The New York Times
February 20, 2005
Testing New Ban, Britons Run With the Hounds
By ALAN COWELL

EDGEHILL, England, Feb. 19 - In 1642, the English fought a battle here between royalists and parliamentarians at the beginning of their Civil War. On Saturday they came to contest a newer struggle that, some might say, is not so different in spirit at all.

For the first time since a ban on fox hunting with dogs came into force in England and Wales at midnight on Thursday, hundreds of people on horseback and on foot gathered here under bright, cold skies to ride and run with the hounds in defiance, if not of the law then of the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, which enacted the prohibition.

"It's the end of a tradition, that's the important thing," said Adam Read, a forestry worker who arrived to follow the horses on foot with his two terriers. While riding with hounds is not in itself illegal, and foxes may still be shot, the use of hounds to kill is against the new law.

Its enactment has opened complex fissures evoking issues of class, politics, freedom and choice, setting some in the countryside against those in the cities who favor the ban. "It's the government using the strong arm to do something to a minority," Mr. Read said.

Here, 90 miles northwest of London, the Warwickshire hunt, founded in the 17th century, drew more than 200 riders and more than 2,000 spectators - far more than the usual turnout. Across England and Wales, according to the pro-hunt Countryside Alliance, many tens of thousands more turned out at 270 places to protest the ban.

"The government has no clue what it has hit," said Rosemary Featherstone, who joined the crowd in grassy open fields near this old village. "They have rather taken it for granted that everyone would take this lying down, but they haven't."

To show their opposition, they came here on Saturday in tweed caps and quilted coats and waxed country jackets shiny with age, on mounts that ranged from modest ponies to sleek, towering hunters, their riders clad in tailored scarlet or black jackets and tight-fitting jodhpurs, insisting that they would test the new law without deliberately breaking it.

Technically, the new law does not prevent people from riding horses accompanied by packs of dogs, and even allows the shooting of a fox forced out of cover by a maximum of two dogs. Hunters may also lay a scented trail for the hounds to follow, as they did Saturday at the Beaufort hunt in Gloucestershire, close to the country home of Prince Charles. But the new law does not allow the same riders to set off with the intention of killing a fox and allowing a pack of hounds to do the killing.

The ride here in Edgehill on Saturday, for instance, was defined by participants as nothing more than the legal practice of exercising the hounds.

Mind you, some said, if a fox happened across the path of the dogs, what's to be done? "We don't intend to hunt a fox," Simon Jackson, the secretary of the Warwickshire hunt, said from the saddle of his horse, "but accidents will happen" - though not if the anti-hunting lobby had anything to do with it.

Douglas Batchelor, the chief executive of the League Against Cruel Sports, said: "We greatly fear that illegal hunting will take place in the countryside today. Hunts are recklessly going out with hounds trained to chase foxes and hares. They will need to exercise extreme caution if they are to avoid committing a criminal offense." Opponents call fox hunting with dogs cruel, barbaric and anachronistic.

No foxes, initially at least, were sighted here on Saturday, but witnesses in several other places reported killings.

From midmorning onward, a huge open field filled up with S.U.V.'s towing horse-boxes and spectators and hunt followers - those who accompany the hunt on foot or in cars. There was just a handful of police officers in yellow slickers there to observe the hunt for infringements.

The ban may be difficult to enforce, and, perhaps more significantly for Mr. Blair as elections approach, possibly in May, the prohibition has opened a social rift, pitting a view of personal freedom against the dictates of democracy.

"We believe in the right to choose how we live our lives," said Julia Hodgkinson, one of the hunt's leaders. "This government is trying to stop that."

But none of the divisions are as simple as they might have seemed in 1642 when the troops supporting King Charles I fought their opponents at Edgehill. (A cautionary example: historians have judged that an ultimately indecisive battle.)

"This whole saga is developing into a crisis of confidence - confidence in government, confidence in our national institutions and confidence in our constitution," said John Jackson, chairman of the Countryside Alliance.

The lines are blurred in other ways.

Many country people like to argue that the fight represents an urban-rural battle, but some people in the countryside do, in fact, support the ban, according to opinion surveys. Some like to call it class warfare, but people here maintain that the hunt draws people from all levels.

"There's the whole spectrum of British society," said William Deakin, a huntsman here who runs a pack of 96 hounds. "You name a profession, and they'll be here."

To some nonhunting outsiders it sounded from their accents - key denominators of British class distinctions - as if the posher types were on horses and the rest on foot, but even that was challenged.

"This is what I have always done, always believed in," said Anthony Spencer, 31, a sheep farmer mounted on a gleaming horse. His accent did not sound at all upper crust.

Politically, the ban has energized opponents of Mr. Blair before the expected election. Many political analysts believe it also helped more radical members of Mr. Blair's party recover from humiliation during the Iraq war, when the prime minister brushed aside their opposition to his alliance with President Bush.

For some, of course, the show of defiance on Saturday may come to be seen as the beginning of the end. With no quarry, "there's no point," said Mrs. Featherstone. And, said Mr. Spencer, without a steady turnout "you aren't going to get the funding. It's all a very vicious circle."

Hunt advocates argue that the ban will mean unemployment among people who look after hounds and that it will not save foxes from being shot or poisoned by farmers. And they maintain that it will force the hunting types to break the law.

"The most law-abiding people are being turned into criminals," said James Forsyth, a 56-year-old farmer. The government, he said, has "turned the countryside against the townspeople as never before."
Gareth Fuller/European Pressphoto Agency
Hunting hounds in Crundale, Kent. Thousands turned out Saturday across England and Wales to protest a ban on fox hunting with dogs.