Labour pledge to amend their own Hunting Act in a way which could effectively make it impossible for those horses and hounds to go out at all. Their veneer of an excuse is that the Act has loopholes which still allows foxes to be hunted, a claim which rings pretty hollow when it was a Labour government itself which drafted the legislation. The hunting community knows very well that it must not only abide by the law but also be seen to abide by the law.

If there was a case for revisiting the Hunting Act, it would be to review it properly. An honest assessment of the legislation would expose the dreadful harm which it has done to the very animals it was supposedly designed to protect and to the countryside which they inhabit.

Failing this, Labour would be wise to take the final step in making peace with rural voters and drop its obsession with hunting once and for all.

The path back to power requires the winning of dozens of rural seats, yet reheating this issue would once again inflame rural communities – and not only those who hunt. Many others will fear, with reason, that they will be next. Yet more time wasted on hunting legislation would be an absurd priority for a new government.

If Labour truly has moved on, they’ll note the thousands of quiet rural people who will traditionally turn out to watch the hounds this Boxing Day, and let this sleeping fox lie.