Loch Hope Scrapbook
out fishing at its best
Sir Max Backs the SCA
This is the text of a speech given by Sir Max Hastings at a fund-
The purpose of most after-
I long ago despaired of becoming a big shot. I was reading recently the gamebook
of a late 19th century figure named Sir James Lamont. Lamont did not go shooting,
he devoted his life to genocide. In 1886, for instance, he recorded that he killed
2,063 grouse for 3,883 cartridges, and another 6,810 head of other species for a
further 11,214 cartridges. His average, he wrote, was 72.7 birds for 123.74 cartridges
on each of 122 days. With one barrel or the other, he reckoned to have killed 67%
of what he shot at. In 1898 he records that his average fell to a mere 54%, and his
gamebook stops. We must assume that he gave up shooting in self-
Sir James Lamont must have been the most frightful shit, and absolutely insufferable
to go to the hill with. For most of us, shooting, like fishing and stalking, are
pastimes not professions, which can give boundless pleasure even to the least skilful
exponent. Edwardian shooting parties provided opportunities for an orgy of adultery,
facilitated by the fact that in large Norfolk or Perthshire country houses, husbands
and wives occupied separate bedrooms. Nowadays when most of us inhabit more modest
quarters, it requires a good deal of ingenuity for a couple bent on infidelity to
find space to swing a cat, never mind themselves, amid a houseful of visiting guns.
A friend once told me that a billiard-
The joy of sport is that it brings us together in fellowship amid the British countryside
with dogs, guns, rods, and-
In the eyes of all of us here, the countryside is fundamental to the vision of the Britain which we love. This is why we find it so dismaying to be ruled by a government which not only cares nothing for the rural community, but has shown itself contemptuously hostile to it.
The countryside and its inhabitants are perceived by New Labour and the Scottish
Nationalists as anachronisms, reflecting traditions of patrician paternalism, plebeian
deference and bloody pastimes which have no place in the pavement society Tony Blair
and his party, together with most of the Scottish Parliament, aspire to enforce.
While Labour claims to have abandoned the old ideals of socialism, it displays a
disdain for rights of private ownership of a single commodity-
The saddest change over the past 50 years is the fungus-
The hunting bans north and south of the border, whether or not they have yet been
effectively implemented, are the acts of a government set upon creating a new Britain
in its own image, confident that it faces no political opposition strong enough to
frustrate its purposes. The government assures us that it has no intention of legislating
against shooting and fishing. We would be rash to swallow such bromides, from ministers
who have shown itself chronically deceitful on a host of other issues. There has
never been a time when the importance seems greater of supporting our sporting organisations-
Yet, amazingly, right now all these organisations are meeting more scepticism from the sporting community than ever before, reflected in flagging membership and fundraising. Critics shrug: 'What's the point ? Nobody has been able to stop the hunting ban. Nobody can stop this government attacking shooting, or land ownership'. Yet, just as no thoughtful countryman regrets the struggle to save foxhunting, which delayed legislation for years and is still making it veryhard to enforce, so surely we cannot now succumb to defeatism about shooting, fishing, and land reform. Silence, from our side of the front, is construed by our enemies as defeatism, impotence. It is vital to sustain the public argument against hostile legislation, ditch by ditch and issue and by issue. We have to keep going on making a noise, a fuss, spelling out the evidence. If we do not fight, then our sports and our landscape do not deserve to survive. And, whatever the imperfections of our field sports organisations, the Countryside Alliance foremost among them, they are the only game in town. If they don’t wage the battle for us, who else is going to ? And how can they do it, if they lack the money which is the vital ammunition to pay staff, mount demos, fund advertising, hire staff, collect evidence ?
We must make strategy in the consciousness that we shall be ruled by Labour governments
for quite some years yet, almost certainly past the 2009 general election. Tony Blair’s
party thinks so, too. Political arrogance fortified Labour’s enthusiasm for banning
foxhunting. It imbues the party's MPs with a dangerous boldness about the possibilities
for going further in their crusade ‘irreversibly to change the nature of British
society’. On our side, in seeking to resist new encroachments, we should fight a
non-
We face a cultural issue, which extends far beyond field sports. Britain is changing.
Those of us who live familiar rural lives amid our rose gardens and the routine of
planting broad beans, casting a fly for trout, pursuing grouse, decoying pigeons,
should perceive that we inhabit a precious yet increasingly isolated social capsule.
It is magnificent, but in the eyes of many of our fellow-
A while back, a Field reader who proudly described himself as a ‘toff’, accused me of inverted snobbery. Yet it seems only common sense to recognise that the people banning foxhunting are motivated chiefly by a commitment to class warfare, not animal welfare. One Labour minister has acknowledged explicitly that the measure represented, in the eyes of himself and his comrades on the Commons benches, 'revenge for the miners'. Tony Blair and his successors may only be dissuaded from further assaults on field sports if they perceive that such action would antagonise those whom they classify as ‘ordinary people’, rather than merely an old 'privileged class' whom it delights them to punish.
The most admirable quality in politics, as in life, is generosity of spirit. What was done in the House of Commons last year, and in the Scottish Parliament before that, represented a great meanness. Henceforward, to paraphrase Hugh Gaitskell in a somewhat different context: we must fight, fight and fight again to save the way of life we love. We can succeed only by representing this as a battle for social liberty and for the rural environment.
Our forefathers would have recoiled, of course, from the necessity of justifying to the urban population the chosen activities of the rural community. They regarded the pursuit of wild quarry as the most natural of human activities, and they were right. Yet today, we must recognise that if we want to go on doing the things we have always done, we will have to fight every day of every year for the right. If everyone who shoots and fishes gave even 3 or 4% of what they spend annually on sport to the Countryside Alliance and its brethren, we would be in incomparably better shape than we are today. If we are not willing to give something, to sacrifice something to sustain our cause, then why should we deserve to prevail, never mind succeed in doing so?
Field sports are always changing, and not always for the worse. It is over a century
since that great authority Sir Ralph Payne-
For all the threats to field sports and the countryside, we are today privileged to be the inheritors of a great and wonderful legacy, which continues to give us much happiness. It is our responsibility to see that this continues through the generations. If we succeed, then our children, grandchildren and those who come after them will know the joys we have shared. If we fail, then something that matters immensely to all of us will have been lost forever.
Thank you very much.
