On 28th November, there should be a massive majority in the House of Commons for a Private Member’s Bill to ban hunting. Yet however large the number of MPs who decide to break with precedent and stay to vote on a Friday afternoon, the attempt at legislation could well come to nothing.
Although there was no commitment in the Labour manifesto beyond a free vote" on the issue both Tony Blair himself and various Labour Ministers did give commitments, prior to the election, in written answers to campaigners (revealed on BBC’s Newsnight), that implied the new government would ensure sufficient parliamentary time to pass the Bill. What’s more, Labour spin-doctors persistently created the popular impression that the new Labour Government would facilitate a ban on fox-hunting; indeed, on that basis, many people around the country voted Labour on 1st May who might other-wise have either not voted at all or voted for another party.
Indications are that the bill may be supported by as many as 70% of MPs, so if it fails to reach the statute books it will be for one of two reasons:
If either of the blocking measures suc-ceeds, the campaign for the protection of hunted animals will need to step up a gear and increase its nationwide activity, now claiming the moral high ground on democ-racy, rather than cruelty, grounds and pressuring the Labour leadership rather than ordinary MPs.
Labour Party Conference will become a battleground on this issue, as animal welfare and pro-Lords reform campaigns clash with the Government’s parliamentary managers, who do not want to push the anti-hunt bill at the cost of other bills being thwarted in the Lords.
The culmination of this campaign must be to force Blair, a supporter of the abolition of hunting, to commit the Government to give time to ensure this bill goes through Parliament. If necessary, he must risk losing other bills in the House of Lords, which will bring the full weight of public opinion down on the unelected "vermin in ermine", or state clearly that the Government itself will bring in a bill to ban hunting in the November 1998 Queen’s Speech.