Up to a million British countryside protesters, armed with their green Wellington boots, are expected to march through the streets of central London on Sunday to demand the right to hunt foxes.
Britain’s House of Commons has voted in favour of banning the blood sport, considered by many to be cruel and outdated, but resistance from parliament’s upper House of Lords has prevented a ban becoming law.
Stephen Lambert runs one of the country’s largest hunts, the Heythrop, from his home near the Gloucestershire town of Moreton-in-marsh, central England.
”The present government has decided to tell us what should happen in the countryside and how the countryside should be run and administered,” he said.
”The difficulty with that is they don’t know enough about it,” adds Lambert (53) who will march alongside his wife Jane (53) and their three daughters Rebecca (28) Frances, (25) and Vanessa (21).
Prime Minister Tony Blair has made no bones about his dislike of foxhunting and has committed his ruling Labour Party — overwhelmingly against the activity — to a ban.
”We are marching because we hope to change their mind,” says a determined Lambert.
Although Scotland’s parliament outlawed the practice of hunting with dogs earlier this year, Blair seems loathe to use the Parliament Act — an effective veto of the upper House of Lords — to ban it south of the border.
Lambert, a master of fox hounds for 20 years, says those against hunting are predominantly city-based people, ignorant of what the sport entails.
”Their knowledge is probably based on sound bites in the press and dramatic pictures from those who are against foxhunting, who regard hunting as cruel and barbaric and totally out of tune with the 21st century,” he says.
”What people are just beginning to understand in parliament is that by abolishing foxhunting you’re not actually going to help the species,” the former estate-agent explains.
For the pro-hunting lobby, the sport is no crueller than other methods used to get rid of foxes — natural predators of animals more important to the rural economy such as pheasants and lambs.
”A lot of people get their livelihood from hunting, not just the people who actually turn up with the hounds and the horses,” Lambert stresses.
He is obviously excited by the rally which he says will involve the largest cross-section of people ever seen for a London march.
”You’ll get everybody from the Duke of Marlborough to the blacksmith who works in Lochgilphead in Scotland. You’ll see people employed, you’ll see landowners,” he adds, insisting that it is not just about ”toffs” (aristocrats).
”Our worry is that the people driving the abolition of foxhunting really haven’t got the slightest intent for the fox, what they are really trying to do is to stuff the toffs.
”But in fact they are not just stuffing the toffs, they’re stuffing an awful lot of other people as well,” Lambert adds, stressing that the march is not just about the one issue.
”I think that what has happened is that the hunting issue has sparked a great debate about the future of the countryside in general.
”The countryside is increasingly feeling that government is just steamrolling right though and leaving country people flattened, without any say in their affairs.
”It’s a freedom of conscience we are talking about,” he says.
”Why should parliament tell me or my neighbours what we are to think?” – Sapa-AFP