You will read a great deal about grouse and hen harriers before Christmas as the Werritty report into grouseshooting in Scotland is published. But this is one little bombardment in a huge war being fought along a giant front. Here is the strategists' guide to what's going on.
Get set for the middle ground battleground. The hunting/anti-hunting debate is one long trench warfare front. It is broadly divided into three sections: the national politics of countrysports are at one end, the media battle for public opinion is at the other. In the middle is the day-to-day policy and public opinion as enacted by civil servants, local and regional government, the police and the judiciary.
The allied fieldsports of hunting, shooting, fishing and falconry have, to date, been winning the national political battle. National politics reacts to votes and science. There are no votes to be had from countrysports, either for or against it. Science - admittedly paid for by pro-countrysports interests, but peer reviewed - comes down in favour of countrysports as a positive contributor to conservation. Even without the paid lobbyists telling them, it is not hard for MPs and MEPs to understand that the UK woodlands are not put there for their benefit by the railway companies, that the benefit all wildlife, they are there for hunting and shooting, and that without hunting and shooting, they would go. Luckily for countrysports in the UK, landowners form a large part of their support base.
Fishing and falconry have gone some steps further. Thanks in part to former MP Martin Salter, anglers have successfully presented themselves as the main national pressure group interested in water flow and quality. Falconers have successfully been enshrining their sport as a matter of national heritage.
At the other end of the trench system, the axis of antis are the ones winning the media war. The media is a good place to present stories and actions in isolation, and to offer a binary view of the world. It is hard to put across the complexity of the 'why hunt?' argument, especially when faced with the simplicity of the 'cute rabbit' argument.
Where both sides need to commit resources next is into the middle ground, and the antis are already better at it. All major organisations, pro- and anti-hunting, have at least one retired police detective on their staff and an appointed legal firm.
In January 2019, Chris Packham's organisation Wild Justice changed the game. Lawyers are not an add-on to its operations. They are its operations. These are lawyers who are able to hold civil servants, the police and even other lawyers to account.
To the more right-wing among the pro-countrysports side, the change in the law's purpose from social framework to bureaucratic swamp allows Wild Justice to gain a cynical advantage. The right wing can whinge all they like. People in City suits now have more say over crop protection than farmers. Get over it. The right wing lost that round and they need to learn to work with what they have got.
This came home to me most strongly at the EFRA committee meeting, chaired by Neil Parish MP, into the conduct of Natural England over the April 2019 general licences debacle. NE acting chief executive Marion Spain and outgoing chairman Lord Blencathra looked like rats in traps. They repeatedly assured the committee that it was not their - Spain's and Blencathra's - fault, and that they had no alternative but to comply with Wild Justice's lawyers' wishes. Incoming chairman Tony Juniper sitting next to them was more assured - the problem took place before he arrived - but he made every effort to distance himself from it. Marion Spain's greatest misjudgement was her belief that pigeon shooting is a minority sport, undertaken by a few thousand farmers. She repeatedly failed to acknowledge or even apparently understand that the reason her organisation's email and website crashed and remained crashed for days was the sheer number of pigeon shooters trying to find out what was going on. Our website crashed, too. Fieldsports Channel broke the news story and had 85,000 hits on that page in 12 hours.
The effect of Wild Justice on the other organisations, both pro and anti, is and certainly should be far-reaching. The League Against Cruel Sports has been losing ground, battling its members, and losing its staff. The effectiveness of Wild Justice versus the ineffectiveness of the League is hastening the League's decline. Do not confuse that with a loss of core support for an anti-hunting message among animal rights fundamentalists. I was on stage at Bird Fair in August 2019, presenting the case for grouseshooting, and the 400-strong audience was fervid. Anti-hunting campaigner Dominic Dyer's speeches in the summer at Hen Harrier Day and Bird Fair helped produce large numbers of supporters in black balaclavas to protest at grouse shoots in August 2019.
There have been failures. Chris Packham's anti driven grouseshooting Revive coalition has not done as well as Wild Justice. He would like to convert Revive's media success into national political clout. Adroit though he is with the media, so far that has not happened. In my opinion, he is lobbing shells from the media trenches into the parliamentary trenches, and he does not yet have the firepower.
The Churchill of countrysports parliamentary support, James Gray MP, gave an excellent and funny speech to 80 diners at a grouse dinner I hosted in West London in October. In it, he pointed out that there would may not be a grouse dinner in 2020. There was laughter. He turned to those laughing and said, coldly: "There really may not be a grouse dinner in 2020," and they fell silent.
What else can an attack on the middle trenches achieve for the antis? Liverpool Council's decision to block the British Shooting Show from taking place in its exhibition centre is an interesting case. I went to that, and it quickly became obvious that pro-countrysports lobbying had not reached these urban, regional politicians. I tried to imagine the cost to BASC and Countryside Alliance of changing opinions at this level of public life and I could not. Councillors unanimously - even the Tory - backed mayor Joe Anderson's ban on the British Shooting Show. BASC put up a good quality spokesperson, Garry Doolan, who even has a Liverpool accent, but it was hopeless. In a bar afterwards, one of the councillors told me that the underlying issue was gun crime, even though most people in countrysports will tell you that the difference between gun crime and pheasant shooting was buried years ago.
Perhaps a barrister would have worked in Liverpool. Only the law frightens officials. Alongside Garry, perhaps we could have had a lawyer pointing out that Joe Anderson's ban was discrimination and would result in a painful court case. Wild Justice did not need to field a lawyer here - but they could have done.
Where are the risks and the weak spots for the antis? They are over-reliant on a pliant media to support their middle-ground message. With the terrestrial broadcasters and most newspapers broadly aligned to anti-countrysports sentiment, they see no threat. But broadcasting is changing, as the barriers to viewers disintegrate, and it becomes possible, for example, to win the US presidency with a single Twitter account. In that world, anyone who relies on their position as the man on the Air Ministry roof, telling viewers what is going to happen, is going to look obsolete beside the kind of 'social broadcaster' who can put an arm around a viewer and persuade them by saying: 'This is what I think, this is why I think it, but no need for you to think it yourself...'
The pro-fieldsports allies have not stepped up to this threat. They should continue their activities fighting rearguard in the media, and on the front foot with politicians, but they need to engage rapidly in the middle ground.
Here's what my outfit is doing. At Fieldsports Channel, we have come to the conclusion that YouTube channels are or can be social movements with lightweight manifestos alongside their role as 'light ent'. This is partly thanks to the collision between entertainment and politics, and partly thanks to the social nature of the TV we offer.
We have successfully crowdfunded a journalist, starting in January 2020, part of whose job will be to punch the antis in the media.
Next hire will be another crowdfunded body, whose job will be to take action on discrimination against countrysports in the media, and bullying against hunters and shooters. This will have a media dividend for us, but is more of a middle-ground job, fighting battles in Ofcom and IPSO, Facebook and YouTube.
The anti-hunting side has already started using Facebook and YouTube's own policies to suppress pro-hunting content. In November 2019, we put out a film about violent hunt-saboteurs swinging martial arts weapons in front of children out with the Cheshire Hunt. The antis forced YouTube to take down that film on a cyber-bullying charge. We re-uploaded it to Vimeo. The antis forced Vimeo to take it down for copyright reasons, even though all of the footage belongs to us. They know that Vimeo does not have the resources to pursue most copyright cases so it simply takes down films when it receives complaints. There is going to be an element of attrition here, as both sides try to beat each other off social media.
2020 will be an interesting year. The general licences review will be a test of the strength of Wild Justice's legal muscle. BASC has put resources into stopping their attack, but battlefield historians like me have yet to report an outcome.
The Werritty report into driven grouseshooting, due in December 2020 will be a test of regional lobbying clout on both sides. With the environment brief devolved to the regions, all sides need to step up lobbying in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
I expect anti-hunters will consolidate their work in the middle ground and expand it. I hope the pro fieldsports allies find a salary between them to make the same attack. It hurts me to promote work for lawyers - but that's what will have to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment