Mark Steyn: Each To His Own, Except In Britain

With rumours of mushroom clouds over North Korea and genocide in Sudan, it's good to know the Government has identified the real threat in the world today. As The Telegraph reported: "Chief constables intend to site CCTV cameras on hedgerows, fences and trees along known hunting routes to enable them to photograph hunt members who break the law after hunting with hounds is outlawed.

"The controversial measure was agreed at a secret meeting between David Blunkett and the chief constables of England and Wales after the hunting ban was announced last week. Police chiefs warned the Home Secretary that enforcing the ban would cost in excess of £30 million and divert resources from front-line policing."

Of course. Doesn't everything? I don't know what "front-line policing" is these days — do they still have those detachments of plain-clothes officers idling over the vindaloo in curry-houses of an evening eavesdropping on adjacent diners in case anybody makes racist remarks about the waiters? But, whatever it is, "front-line policing" isn't so urgent that "resources" can't be "diverted" in order to stick a CCTV camera on every tree in England.

But, if they can't and they have to snake the electric cable down every tree trunk in simulated wood-effect vinyl casing, it will still "send the right message" — which is that the monumentally useless British constabulary is happy to invent an entirely new criminal class if it reduces the already minimal time they have to spend dealing with the real criminal class.

Each to his own, except in Britain
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 14/09/2004)

With rumours of mushroom clouds over North Korea and genocide in Sudan, it's good to know the Government has identified the real threat in the world today. As The Telegraph reported: "Chief constables intend to site CCTV cameras on hedgerows, fences and trees along known hunting routes to enable them to photograph hunt members who break the law after hunting with hounds is outlawed.

"The controversial measure was agreed at a secret meeting between David Blunkett and the chief constables of England and Wales after the hunting ban was announced last week. Police chiefs warned the Home Secretary that enforcing the ban would cost in excess of £30 million and divert resources from front-line policing."

Of course. Doesn't everything? I don't know what "front-line policing" is these days - do they still have those detachments of plain-clothes officers idling over the vindaloo in curry-houses of an evening eavesdropping on adjacent diners in case anybody makes racist remarks about the waiters? But, whatever it is, "front-line policing" isn't so urgent that "resources" can't be "diverted" in order to stick a CCTV camera on every tree in England.

Maybe they can all be powered by wind turbines.

But, if they can't and they have to snake the electric cable down every tree trunk in simulated wood-effect vinyl casing, it will still "send the right message" - which is that the monumentally useless British constabulary is happy to invent an entirely new criminal class if it reduces the already minimal time they have to spend dealing with the real criminal class.

"D'ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?" "Roger, Tree 74. He's just rounding Hedgerow Q89."

But I don't suppose we'll be hearing "D'ye Ken John Peel?" much any more. The new countryside will need new songs: "Tie A CCTV Round The Old Oak Tree It's been three whole yards Since you last filmed me."

I love hunting - which in my corner of the Eastern Seaboard means whitetail, bear, turkey and moose. "Hunting" in the sense of a lot of fellows prancing around in sissy gear holds less appeal, and the couple of times I've done it I had my four-fold scarf on but I'd accidentally five-folded it (or vice-versa) and people exchanged pitying glances. Still, each to his own - which is a good motto for a civilized society.

But the toff thing makes hunting a hard sell. You may recall a few weeks ago I quoted John Kerry's somewhat unlikely observations on his favourite kind of hunting. He has been at pains all campaign season to be photographed with guns and in various sporting scenarios. Democrats spend most of every election year going to great lengths to demonstrate they're regular guys, and that usually involves some hunting or quasi-hunting activity. After the Republicans' triumph in the 1994 Congressional elections, Bill Clinton felt it useful to be filmed duck hunting - in order, if I remember correctly, to kill all the talk that he was a dead duck by going out and shooting a duck dead. So every newspaper had a picture of him emerging from the rough with his gun in one hand and a ventilated mallard in the other. Message: unlike the closing credits of his Hollywood pals' lousy movies, ducks were harmed in the making of this photo-opportunity.

Did he really want to go hunting? I doubt it. I expect he'd much rather have been breaking in the new intern pool. But the point is he felt it was in his political interest to be seen killing animals. Can you imagine any development in British political life which would prompt Tony Blair's image-makers to tell him to climb into the jodhpurs and push off down to Badminton to be filmed yelling "yoicks!" and "tally-ho!" with the Beaufort?

For all the talk of vibrant "multi-culturalism", Blair's Britain is strikingly unicultural - diversity of race, gender and orientation, but a ruthless homogeneity of metropolitan modishness imposed by a highly centralised politico-media culture. America is a federal state and thus local majorities prevail: in New Hampshire, we like hunting; in the gay environs of Fire Island, the thrill of the chase lies elsewhere. Each, as I said, to his own.

In Britain, Soho's views on hunting should be no more relevant than Somerset's opinion of gay leather bars. But they are. And those Left-wing columnists who go on about the "climate of fear" in Bush's America ought to remember that, even in their wildest power-crazed dreams, Bush and John Ashcroft will never be able to issue a national ban on centuries-old traditions merely because they offend metropolitan taste. Nor, unlike the modern British state, are they able to keep the populace under 24-hour video surveillance, whether you're at the railway station, in the shopping centre, or strolling down a leafy country lane.

Hunting is a small loss in a country bent on tearing up so much of its past, but it is a significant one. The criminalisation of a law-abiding group is not something respectable governments should embark on lightly, and in this case, regardless of how many trees and hedgerows they wire up to the network, the cure is almost certainly worse than the disease, extending to the police more opportunities for frivolous intrusion.

The inability of Conservatives to defend hunting sums up the problems of British conservatism. At the time of the first Countryside March, Joanna Trollope said that the essential ingredients of village life are "church, pub, farms, cottages, a small school and a Big House". That's swell if you're the one in the Big House, but presenting rural Britain as a haven of deference and social order cripples its political viability. In Britain, this is an undeferential age - see Digby Anderson on oiks et al. Rural America is about individual liberty - where even the brokest of broke losers with no teeth can still have a few acres, a rusting trailer, a hunting licence and a "Survivors Will Be Prosecuted" sign at the foot of his drive.

As long as British conservatism recoils from individual liberty and clings to Joanna Trollope Big-House social order, it will be unable to offer a viable modern defence of that which it wishes to conserve

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