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Last week I reported on the British Prime Minister Tony Blair once again taking up the cause against fox hunting. The Labour Party previously tried to ban fox hunting, but had to back down after huge demonstrations by supporters of the sport, and some observers suspect Blair might pull back from his recent pronouncement. The theory goes that Blair is using the fox hunting issue to court animal rights groups, which are significant contributors to Labour, while also trying to avoid excessively alienating sportsmen and their supporters.
After Blairs latest statements, however, supporters of fox hunting point out that the anti-fox hunting proposal is hypocritical since the British government itself funds the hunting and killing of foxes in Scotland and Wales. The foxes are killed as part of a pest control scheme, and all indications are that any ban on fox hunting will contain a special exemption for the government-sponsored culling of foxes.
Until the 1970s foxes in Scotland and Wales were removed by the use of leg traps. The leg traps were banned because they were alleged to be cruel and so the government began subsidizing the hunting of the foxes. The animals are typically tracked with hounds and then killed by rifle shot. Conservative and pro-hunt member of parliament Paul Atkinson told the BBC that by banning fox hunting by private individuals while simultaneously subsidizing fox hunting in Scotland and Wales means "what they want to do is put people in prison who ride around on horses with red coats," alluding to the fact that it is primarily the upper class that hunts foxes in Great Britain.