Introduction

In a special supplement marking ten years of Tony Blair's premiership, The Observer newspaper heralded the ban of fox-hunting as the second most significant ‘defining Blair moment’, behind only the war with Iraq (The Observer, 2007). The hunting ban arguably qualifies for this elevated status on a number of grounds. It is one of the truly historic achievements of the New Labour government, criminalising an activity that had been part of rural tradition for several centuries and which was regarded by many as an icon of Englishness, as well as concluding a century-old campaign for its prohibition. The hunting ban was also a notable instance of New Labour enacting a long-standing ‘old’ Labour commitment and adopting a clearly left-wing position that distinguished it from the Conservative Party. Furthermore, consuming over 700 hours of parliamentary time between 1997 and 2004, the hunting issue was a recurrent preoccupation of Blair's first two terms of office, and the source of the first significant popular challenge to his authority. From the Countryside Rally in July 1997 to the invasion of the House of Commons chamber during the passage of the final Hunting Bill in September 2004, the prospect of a ban on hunting galvanised an unprecedented wave of rural protests that at times arguably formed the most vocal opposition to the Labour government.

Yet, at the same time, the ban on the hunting of wild mammals with hounds eventually introduced in February 2005 has about it something of the air of an accidental policy outcome. For seven years the Blair administration vacillated in its support for a hunting ban between lukewarm endorsement and government-sponsored legislation. It repeatedly searched for a compromise or a way out, but its attempts at evidence-based policy making fell foul of baser political machinations. As such, the policy process that led to the ban eludes rationality-based models of policy making, and rather encapsulates Flyvbjerg's (1998) contention that power defines rationality, not the reverse.

This chapter traces the development of the hunting debate between New Labour's election in May 1997 and the passing of the Hunting Act in November 2004.