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THE NATION: EDITORIAL/Intrusions on



Editorial & Opinion 

      EDITORIAL/Intrusions on
      country life

      COUNTRY life. It is a phrase of mystic
      redolence. There is a smart British
      magazine of the same name that is
      frequently to be encountered on the coffee
      tables of the urban upwardly aspiring; the
      BBC radio serial ''The Archers'', set in a
      ''typical'' village, has bent the ears of a vast
      daily audience for decades. 

      The British, who began the Industrial
      Revolution and have been a predominantly
      urban people for over a century, remain
      particularly addicted to the minutiae of the
      rural scene. Nowhere else in Europe is
      down-to-muck existence invested with such
      glamour. 

      Only in this context could a parliamentary
      proposal to ban fox hunting so rouse a
      people. A quarter of a million marched
      through central London on March 1 to
      protest at this and what they saw as the
      government's neglect of rural and farming
      interests. The demonstration was one of the
      largest London has ever seen. 

      Many people are appalled by the way a
      band of well-off people gallop after a pack
      of hounds which, should the fox be caught,
      will tear it to bits until whipped off,
      whereupon, should there be a first-timer in
      the cavalcade, the fox's tail (its ''brush'') will
      be cut off to bloody the novice's cheek. But
      the ''hunt saboteurs'' who glue up car locks
      while the drivers are in the saddle are a
      largely urban crew. 

      The fox is a pest. It doesn't come into town
      and worry to death more supermarket
      chickens than it can eat: it has its fun in the
      barnyard. If not torn up, it would be
      poisoned in just as nasty a fashion. 

      Pivotal as it is in the iconography, the hunt
      is not what last Saturday's rally was about. 

      The politics of the developed world are
      overwhelmingly shaped by the cities, in
      which most of the voters live. The city
      cannot live without the countryside but looks
      to foist its own values on it. And they don't
      work. Bureaucracies are urban
      abstractions; the country must be ready to
      fill its dinner tables more practically. Well
      has it been said that when there is a
      blackout the countryman groans and
      reaches for his candles. 

      Socialism has tempered all of
      contemporary politics, even where its very
      name is anathema, one of which, ironically,
      Britain's ''New Labour'' bids fair to be. One
      of the snidest affronts to a right-wing party
      these days is to call it paternalistic. Caring
      can go too far. In the polluted streets of the
      modern city it makes perfect sense to raise
      revenue by increasing the petrol tax; it is
      crippling to rural areas where little or no
      public transport makes private vehicles a
      necessity, not a bane. 

      The country has always been a poorer
      place to live than the town. What
      compensates is living a more natural life. If
      the body politic is biased too heavily
      towards the town, there the country folk will
      go, especially young adults who cannot buy
      a first family home because affluent townies
      are buying them up at silly prices as
      weekend cottages. This tendency may not
      take long to destroy the natural rural
      communities and replace them -- food must
      be grown -- by the ghastly prospect of
      factory farms. 

      The British Labour party is split on whether
      to act at all, and plans to set up a new
      ministry of rural issues are being played
      down. Addressed, though, the issue must
      be. It happens to have surfaced first in
      Britain. It will not stop there. The eyes of the
      world should bore into Labour backs, but
      countries do not learn by each others'
      mistakes: they are too proud to admit that
      they could make the same ones
      themselves. 

      The Nation