U.K.:Government Finally Admits – Hunt Ban Is Part of the Class Struggle

The Telegraph ^ | November 21, 2004 | Melissa Kite

[quidnunc]

A member of the Government admits today that the hunting ban is driven by old-fashioned class warfare and is, at its heart, a bitter battle for control of Britain.

Writing in The Telegraph, Peter Bradley, the parliamentary private secretary to Alun Michael, the rural affairs minister, reveals that the real reason that Labour MPs feel so strongly about the ban is because it is aimed at killing 'the old order' and is the first time in history that a Labour government has taken on 'the gentry'.

Mr Bradley says: 'We ought at last to own up to it: the struggle over the Bill was not just about animal welfare and personal freedom: it was class war.'

The MP for The Wrekin adds that it was the 'toffs' who declared war on Labour by resisting the ban, but agrees that both sides are battling for power, not animal welfare.

'This was not about the politics of envy but the polities of power. Ultimately it's about who governs Britain.'

Mr Bradley's comments are in stark contrast to statements from ministers, who have always claimed that the Act to ban hunting with hounds is about protecting wildlife.

Mr Bradley, 51, admits that he personally sees the campaign to save hunting as an assault on his right to govern as a Labour MP. He protests that the hunting cause is made up of 'the privileged minority which for centuries ran this country from the manor houses of rural England' and tried to keep people like him 'in our place'.

'The placards of the Countryside Alliance plead 'Listen to Us' but what they mean is 'Do What We Say' — as for centuries we have. But that old order no longer prevails.'

-snip-

[quidnunc]

Yes – This Is About Class War
The battle is a last hurrah for the feudal system

Now that hunting has been banned, we ought at last to own up to it: the struggle over the Bill was not just about animal welfare and personal freedom, it was class war.

But it was not class war as we know it. It was not launched by the tribunes against the toffs — it was the other way round. This was not about the politics of envy but the politics of power. Ultimately it's about who governs Britain.

Labour had not been in Government a year before the Shires rose up and marched on London. But the Liberty and Livelihood March was not about the countryside. It was not a postdated protest against the remorseless loss over the previous 18 years of rural schools and post offices, public transport and affordable housing. It wasn't even really about hunting. Nor were we witnessing, as was claimed at the time, the birth of a new political movement. It was more like the last hurrah of the feudal system.

An experience in my own back yard crystallised it for me. In the very week the Commons voted to delete the hereditary principle from our constitution, a deputation of local hunt supporters brought to my surgery a map of my constituency coloured almost entirely green to signify the land where the fox is fair game until February.

This, they claimed, was conclusive evidence that The Wrekin overwhelmingly supports hunting. When I pointed out that they had painted round the towns and villages where most of my constituents live, effectively disenfranchising them, they were incredulous. "But," exclaimed one of them, sweeping his hand across the green acres of The Wrekin, "these are the landowners!"

That is the nub of it. The campaign to save hunting has relatively little to do with rural life or rights. It has a lot to do with preserving the age-old privileges of land ownership.

-snip-

(Peter Bradley in The Telegraph, November 21, 2004)
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[proxy_user]

This is not actually so great an idea.

Without a hereditary ruling class, a true rightist party might form and give Labour some competition.

[Veto!]

I suppose they'll want to ban butlers and footmen next. And soon, the Queen. Whatever is this world coming to?

[FrankRepublican]

The people who hunt and their country side alliance group are the UK's version of American conservatives. Sadly, they are outnumbered and the UK left has let illegals flood in particularly Muslims.

The UK is becoming a sewer.

[PistolPaknMama]

1. I have no sympathy for these people. They have made personal defense a matter of "hunting." Therfore, those that hunt prey upon those who cannot defend. They've taken self defense away from women, children and elderly....why not take it away from the foxes too?
2. I'm still tired of excerpted articles. Those of us who are on dial up wait for an article to load and then have to wait for an article to load again, plus registration, if we want to real the entire article. I just want to know where the rules are and why some articles are excerpted and some are not.

[F16Fighter]

Mob-Rule run amok...

And how long before butchers, fishermen, and supermarkets in the UK are charged with "murder" and accessory-to-murder"?

[docbnj]

It IS class warfare.

In the same way, the antigun movement here in the USA is cultural warfare, and partly motivated by regional hatreds. It is not considered polite in this country to express any sort of criticism of select, privileged minorities, except that it is fine to attack rural folk, people from the regions which feed us, and Southerners. Writers in prestigious media can say all sorts of ridiculously insulting things against "fundamentalists," which includes just about anyone who has ever had a religious thought or impulse.

The only exception I would take to the class-warfare theory of the anti-hunting acts in England is that it is not hitting "gentry" alone, but all the traditional country people: those who are really most English. In that respect it is very anti-English, in exactly the same way that Kerry-state bigotry is anti-American.

[libstripper]

Will someone please explain to the Brits why it is wrong for a land owner to allow others acccess to his or her property to hunt foxes and charge for the privilege. No one but the foxes is hurt.

[Myrddin]

The hunting ban covers England and Wales. Once again, the damn English are busy imposing their laws on the Welsh. I hope to live long enough to see a devolution of power that permits the Welsh to rule their own country. My principal reservation is that Plaid Cymry (the Welsh Party) is so steeped in socialism. I had to withdraw from participation in Welsh language internet forums. The stench of socialism was too much to bear.

[Myrddin]

Will someone please explain to the Brits why it is wrong for a land owner to allow others acccess to his or her property to hunt foxes and charge for the privilege. No one but the foxes is hurt.

It is the growing power of the socialists that is fueling these moves. Private property is a anathema to socialists. Using the iron fist of government to prohibit fox hunting on private land is a means to strike at the heart of private land owners.

[okie01]

'Labour governments have come and gone and left little impression on the gentry. But a ban on hunting touches them. It threatens their inalienable right to do as they please on their own land. For the first time, a decision of a Parliament they don't control has breached their wrought-iron gates.

In other words, they know exactly what they are doing: Labour is attacking private property rights -- and this is only the first strike.

So much envy. So much greed. So much hate. Meaning there is more socialism to come.

Thomas More would understand, completely.

[libstripper]

You're so right and it's totally repulsive. It's not as though the aristocrats were riding roughshod over the common farmers and destroying thier land. Insted the farmers invite the aristocrats onto their land for the hunt and get compensated for it. The ban (I'm not a fox hunter) is nothing but pure, evil malice designed to hurt all rural people and destroy a quaint and somewhat humorous ("the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable") English tradition that dates back for hundreds of years. It's every bit as pointless and malicious as banning possession of pleasure boats would be.