YESTERDAY'S mobilisation in London was an impressive show of force. The countryside is hurting and little wonder after the ravages of foot and mouth which were exacerbated by the Government's inept handling of the epidemic.
The countryside shares many problems with the rest of the country - the decline of local services and standards - and yesterday should have been a wake-up call to the Government.
It needs urgently to address the fall in rural incomes and the march should have been a platform to start discussions about the failure of the current subsidy system and how it can be replaced. What does Britain want from its countryside and how is it going to pay for it?
The march should also start a debate about our foodchain in general: how can supermarkets charge high prices when farmers receive so little? How can the British public claim that it wants the highest quality food when time and again it buys the cheapest option?
It should heighten the debate about the value of local services: if we say we want local shops and buses why do we allow them to go out of business by not using them?
It could even be the springboard for an overhaul of the way both town and country allows the workings of the property market to make life so hard for young people, and there may even be dramatic legislation concerning second homes.
It was unfortunate, though, that so many of these valuable messages were drowned out by the dominance of hunting.
It is ironic that people can march on London accusing the Government of not listening to them when they themselves can be accused of being equally deaf. Opinion poll after opinion poll tells them that at least 70 per cent of the country as a whole regards their sport as cruel.
Whether that 70 per cent wants hunting banned out-right is another matter because the British people are, as a whole, fairly tolerant. Indeed, the passion of yesterday's protest may well encourage more tolerance.
But, just as the hunters expect the Government to listen to what they say, so the hunters should listen to what the majority of their countrymen are saying. This would mean them working with the Government to eradicate the worst excesses of hunting which so many people - in both urban and rural settings - find distasteful.
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