Who Let the Hounds Out? Who? Who? Who?

The answer to that is just about every Hunt in England and Wales, this weekend as Jeannie Fiona Macauley points out over on Dodgeblogium.

Meanwhile Andrew Dodge and Wolfie joined a hunt meet on Saturday and interviewed many members of the hunt in connection with another project. (Ed: it should be said that the hunt did nothing illegal and did not attempt to catch any foxes. They were within the law, deeply daft though the requirements are.) Whatever the urban Labour elite like to claim about toffs in red coats, the hunting fraternity come from many different backgrounds but the overwhelming thing they have in common is that they understand the countryside. Many of the hunters and hunt followers (who outnumbered those on horseback by ten to one) were involved in equestrian pursuits - providing foodstuffs and saddles, harnesses and horse trailers. Others were farmers whose livelihoods were in the balance following the foot and mouth outbreak. For them, losing lambs to an exploding fox population would put them out of business.

Bad laws like the fox hunting (in certain ways) ban threaten the very rule of law because laws based on prejudice are bound to be tested to their limits and the habit of lawbreaking becomes commonplace among the general population. If the law is policed it will bring the Police into direct confrontation with a large group of people who, until now, have been the most law-abiding supporters of the Police. They haven’t changed. The law has. Like the persecuted motorist or the small businessman who finds himself beset by inspectors and licencing officers, another group of people will start to see the Police as their enemy, not as their protector. The whole basis of the rule of law is thereby undermined.

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