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Hunt supporters are fighting for freedom
From: Simon Hart, chief executive, Countryside Alliance. It has become increasingly obvious that a large majority of Labour MPs are determined to try to force through a total ban on hunting with dogs. This could trigger the emergence of a civil resistance movement the like of which the UK has not seen before.
Several thousand people from one of the most law-abiding sectors of the community have already signed a formal declaration that, in the event of a ban on hunting, they would, as a responsible means of protest, openly disobey such a law – not in the hope of evading punishment but willingly accepting the personal consequences of their unlawful but peaceful actions.
How has it come to this? Parliament should only limit the rights of a minority if there is conclusive evidence that such action would be in the clear public interest. No such case for a hunting ban has been made; indeed, most anti-hunting MPs have consistently paraded their ignorance and prejudice on this subject. First they ignored the evidence of the Government's independent Burns Inquiry into hunting, which had been commissioned expressly "to inform the parliamentary debate" and had found no grounds for a blanket ban on hunting. Yet hardly any of the anti-hunting MPs bothered to read the inquiry's report or even turn up for the debate on its publication. They also ignored the evidence emerging from the Government's subsequent consultation process and torpedoed the "licensing" Bill the Government then brought forward.
In whose name are they doing this? Most Labour MPs were elected by fewer than a third of their constituents so they cannot pretend to the support of the majority of their voters for a hunting ban. And national polls show that these MPs are totally out of step with public opinion, which no longer favours a ban. Indeed, recent polls show the majority do not believe that Parliament should be wasting scarce time on this issue – hardly surprising when not a single MP has been able to show how a hunting ban would either advance animal welfare or improve the lives of a single rural or urban family. But most anti-hunt MPs don't even bother to try: their intemperate and often bigoted pronouncements betray all too clearly that their real motives are political. Meanwhile if, as is likely, the peers in the House of Lords vote next month for sensible regulation, more Parliamentarians will be opposed to a ban than in favour!
In short, there is no rational case for a ban and no parliamentary, electoral or public "mandate" of any kind for a ban. Consequently, the thousands who have signed the "Hunting Declaration" believe passionately that civil disobedience on this matter of individual conscience would be an action of high principle. However, since it is impossible to disobey a hunting ban until one has come into force, many campaigners believe that to prevent a ban before it is too late they may have no option but to prove their resolve to the Government by undertaking some other forms of limited civil non-cooperation and disobedience which do not harm the public.
Predictably, this resolve has been misrepresented as "undemocratic" and "intimidatory" by the very Labour MPs whose own misuse of the parliamentary process has been wholly responsible for creating the crisis in the first place. The prospect of civil disobedience has only arisen because those MPs obsessed with banning hunting have themselves abused the democratic and constitutional norms on which the respect of the electorate for our parliamentary system depends.
If prejudiced and unfair legislation can be imposed on one minority it could be imposed on others. This is why the battle to save hunting should concern not just those who hunt but everyone in our society who values freedom, fairness and the proper working of democracy. Anybody – whether or not a member of the Alliance – who regarded a ban as manifestly unjust and as a matter of conscience disobeyed that law would be supported publicly by the Alliance, particularly when they came to trial.
In his speech to the US Congress in July, the Prime Minister said: "We are fighting for the inalienable right of human kind… to be free. Free to be you so long as being you does not impair the freedom of others. That's what we are fighting for. And that's a battle worth fighting." Hear hear, Mr Blair – but perhaps your MPs should first practise at home what you preach abroad.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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