Whacking Day British Style

Fans of The Simpsons will recall an early episode entitled “Whacking Day”. The episode concerns an annual snake drive into the centre of town whereupon the snakes are clubbed to death. Whacking Day is a carnival, a time to let loose and celebrate the supposed traditions of Springfield’s forefathers.

Oh Whacking Day!
Oh Whacking Day!
Our hallowed snake skull-cracking day!
We’ll break their backs
Gouge out their eyes
Their evil hearts we’ll pulverize!
Oh Whacking Day!
Oh Whacking Day!
May God bestow His grace on thee.

Regrettably Whacking Day is found to be fraud, formerly an extraordinary excuse to beat up on the Irish and not actually founded by Jebediah Springfield after all. Convincing the town of Springfield to turn from its barbaric ways, thus sparing the snakes, is Lisa’s moral imperative. Together with Bart she offers refuge to the snakes in the Simpson home, but it is the historical fraud and not in fact empathy with the snakes that wins her cause. Lisa the intellectual, along with Barry White the entertainer, are the only ones who actually think the clubbing of snakes outrageous. In the words of Mayor Quimby, the townsfolk are “nothing but a bunch of fickle mush-heads”–open to suggestion and ready to follow wherever. But to call the townsfolk fickle mush-heads is a bit harsh, they were drawn to Whacking Day because they thought it a continuation of their way of life, life as the revered Jebediah intended. They even applauded, seemingly complimented when Barry White deplores: “You people make me sick!”

What makes the end of Whacking Day regrettable is the cost it exacts on Springfield culture. It was an annual event that really brought people together, in parade and song, but also pastime. The Reverend Lovejoy was so committed to the day that he talked up heresy: “And the Lord said, whack ye all the serpants which crawl on their bellies and thy town shall be a beacon unto others.” Chief Wiggum devised snake-like targets to shoot at on the draw. And Homer used the annual event to hone his incredible ninja snake whacking technique–to the delight of Marge.

‘Tis, ’tis, some may say, but none of that matters if the whacking of snakes constitutes a great atrocity upon snakekind, one more ravaging of nature by mankind. What about snake rights? Does their welfare not matter?

Such questions are commonly asked everyday, be it about hunting seals in Canada’s Arctic or foxes in the English countryside. They are questions over which common sense often gets lost. But lets face it, snakes have no more rights than we give them and, unless they’re going extinct, probably not.

We’re never told whether the snakes were pests, an excess of which could ruin the local ecology. After years of annual Whacking Days they most likely weren’t. Yet we do know that Whacking Day began as an excuse to beat up on the Irish, somehow transfiguring itself from that into the celebration of an annual snake hunt. We do know that the locals didn’t give a fiddlers fart what Lisa or Barry White had to say about how awful it is to club snakes, only that what they thought to be their heritage was a lie. Nonetheless, it was a lie that saved the Irish.

Parallels can be drawn to the present predicament over hunting foxes with hounds in Britain. In recent weeks the Labour government has brought forth legislation banning the practice, a ban not to come into force until 2006. This is not the first time the Blair government has tackled the issue but this time it means business; and not to be denied by the Lords, threatening to use the Parliament Act to see it into law.

This is simply indicative of what little regard New Labour has for the interests of rural Britain. Realistically it makes no sense to ban the traditional hunt. The traditional use of hounds, to kill the fox and not just chase it, is a less effective mode of killing than using hounds to chase a fox in the direction of guns. If killing of foxes were the sole point of the hunt, then this would be an improvement. But fox hunting has never been just about killing foxes. It is an exercise in population control, complete with hundreds of years of tradition, ceremony and social gathering. The traditional hunt is a means of culling vermin in a way that is safer and less drastic than others. The point is not to wipe the foxes out but keep them in check. Since Scotland banned hunting with hounds in 2002, the number of foxes killed in a season has actually increased by 50%. While previously the fittest of foxes could outrun the hounds, now not even they can escape the guns.

Yet the traditional hunt has all the trappings of sport: notions of fair play, rules of conduct, and discriminate understandings of which foxes should be hunted–pregnant vixens are left alone. When shooting is involved huntsmen are usually too far removed to effect such conduct. And unlike trapping, the traditional hunt affords foxes a fight or flight chance of survival.

The traditional hunt is also good for the rural economy. Not only do stables benefit by providing hunters with horses for rent, kennel trainers are needed to show hounds how to kill a fox with a quick nip to the back of the neck. Hunters also require dining and lodging, another area of major consumption in the rural service economy. Roger Scruton has reported that up to 16,000 full-time jobs in rural England exist solely because of the hunt, and even more indirectly. Much of this economic spin-off is in jeopardy if the traditional hunt is banned. Rural areas are bound to realise the same economic downturn suffered in rural Scotland. Other modes of hunting just don’t have the same excitement or the same draw–the element of sport is weakened if not gone.

Like so many things in modern politics, banning the traditional hunt is indicative of a progressive dumbing down of culture–in this case fed by the ideology of animal rights. The dogmatism of animal rights loses sight of the common sense fact that any killing of an animal is necessarily cruel if you value its life for the sake that it has one. But it is a necessity of nature to keep species in check. For humans this means well managed urban and rural development, while for other species, this means culling. Hunting with hounds is good practice in rural Britain because of how quickly a fox can be killed without suffering, the element of fair play, and the cultural robustness motivating the overall enterprise. Not least do huntsmen have a colourful repertoire of ancient calls and wear swanky red jackets; they celebrate their exploits with a hunt ball!

The ideology of animal rights, like all ideologies, was thought up to direct political action to a predetermined logical end–in this case, treating animals like human beings. The greatest practitioners of ideological “thinking up” love to moralise; it is the raison d’etre of being a progressive thinking intellectual–a postmodern one at that. In other contemporary forums, these are the anti-thinkers unable to fathom that notions of gender are not entirely relative. They cannot see how gender is a part of culture to the extent that it distils virtuous behaviour to girls and boys. Or they think diversity and toleration necessarily good while inequality and discrimination necessarily bad. They can’t be bothered to think through how the first entails the latter, or what a dehumanised and illiberal world we would have without such qualities of nature. They moralise because they are unwise, unable to see that politics is about judging how best to act in civil society, whether for tradition or progress. It is not just about chasing a dream but also entails dealing with everyday life; a reality simplified by knowing how those who came before us dealt with similar situations.

While animals should not be abused one is hardly justified in thinking them coequal to humans. Not only do we like to eat meat and wear fur, we know that the overpopulation of a species is ecologically destructive. The traditional hunt is an effective and ecologically safe means of culling. Foxes are not only given a fair chance of escape but they are killed in a way that does not leave repercussions down the food chain, unlike poisoning. The cultural enthusiasm behind the practice makes it a colourful event in the life of rural Britain.

Of all the things on New Labour’s plate, why ban hundreds of years of traditional fox hunting and why now? The short answer is that New Labour seems intent on breaking British culture. New Labour wants a Britain more amenable to Europe, more amenable to integration with a postmodern and posthistorical political culture. This means reforming the conventional practice of Parliamentary Supremacy by creating a Supreme Court and eventually “writing” the constitution; and let us not forget pushing to adopt a common currency. As regards the case in point, this means breaking the backbone of British nationalism, rural Britain; abolishing an idiosyncratic hunt helping to sustain rural socialisation contrary to the integrationist agenda.

Springfield never cared for Lisa’s moralising yet it cared that its heritage was a lie. But rural Britain knows who be the liars. New Labour longs for a Britain of fickle mush-heads, one more amenable to Europe; in this case they use the moralising lies of animal rights to get it. New Labour does not confront the claims of rural heritage because it does not respect them. They know that if they are to succeed in “modernisation”, they must succeed in breaking rural Britain.

Yet rural Britain remains unconvinced that traditional fox hunting is unequivocally bad. They know they have a reasonable case for maintaining the practice, not to mention a vested interest in it. They know they would rather have their own identity than care what those like Lisa and Barry White think of them. Rural Britain is fronting an admirable defence, both in organised lobbying and active protest. Rural Britain has a long memory. Let us hope it is long enough.

What is troubling, a point of concern in many issues we face today, is the resistance to reasonable debate. New Labour is not interested in it. They have been put to task chasing utopian dreams, relishing a world where states are without borders and nations no longer cause any fuss. Britain must modernise from top to bottom. Fox hunting is bad, and that is that. If only they could see the irony of their presence in Iraq, that while they dumb down their own nation they try to build another one up.