What Goes Around Comes Around

"As an animal welfare issue, fox hunting comes in at about number 155. It probably ranks below the last of the great working class bloodsports, coarse fishing. It’s insignificant beside intensive pig farming, chicken keeping or even the rearing of pheasants for driven shoots. But as a class issue, it ranks behind private schooling at number two. This isn’t about animal welfare. It’s about human welfare. By taking on the hunt, our MPs are taking on those who ran the country for 800 years, and still run the countryside today. This class war began with the Norman conquest. It still needs to be fought."

From "Class War on The Hoof" by George Monbiot (monbiot.com blog 14.9.2004)

Friendly green anarchist (I hope he doesn't mind me calling him this) George Monbiot is one of the most original and cogent environmental and social commentators around. I certainly agree with his view on the animal welfare dimension of fox-hunting. However, I think it is a mistake to invoke the "class war" in this and most other contexts, including the system of "public education" in Britain today. The "class war" certainly exists, but only as a lower substrata of most peoples psyches (or as part the collective unconscious if you prefer). The fact is that there are all sorts of tribal, religious, family, inter-personal and other power struggles going on at the same time at various levels of people's (un)consciousness. In some respects, the British (or English and perhaps Scottish) "class wars" as manifested in the public school system, and certain country and sporting pursuits, are amongst the more benign aspects of the ever-evolving (some might say eternal) power struggle between different social groups. However, for me the key dynamic is the economy and economic power, rather than the symbolism of fox hunting.

Nevertheless, the rather bourgeois proponents of New Labour have aligned themselves with the
class war community on this and certain other issues for the simple reason that their core political motivation is divide and rule, and we certainly have a most divisive government and divided society just now.