11.09.2002

Reynard and reaction

Mark Metcalf (ed) The rich at play: foxhunting, land ownership and the 'Countryside Alliance' Revolutions per Minute, Vol 9, 2002, pp78

A nyone who has recently examined the publications and website of the Countryside Alliance will realise not only its financial power but also its nature as one of unsullied reaction. The alliance has been engaged in a radical hegemonic project over recent years in order to further its pro-hunting, avidly ruling class agenda. They know and we know that this project is reactionary, but there are two rather interesting elements at work here. The first is that the alliance very clearly sees itself as articulating what amounts to a cultural white terror against progressive forces on the centre and the left, as well as the usual myriad of anti-hunting groups ranged against them. The second element concerns the kinds of ideas they are using in order to further their historically backward programme. The CA situates itself on that sticky ideological motif of liberty. This, of course, is not in order to further the expansion of democracy but to advance an anti-modern counter-enlightenment conception of a feudal, rural past - untainted by the projects of scum like ourselves who seek to question their concept of liberty. This is a concept of liberty which leaves them to do anything they like on land stolen in the class struggles of the past. It is a liberation from those bourgeois and even Labourite restrictions on their freedom to oppress rural workforces, enclose common land and bump off the local grouse population at will. This, at the same time, as maiming and prosecuting anyone from subaltern classes who dare to poach from their stock. A decisive test of their ideological strength amongst rural and hunting communities will be the 'Liberty and livelihood' march on September 22. Judging from past manifestations of the alliance it will be big - perhaps the biggest demonstration in Britain for a generation. What is clear is that, whatever ideas of liberty and self-determination they advance, this project is regressive, even in bourgeois terms. Parts of the movement explicitly reject bourgeois democracy and are direct ideological descendants of the 'church and king' mobs of the 18th century and the Vendée reaction during the bourgeois revolution in France. Anybody who doubts the capacity for such movements to have real efficacy in bourgeois democracy should read Marx on Balzac. They amount to the clearest manifestation of all the traditions of the generations weighing so heavily upon us. The necromancy of the Countryside Alliance is a signal that the dead really can seize hold of the living. All the more useful then is the new edition of Revolutions per Minute, as usual edited by Mark Metcalf of Sunderland Fans Against Racism and Red Star Research. Explicitly dealing with hunting and the countryside as class questions, it deals a blow both to rural reaction and to the green anarchist groups - who in calling for the destruction of bourgeois civilisation themselves want to turn the clock back to the past. The question of liberty is central to this short collection of essays. The liberty to foxhunt is presented by the alliance as a historical right, yet one of the things that Mark and his co-writers pick up on is the very recent invention of the tradition of foxhunting. At the same time the writers also emphasize the land question in terms of historical theft and ownership. The work of Marxist historians such Edward Thompson and Peter Linebaugh are important for the kinds of questions raised about property and power and there is a key emphasis on history from below and the struggle for rural rights. As we shall see, however, there are some problems with their analysis. Trevor Bark's article on the land question is possibly the finest piece in the collection, particularly in regard to the evolution of hunting and its relationship to the class struggle. He goes back to Christopher Hill's idea of the Norman yoke and reaffirms the centrality of hunting to agricultural enclosure. As Trevor points out, there are better population statistics for deer in medieval England than for human beings. His analysis of feudalism is a little vulgar, but the question of land ownership is directly connected to the ideological motif of liberty. In bourgeois society the liberty to foxhunt is often used as a political barometer for the ideological dominance or decline of the landowning gentry. The blood sport question is central therefore to securing the ideological conception of a way of life which is disappearing or being terminated by nasty, uppity bigots in Whitehall and their hunt saboteur lackeys out in the field. Trevor Bark also scotches all of the ruling class myths about foxhunting: that it unites all classes, that it is perfect training for war, and that it is not about ruling class pleasure at 'blooding' but is a legitimate device to control nature. As great writers like Reg Groves and EP Thompson have pointed out in the past, there is a subaltern history to the countryside. The attempts of the Countryside Alliance to marshal the Jarrow marchers and the Tolpuddle martyrs to their side in order to articulate an old and free England is therefore nothing short of a disgrace. As Trevor Bark notes, the struggle for workers' liberty has nothing to do with the liberty of the ancien régime to oppress and shed the democratic content of all that the bourgeois order and nascent proletariat fought against them for. Mark Metcalf's article on land ownership is very good and displays the importance of getting our facts right about ownership and control. We are engaged in an ideological and practical struggle for democracy, and truth and factuality are a large part of the armoury we use as Marxists. Pippa Gallop of Corporate Watch has also done some great work here on the individuals and organisations standing behind the alliance and funding it. The reactionary ideology of these people is displayed by one of its backers who said: "We are fighting for liberty and freedom. My warning for Mr Blair is that if he does not listen to us there will be a civil war in this country, the like we have never seen since the days of Cromwell and Fairfax" (p46). One wonders where this character would be standing on the field of Marston Moor. Would he be standing with that great fighter for the liberty of kings to oppress, Charles Stuart, or with that truly great bourgeois revolutionary, Cromwell, who, unbeknown to him, ushers in the world that the alliance are in flight from? There is much that is admirable in this short collection, but there are also serious shortcomings. Although the opposition to the alliance is noted throughout - particularly with regard to subaltern class politics - there is no serious attempt to get to grips with the organisation of our class. Instead we get the usual focus on a raggle-taggle band of hunt saboteurs and ramblers. Trevor Bark refers to the struggle against this reactionary movement as a struggle of poachers against keepers, but offers no lessons in how to confront the movement in practice. Ideological emphasis on the facts of ownership is one thing, but we need to challenge the direct action of a possible white terror of the future with a more sustained organisational project. One has to remember that Captain Swing and the Luddites were not progressive, but movements oriented to the past, back to the 'golden age' before the dark days of capital and the looming majesty of the industrial metropolis. There is little for us here but to note the defeated struggles of our class in birth. If we are to be the loom and machine breakers of the future than we break them not in order to regress to a past which has been terminated, but because the future offers us machines and ideas more suited to human liberation than those of capital - beyond, not before it. Martyn Hudson