LAST week I presented the hunting issue through John Masefield's thrilling poem Reynard The Fox, written, as he explained, as "an attempt to understand the mind of a shy, wild animal when sorely beset''.

Now here are some of my own thoughts:

1. If foxhunting is a minor issue, why all the protests, the acres of newsprint and, not least, the Tory promise to reverse a ban, against their own logic, which dictates that action on foxhunting should be far behind sorting out Labour's follies with schools, hospitals, crime, etc. In fact, hunting is important as a token of the kind of country we wish to live in.

2. Chasing an animal to the point of exhaustion is incontestably so cruel that debating the matter is pointless.

3. Backed by studies, common sense suggests that fox numbers are related to available food. The urban fox would be almost non-existent if we didn't litter our cities with thrown-away junk food. In the countryside, the end of hunting is unlikely to bring an explosion of fox numbers.

4. In any case, hunts encourage foxes. The fashionable Sinnington, for example, owns coverts and is proud that a fox can usually be found. A blank day is not to be contemplated if HRH Prince Charles is turning up.

5. Like other top hunts, the Sinnington also erects its own fences to increase the pleasure of the chase. It could still do so if it switched to drag hunting.

6. More foxes are killed on the roads than by hunts. Since scarcely any fox would die on the roads 100 years ago, it could be said that road traffic fulfills whatever control role the hunts claim.

7. The fox kills for pleasure only when intoxicated by blood. A child left alone in a sweetshop will gorge the goodies. A fox in a hen hut will do the same. He is blamed for acting naturally in an unnatural situation.

8. On major pheasant-shooting estates there is little hunting, which would disturb the birds. Foxes are dealt with by shooting drives. Again, there would be fewer foxes if the pheasant population wasn't artificially boosted - and the birds almost as tame as hens.

9. Foxhunting has been closer to the heart of rural life than any other bloodsport. It has inspired great art and literature. All this can be honoured in the context of times whose perception of our responsibilities to animals was less well developed than today's.

10. Hunting has simply had its day. If not banned now, or by a Labour government that might be elected next year, it will certainly be banned by the next Labour adminstration after that, whenever it comes. As most hunters probably sub-consciously recognise, the battle really is all over bar the shouting.

11. No-one urges the restoration of any cruel sport already outlawed. This applies even, or perhaps especially, to otter hunting, banned as recently as 1978. After perhaps a generation, foxhunting will equally be seen by the vast majority as beyond the pale of acceptable behaviour. Its passing will mark an advance in our progress as human beings. And that is why Labour should face down the protestors and enact what is a civilising measure, in step with history and humanity