It’s a delicate balance: rural tradition, public opinion, and the spotlight of a major agricultural show. So when the Hound Parade commentary at this year’s Gillingham and Shaftesbury Show veered into a lengthy diatribe about the need to preserve fox hunting at all costs, it felt like the commentator had misjudged the moment – and the audience.
While I am not a fan of fox hunting, I have no particular objection to hounds being part of the show. They’re part of rural life, and the packs of foxhounds and bloodhounds parading were fine examples of their breeds. But turning what should have been a celebration into a soapbox for a controversial agenda was, frankly, a betrayal of the show’s organisers – and an insult to the intelligence of those watching.
It’s a shame, because the rest of the show was exactly what it should be: a landmark in the farming calendar, showcasing the fantastic work our local farmers do and bringing a bit of joy to what is often an isolating, thankless industry.
The main ring at the show acts as a venue for entertainment, education and celebration and, on the whole, it did just that. We were entertained by the motorcycle and jousting displays, educated about the evolution of horsepower via heavy horses, steam engines and vintage tractors, and we celebrated the prize-winners in the livestock parade.
Only the Hound Parade struck a discordant note.
‘It’s not as important as mine’
As a historian I am a bit of a pedant when it comes to matters of fact. The presenter started his introduction to hunting with hounds by explaining that it was “introduced to England by the Normans”. This is wrong: hunting with dogs in England goes back way further than the Normans. Vikings, Saxons, Celts and Romans all left behind documentary evidence of using dogs to hunt.
What the Normans did do, which he alluded to when he mentioned Cranborne Chase and the New Forest, was to enclose vast tracts of land as hunting reserves for the aristocracy.
What he didn’t mention, of course, was that most of our ancestors could have been summarily executed for so much as setting foot on that land. He went on to explain that fox hunting came about from the 18th century – but again, rather neglected to mention the social context in which it was created: a deliberately exclusive and aristocratic pursuit at a time when land was increasingly enclosed and the ordinary man could be hanged or transported to Australia for poaching a rabbit or pheasant.
Thankfully, those days are gone … although, of course, only the comparatively wealthy can afford to ride to hounds today. But the commentary would have us believe that everyone in the countryside has forgotten the injustices of the past, and is now squarely behind the hunt.
The commentator did concede that many people were opposed to hunting, and that they were entitled to their opinion – although he didn’t really seem to entertain the idea that it was legitimate for a democratically elected parliament to outlaw something that had gone on for a couple of hundred years. The overall tone was that “you’re entitled to your opinion as long as you understand that it isn’t as important as mine”.
I think we can count ourselves fortunate that Westminster doesn’t always side with tradition, or we would also presumably still have cock fighting, bear and badger baiting, slavery and witch-burning, on the grounds that they, too, were fine old English traditions. (Mind you, having seen some of the comments on the Daily Telegraph’s recent article about the Gillingham and Shaftesbury Show’s decision to ban those hunters with criminal convictions from the show, it seems that some members of the Countryside Alliance probably think that banning those things was all part of a plot by a woke metropolitan elite.)
The commentator meanwhile told us how he had been threatened by a large hunt saboteur in a balaclava. This is, of course, totally unacceptable. There is no place for that kind of behaviour, and it has to be said that the violence and tactics of some anti-hunt protestors completely undermines their position. Sadly, hunt followers are not angels either … but this was ignored.
Intrinsic, indispensable and inevitable
Perhaps the most annoying part of the commentary from the Hound Parade was the element of moral blackmail at the end. If hunting with hounds is banned, the “hounds and horses will have to be put down – and it will all be your fault”, we were told. “Hounds are pack animals which cannot adapt to domestic life” – this seemed a particularly odd statement just at the moment that the children in the audience were being invited to meet and pet said hounds. It was followed up with the equally baffling statement that “without the hunt, the rural economy would pretty much collapse and be left without vets”. Personally, I find it hard to imagine that hunting puts so much into local vets’ practices that it outweighs all their other streams of income. Finally, there was the claim that “hunting is not just fun for the hunters, but for the hunt followers, large numbers of whom would be left with nothing else to do”. The implication was that a lot of the audience were hunt followers, and were naturally on the same side.
I wasn’t convinced.
I was left with the feeling that an attempt was being made to railroad the audience into backing hunting by implying that it is an intrinsic, indispensable and inevitable part of country life which naturally benefits all who dwell in our rural area.
Unfortunately, it was another example of modern-day post-truth history, where a wealthy minority is seeking to manipulate opinion by appealing to a past that never was. Most people who were at the show, I suspect, are like me: the descendants of agricultural labourers or tenant farmers. I dare say that Norman barons and 18th-century fox hunters thought nothing of horse-whipping our ancestors if they weren’t quick enough to tug their forelocks. It’s a bit rich to expect our support now.
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