Town vs. Country

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To those outside Britain — and many inside it — the fury that exploded last week over foxhunting, which the House of Commons voted to ban, doesn't make much sense. The lopsided vote, which starting July 2006 will make it a crime to hunt wild mammals with dogs, is supported by 70% of Britons — including more than half of those living in the countryside. But some 10,000 passionate prohunting demonstrators came to London to denounce what they contend is an arrogant, citified government trampling their human rights as part of a cynical ploy by Prime Minister Tony Blair to mollify left-wing M.P.s who are angry at him over the Iraq war. Most of the protesters were peaceful, but a few flying bottles and smoke bombs triggered bloody clashes with police protecting the House of Commons. Five men, including a polo-playing friend of Princes William and Harry, managed to evade security by pretending they were building contractors and rushed into the chamber during the debate — the first such invasion since 1647.

Britons love animals, but the protesters are right when they point out the illogic of the ban. Foxes will still have to be killed as agricultural pests, just by snares and shooting instead of by baying hounds pursued by red-coated riders. Other forms of hunting and fishing will remain legal. A government report estimates that 6,000 to 8,000 full- and part-time jobs depend on hunts, which involve about 1.2 million people, 50,000 horses and 70,000 dogs each year. So to many hunt supporters, the dogged effort to ban their sport is, in the words of a House of Lords report, a "capitulation to zealotry and class prejudice," a peculiar 21st century manifestation of an old struggle against the privileges of aristocrats — who actually make up a small proportion of modern hunters.

Since coming to power, Blair has tried to find a middle-way compromise on hunting, but with a general election on the way has decided he can't disappoint party activists one more time. Even so, this fox is still running: Professor Patrick Dunleavy, a politics expert at the London School of Economics, predicts "a continued campaign of civil disobedience that will make the general election colorful."