If you’ve been reading this blog since it began several months ago, you may recall the strong reactions from some quarters that greeted our announcement that the Countryside Alliance we’re joining the Convention as partners. Both myself and Anthony Barnett wrote posts defending the decision to work with the CA – and a diverse mix of other organisations – on an issue of such vital political importance.
The former chairman of the CA, John Jackson, who is closely involved in the Convention and will be chairing the session on Judges and politicians – who decides?, was moved to write an article on the history of the CA and its purpose as an organisation. We have now published that article on openDemocracy’s UK blog, OurKingdom. Contrary to popular belief, the CA isn’t simply “about” fox hunting and neither was the 500,000 strong demonstation it organised in 2002, according to Jackson. For, “whilst most of the marchers came from the countryside, less than one tenth of them were, or ever had been, involved directly in hunting. And of the ten grievances for which remedy was sort in the petition delivered to Downing St after the march only one related to hunting – a point much of the press missed.” One of the primary roles fulfilled by the CA, says Jackson, is to defend the liberties of a rural minority against an urban majority.
“defend the liberties of a rural minority” means little more than claiming an exemption from the law for people who live in particular geographical areas. I’ve never met a CA member (and I’ve met many) for whom it wasn’t about hunting, or more specifically about their supposed “right” to ignore laws they don’t like. The rest is window-dressing.
The convention is about liberty. Issues such as fox hunting are a sideshow, whatever your opinion of fox hunting. Please please lets not get bogged down in a debate on blood sports when it is just one of a myriad of issues that surround the terrible proposals of this Government on its ID database. Let’s embrace all groups that would seek to defend our liberty. I may not like what you have to say but I shall defend your right to say it.
With this new commitment to liberty I’m presuming that the Countryside Alliance will be campaigning for the repeal of section 68+69 of the Criminal Justice Act 1994 which criminalised tresspass and made it punishable by prison.
These sections of the draconian CJA 1994 were brought in by vigorous lobbying of then Tory home secretary Michael Howard by the Alliance’s predecessor organisation the British Field Sports Society.
In contrast to the Hunting Act these laws were thoroughly enforced by police forces up and down the country , who arrested hundreds of anti-hunt protestors in the years that followed.
So liberty for who?
The CA isn’t seeking to defend my liberty, or the liberty of those of my family who live in rural areas. What it’s seeking to do is to destroy the principle that the law applies equally to everyone. That’s profoundly anti-libertarian.
Come tell me and mine about ‘liberty’, John Jackson, come tell us of our ‘rights’. Being from an ex-mining community we’d love to hear how you and yours are going to help us after all these years. Your true colours shone through with the statement – “Coal mining was a huge rural industry and it was right that it yielded, finally, to the pressure for economic efficiency.” When, in fact the miners were crushed because they posed a very real obstacle to the neo-liberal gravy train – which has now derailed itself to spectacular effect
‘Liberty & Livelihood’ reflects John’s somewhat romantic view of a doff-capping, forelock-tugging, passive workforce happy as Larry in their service to the well deserving rich. But the countryside I know is a very different place where the stark realities of our still blatantly class divided society are like open sores on John’s ‘green and pleasant land’. Liberty without equality is no liberty at all. When the Countryside Alliance talks of ‘rights’ it is like the mention of ‘rope’ in the house of a hanged man.