Boris warns pro-hunt protesters

In today's Telegraph, Boris Johnson warns the pro-hunt protesters to remember what happened to Scargill.

Go back to that miners' strike, and the Scargillian revolt. Remember how people began with some feelings of sympathy for the rebels. We all heard their message; the threat to the communities, the Hovis ad pit villages, the way of life that would never return.

But suburban Britain was never likely to indulge Scargill for long, and as soon as police were pictured with blood running down from under their helmets, the mood began to turn. Neil Darbyshire was spot-on in these pages yesterday, when he noted the basic apathy of suburbs on the question of hunting. Middle England may be interested in principle in the doctrine of liberty, but if the pro-hunt lobby starts impeding their liberty to use the motorway, or to get home for supper, then there will be hell to pay.

He makes sense and he certainly does not over estimate middle England's interest in principle in the doctrine of liberty.

The pro-hunt alliance is quite a large movement and within any large movement there are always going to be people who are willing to step over the line, wherever you think that line should be drawn. With the media the way that it is it will be this group that will get the most press attention; it will be this group that will be labelled pro-hunt or countryside (alliance) campaigners and it will be by these actions that otherwise disinterested members of the public will judge the issue.

Pro-liberty people will look at what happens and may say that it is the wrong way of going about things but will, more than likely, not change their views. What did they expect, they will say (and I count myself as being in this group). People who have pro-animal principles and judge them higher, in this case, than minority rights will not be persuaded to change their views no matter how peaceful or how ugly the thing gets (they will just use violence as positive reinforcement).

The disinterested will have no deeply held principle by which to judge the underlying issues and this, as always, will make them vulnerable to easy persuasion. They will make up their minds based upon the actions of a few more militant protesters and by whichever way the media decides to spin this.

No, I don't think that middle England is that interested in liberty, in principle or in any other form. Not really. Not properly. Not so much as to defend something they don't care about or find mildly distasteful on the basis of that principle.

Some guy called H.L. Mencken once said:

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppresive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Now, I don't for one minute categorise pro-hunting people as scoundrels, but even if I did I would still be on their side.

That's what I call being interested in principle in the doctrine of liberty.

Posted by John at September 23, 2004 03:21 PM | TrackBack