by Alexander Moseley by Alexander Moseley
I have recently published a novel, Wither This Land – the first of a trilogy – written in the vein of Brave New World and 1984 on contemporary Britain and whither its heading. The plot involves several characters caught up in the present government's attempt to ban hunting with hounds – the main character is an animal-rights activist who ends up getting lost in the English countryside only to be picked up by an artemisian huntress; events and adventures, but, more importantly, ideas prompt him to change his mind. In the background, a countrywide movement called the Rural Alliance is plotting a very libertarian secession from Westminster's rule. Very much in line with and drawn from Hans Hermann-Hoppe's arguments on secession and Mises's theory of human action.
For my compatriots, the book is a reminder that this land once stood up to fight tyrants and bullies – and indeed possesses a record of toppling other peoples' dictators who happen to have banned hunting with hounds (Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein). For literary buffs, the style is in the vein of classical hunting literature – the names of institutions, counties, towns, papers, magazines, and politicians are all changed. I leave the capital cities the same, as they're big enough to be fair game – but to give some orientation, many of the events are set in Northchester – which is the ancient city of York, where I earned my first degree. York used to possess its own Parliament – well, a Northern Parliament to administer the monarch's jurisdiction so far from London: this, I thought, while supping with the local Bibliographical Society a couple of years back, would be an excellent focal point for any secession.
The novel draws strong parallels with what is happening in my country: it's not just about hunting – hunting provides the symbolic backdrop against which freedom is making its last stand. Wither This Land is about self-discovery, freedom and individualism, values and responsibility. It attacks the Soviet-style educational system that we possess and the welfare state that creates such loving disincentives to be reasonable and responsible. It criticises pop culture's hedonism and superficiality that leaves our youth so vulnerable to u2018soundbite' politics. It also draws our attention to philosophers who espouse doctrines that so warp logic, reality, and hence minds to make them more pliable for further state intervention.
Anyone who's kept up with British news must be aware that we're heading down the grand old route so dreamed of by the socialists of all hues. Increasing numbers of rules and licences are being thrust upon us at such a rate that it's difficult to know whether I can leave my house without some official acceptance note. I will soon no longer be able to enjoy artificial smoke flavourings, although there's no evidence of any cause-effect harm. I will not be able to talk on my mobile phone whilst driving (dumb idea anyway on our meandering UK roads, but I prefer to pay a lower insurance premium on the basis that I don't use the phone while driving than to be forbidden to do so). I will also not be able to tap into that wonderfully free u2018alternative health' industry – can't have people making decisions about their own life, for heaven's sake.
Slowly, industry by industry, service by service, the state is setting up itself as the divine, impartial, benefactor for all our lives – and as a result, we're withering away.
Plugging the novel's going to be interesting to say the least. The hunts have responded enthusiastically and the books sell well when I'm book signing at country and hunt fairs – but I'm keen to get the book onto the shelves of the great retailers, Borders, Waterstones, et al. so it can reach a wider audience. I've opted for self-publishing, which means that I have to market the work as well: I could have been searching for years to find a sympathetic pro-hunt, pro-liberty publishing house in the UK; instead I've put the money up as a business investment. We'll see how it pans, but by Jove I've got an excellent incentive to make the book work! It will be an uphill struggle: many British writers tend to the left and thereby seek or support direct subsidies, grants from the government's Arts Councils, or favouritism by the BBC. Now there's one institution that's going to be thoroughly entertaining to market a pro-hunting, anti-state book to.
The BBC has enjoyed a hitherto untoward imperial expansion recently – I've thrown away my TV on conscientious grounds that the state requires I pay an annual licence fee to watch it. Checking the web pages I find out that the BBC runs twelve radio stations now, including the World Service which broadcasts in 43 languages, and one local radio station for each area of the British Isles. It has four main TV stations with a myriad of local services. Worries about a free enterprise company monopolising the airways are ludicrously off the mark when we look at the beeb's sneaky tax-funded expansion. Everywhere you turn you find the BBC offering services to educate and entertain the population.
Incidentally, I checked the search engines on my local BBC web pages, and the top finds for hunting and fox hunting came up with information about the local football team (nicknamed the Foxes), house hunting, and a film called The Hunted. Hmm. And Leicestershire is the heart of foxhunting with great and distinguished hunts that reach into all the villages here – the Belvoir, the Quorn, and the Cottesmore. Putting in u2018Belvoir Hunt' retrieves the same information, with the added bonus of the top return being about night clubbing in Leicester city.
If you check the BBC's web index, you'll find Blair's Broadcasting Company wants to educate us on everything under the sun from accents to zoos. Except there's nothing on hunting here either, I note; shooting has a reference to some celebrity quiz show; nothing on fishing. However, I may have an angle – the BBC has recently been involved in a dispute over Weapons of Mass Destruction, which Blair Believes In. A flurry of accusations of government lies (no, really?!) gave the BBC some street credibility – but of course the BBC is dependent on tax payers' funds, which several hotly embarrassed ministers were quick to remind their interrogators! So, if I pitch the book as anti-government, the old red-socked brigade of intellectuals that enjoy the beeb's patronage may even be interested. I'll let you know.
But on with the withering of the country. European directives are accepted without murmur; intricate legislation passed without reference to the common law of the land (or understanding on the part of MPs); and now with the great hulking majority President Blair enjoys – the threat to ancient customs and sports: the Commons has passed a bill to ban all hunting with hounds and to absolutely prohibit folk singing in pubs. Now this latter is not in my novel. Too silly for fiction. Oh, where is Monty Python these days? The absurd present law that a pub needs a licence if more than two people begin singing in it (not applicable in Scotland, which explains the success of Scottish folk music vis à vis English!) is going to be replaced by a licence for one person to begin humming, Blair forbid!, the national anthem or Land of Hope and Glory (which most of us believe ought to be the anthem).
A month back in a Blair random attack on our u2018unwritten constitution' (the quality of which has endured a millennium), our beloved Blair decided he wanted to abolish the position of the Lord Chancellor. Didn't inform anyone before hand – like the people or even the Queen. The seat was in the way of something – we're not quite sure what yet, but probably abolishing the monarchy, the pound, pints of bitter, hunting, folk singing, smoky bacon flavoured crisps, Blair's apotheosis…. This was on one of his rare visits to the nation in between flying around the globe getting everybody to love him, love one another and love Britain's new imperial role and to tune into the World Service for updates on how wonderful Great Blairdom is. Get rid of 1400 years of constitutional tradition in one Blairswoop. Easily done, surely? Well, the Lords can't actually sit without a Lord Chancellor, so he had to backtrack. So he offered the post to his old childhood friend and one time flatmate, Lord Falconer. This Lord (who made him Lord – three guesses!) will preside over a new Department of Constitutional Affairs as Britain creates a Supreme Court and an FBI style agency. This Blairfriend has never actually been elected: he has chaired up to 14 cabinet sub-committees at one time, and oversaw that wonderfully embarrassing project of simple-minded statists, the Millennium Dome. I don't suppose he's been falconing.
My novel was completed last October, before troops had been trundled off to Iraq. The war was quite predictable, so I've updated the latest edition to involve a war in Iran. In the novel, the Home Secretary (Damien Blunderton, supported by the Prime Minister, Hugh Cramp) seeks a rule to obligate the once free Britons to carry ID cards and for all citizens to give a sample of their DNA to the government; he also wants trial by jury and habeas corpus to be abolished. Reality: Lord Falconer and David Blunkett are attempting all four policies – except, thus far, only charged folk will be obliged to give up their DNA (whether they are found guilty or not).
Since publication, the Commons (but not the Lords) has voted to ban completely hunting with hounds. The Minister in charge of forging a philosophically dubious bill based on u2018utility' and u2018cruelty' (the incredibly patient and tolerant Alun Michael, right!) at the last minute decided to accept what he and Blair's backbenchers wanted all along: an absolute ban on hunting with hounds. Three years, millions of funds spent by all sides, a half million hunt-supporters marching in London, and 85 hours of Parliament time were scuppered in seconds. Why? Because hunting's cruel? No – all scientific evidence supports killing and culling Britain's quarry with nature's fittest. Because it's barbaric? No – because the hunts present one of the highest moral standards in the land who set the standards for animal welfare societies. So why then? The Minister, who now styles himself as u2018Minister for Horses' (oh, for a Jonathan Swift now that parody's here!), did not accept an invitation to go to any hunt – has probably never ridden in his life. No, all the science, all the evidence, and all the reasoning were rejected because Blair's socialist backbenchers think they're getting their own back on previous Conservative governments and the u2018toffs' who go hunting. (The modern hunt draws on a vast social base in which wealth and occupation are irrelevant to the passion for the chase: its cheaper to keep a horse and hunt subscription than to attend a season's Premier Division Football). The livelihoods of fifteen thousand hunt staff and thousands more indirectly involved in the industry are affected by this blatant act of prejudice. Twenty thousand hounds are likely to be destroyed. Even an ex-animal rights activist has admitted that such a bill would not save the life of a fox. But it's not foxes that Blair's backbenchers are interested in.
One of the most rabid anti-hunters, Tony Banks MP for the idyllic, bucolic arcadia of West Ham in London, is rejoicing that he and his cohorts of thoughtless Commoners are going to get hunting banned – it's totemic, he said on a TV show. Totemic? That is, ban hunting for the sake of banning something. Finally the true colours of the Blair's backbenchers and the odd idiotic Tory who supported them are shown. Reason and evidence are to be rejected (as we knew all along that they would) in favour of bigoted prejudice funded by celebrities and applauded by a state-educated youth brought up on a vision of a Disneyfied countryside in which animals all get on well with one another and man and hunting have disappeared.
Some MPs think they will be getting their own back on u2018what the Tories did to the miners'. Thatcher gradually displaced the communist-led mining union from the centre of British politics – hence it no longer holds the country to ransom as it did in the 1970s. But there are many miners who love to hunt. Except that fact doesn't come into the orbit of the urban socialist mentality with his or her ambitions to rule unelected in Europe issuing binding directives on individuals, corporations, and countries at a rate Jean-Baptiste Colbert could never have foreseen or hoped for.
Incidentally, I enjoyed a conversation with an ex-mining, foxhunting Welshman at a book-signing event a few weeks ago. "We have an anti, you know," he said. "One anti hunter?" "Oh, yes, her name's Wendy. We take her and her mother out for tea afterwards, you know." "If only the protests were so benign across the country – one expects hordes of balaclava sporting quasi-terrorists to turn up at English hunts." "Balaclavas? If we got any of those sort down in the valleys … well, we wouldn't know who'd we hit, would we?" he laughed. "That's the spirit that enabled a small Welsh regiment to survive a Zulu onslaught at Rorke's Drift. That's the spirit of rebellion I'm trying to rekindle in my own country." He bought the book.
The novel takes off from present events (and you can probably identify my motive for writing it!) – but the extrapolations are horrifically close. Weeks can go by without my reading the news, since the selling of old England by the pound (soon, no doubt, by the euro, since we've given most of our gold to the European Central Bank) can get quite depressing. The values and policies of freedom that this land exported to America in the seventeenth century, that were held high as the guiding policies for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, those values are now mere remnants, fluttering in the wind on the faces of older generations who received an education that taught them their land's history and great deeds. No more. Cast adrift is the modern youth – symbolised by a central character in the novel – Miles Thomson, aka u2018Flood'. In some respects the novel presents a dark picture of contemporary Britain. But it also is a political satire – there's also much to laugh about and a hope born aloft that we will once more find that fighting spirit Churchill so eloquently tapped into.
But above all, it's a book that embraces the value of freedom and need to fight for it – continually.
