ASK anyone in the street whether traditional fox hunting is banned in Scotland, and I imagine you will get one of three answers: “Yes”, “I don’t know”, or “Sorry, I don’t have any change on me”.
On paper, anyone who said “Yes” would be technically correct. But in practice, hunts through the fields and farms of Scotland – hunts that end with hounds ripping live foxes to bloody pieces – continue as if the 2002 legislation banning them didn’t exist.
That’s why animal rights activists and protesters have maintained pressure on the Scottish Government since the first attempt at a legal ban passed 20 years ago – and why so many marched through the wind and rain in Edinburgh on Saturday. Congregating at St Giles’ Cathedral and proceeding to the Scottish Parliament, the crowd came with signs, banners and costumes, partly to commend the Scottish Government for moving forward with a new bill to strengthen the ban, and partly to push them to ensure the new legislation won’t contain the same legal loopholes and exemptions as the 2002 Protection of Wild Mammals Act.
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The issue of fox hunting is a contemporary one. As a nation living amid strikes and rising wealth inequality – particularly as we face a winter of rising fuel costs as energy companies rake in record profits – the connection between a fox hunting ban and broader discussions on poverty in Scotland may seem a little tenuous.
But blood sports expose the unspoken power of Scotland’s class system – and with the bosses and landowners of our nation currently under the political microscope, it remains relevant in our immediate discussion of who holds power over us – and how they use it.
If a group of young men in a working-class estate took to their streets armed with weapons to gleefully and painfully slaughter the wild animals that have taken to living in an urban environment, they would be portrayed as a barbaric menace. Give them a horse, a horn and an aristocratic accent, however, and suddenly it’s a great and rousing tradition that should be maintained for the good of the local community.
Class in Scotland is an embedded property that can, unconsciously, paint our perceptions of an act. There is no material difference between the working classes and the upper class joyfully participating in the torture and dismembering of a live animal. But through the lens of class, the act transforms into something that press and politicians alike will scramble to defend.
When we see examples of wealthy interests and the upper classes treating the law as something that happens to other people, that is a manifestation of the internalised supremacy that is bred into the sort of person who would take their nanny with them while out canvassing for political support.
The 2002 fox hunting ban failed not solely because of loopholes in the legislation but because landed elites and the wealthy chose not to follow it – and because they were allowed to continue to do so without consequences.
It has taken years of work from grassroots organisations such as the League Against Cruel Sports to unearth the evidence that reveals the disregard shown by hunt organisations for the welfare of animals and for the laws that sought to protect them.
The aim of the 2002 legislation was to ban the act of fox hunting while allowing landowners to perform alleged pest control to limit the number of foxes in the wild. This was to be achieved through “flushing to guns” – using an unlimited number of hounds to flush foxes from their hides into the open where huntsmen could end their lives with a gun.
And so the sight of huntsmen on horseback surrounded by racing hounds remained common in the countryside, entirely legally, were it not for one little problem. There were no guns in sight. Research and footage from hunts repeatedly revealed no arms in use at all.
Traditional fox hunting as a form of pest control is as much an aristocratic myth as the idea that the wholesale torching of Scottish heather moorland for the benefit of grouse shooting is the best use of our land.
The hunts continue, and still put the wants of the wealthy above the needs of the community and the welfare of living animals. In 2020, the Duke of Buccleuch’s hunt was accused of causing “mayhem” after allegedly losing control of its hounds, resulting in a mounted huntsman jumping over a hedgerow into the path of an oncoming vehicle. Never failing to uphold the class privilege that comes with such a sport, a dismounted rider allegedly berated the driver for getting in the way.
Unsurprisingly, masters of fox hunts have been revealed in the past to be major Tory donors, further cementing the links between the wealthy and the politicians who best represent their interests.
The sooner the Scottish Government acts to bring the out-of-control upper class of our nation to heel, the better. An effective ban on fox hunting is just one small step toward doing so.
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