British foxhunting seems to have dodged the bullet aimed at its head again, thanks in part to the determination of British foxhunters and in part to the vagaries of politics. Here’s a snippet of the latest news since Lucretia Grindle wrote her article “If The British Ban Foxhunting. . .” (p. 54):
The London Times reported on April 8: “The pro-hunting lobby scored an unexpected success yesterday when Ken Livingstone’s latest backbench attempt to secure a ban foundered through lack of support. The prospect of banning hunting in the present Parliament effectively died after Mr. Livingstone failed to drum up enough M.P.s to force a vote on the second reading of his bill. Although the government has promised to give time for a Private Member’s Bill to ban foxhunting in the next session of Parliament, it is almost certain that a general election next year will prevent it getting through in time.”
And the future? I suspect a lot depends on Parliament’s official inquiry into hunting. The chairman, Lord Burns, has told Horse & Hound that he has received more than 5,000 letters from individuals, about 90 percent of which opposed a ban. He’s also received 250 submissions from a wide variety of organizations.
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Individuals’ desire to criminalize foxhunting and other forms of hunting is a manifestation of our society’s continuing tendency toward political correctness. Our culture seems bent on becoming ever more intolerant of people with unusual needs, customs or traditions. The British anti-hunting movement is a failure by urban and suburban policy makers to understand what an integral part foxhunting plays in the farming community of their own country, in many complex ways.
Nature is wonderful and very often absolutely beautiful. But it can also be rather ugly. A frighteningly large percentage of Americans and British don’t understand or accept that predators live in nature by stalking, chasing and killing other animals. One of those predators is the fox, and they’re so numerous in Britain that farmers are going to kill them with rifles, shotguns, traps or poison if hounds can’t catch them.
The true lunacy of the British anti-hunting campaign is that not one single fox will be saved if Parliament makes hunting foxes with hounds on horseback illegal. The farmers will continue to kill them because they have to in order to protect their lambs, calves, chickens and other birds. And isn’t it more sporting and natural for we humans to cull the old and sick foxes with their only predator
