In 1702, King William III was riding his horse around the gardens of Hampton Court Palace when the horse stumbled on a mole-hill. William was thrown and suffered injuries from which he did not recover. From then on, his Jacobite foes celebrated the event by raising a toast to ‘the little gentleman in black velvet’.
Fast forward three centuries and another species of native British wildlife could be the cause of a government tumble. When supporters of the Countryside Alliance marched through London last September in protest at HMG’s plans to abolish fox-hunting they said they were ‘Born to hunt, ready to fight’. Now, according to the UK Times [no direct link], some of them are about to make good on that threat:
THOUSANDS of people will boycott the payment of council tax, car licence tax and the BBC licence fee under plans by hunt supporters to launch a campaign of “civil resistance” against the proposed ban on foxhunting.
The threat of law-breaking by thousands of otherwise respectable middle-class citizens is revealed in confidential documents prepared by the Countryside Alliance and leaked to The Sunday Times.
Of course, this isn’t really all about fox-hunting. It’s a cumulation of deeply felt resentments about a lot of things (see our archives for details) and, probably above all, about a government which rules rather than represents.
Still talk is cheap and fighting talk is wholesale. Do the countryside rebels have the grit to actually do it? Or sustain it? Marching up and down with placards is one thing, but actual tax rebellion is hitting the state where it hurts and that means that the state is certain to hit back. Only through a willingness to accept the consequences can the rebels hope to succeed. But what if they do succeed and large pockets of the countryside become, in effect, ungovernable? What if they succeed thus and it spreads?
Too early to tell yet but I find the editorial position taken by the Times to be of considerable interest:
It is indicative of the ever-tightening grip of a controlling society. New laws, many from Brussels, increasingly control what we can or cannot do. Employers spend more time managing red tape than expanding firms and creating jobs. Motorists operate under the watchful eye of ubiquitous speed cameras. Government intrudes on what used to be considered our private sphere, regulating our behaviour and demanding with menaces information about every jot and tittle of our lives. Hunt supporters are saying enough is enough, that somebody has to take a stand against this assault on our liberties. And they have a point.
Succinctly put and admirably correct. Nonetheless we’re not just talking about a sit-down demo or a campaign of fly-leafleting here and while the editorial doesn’t quite go as far as condoning the rebellion they only stop just short, leaving no-one in any doubt as to where their sympathies lie. When an institution as reliably august and reputable as the Times gives an approving nod and wink to a campaign of civil disobedience then you know for sure that there is a whiff of real excitement in the air.
ONE CAN ONLY HOPE !!
David,
Don’t get your hopes up!, the Brits have been trained for years to be obedient, subservient even!
They just don’t have the stomach for confrontation with authourity. The only ones who dont mind a night or two in jail, would seem to be the anti-war protesters, but then, they do have some strong beliefs.
As soon as the ‘Boys in Blue’ show up, (“Just doing my job Sir”.), they will shout and swear a bit, (and feel, oh so brave doing it!), and then they will go home muttering amongst themselves, leaving the one or two brave souls who really did stand their ground, to face the music on their own.
What a bunch of losers!!!.
Just do not hold your breath waiting for anything more positive.
The Enemy in Whitehall couldn’t give a damn anyway….
Good for them! I hope they do go through with the planned withholding of taxes. It would be even better if they also went out and hunted.
It’s great to see people taking a stand. I hope they keep their nerve up, even if it means arrest.
Wanted to comment on:
“Don’t get your hopes up!, the Brits have been trained for years to be obedient, subservient even!”
Perhaps this is true, I can’t say because I don’t live there. However, it goes against the perception of the British I was given via my family (who came to the US in late 1800’s) and via history.
My perception is that you can push the British just so far and no farther. They will stand up and defend what they believe is right and damn the consequences. I’ve always believed the British have a real backbone and wouldn’t allow anyone to walk all over them, foreign or domestic. I must confess, I’ve been puzzled about why the British are allowing some horrible violations of their sovereignty take place and doing nothing about it.
Perhaps today’s generation has lost some of the spirit of past generations?
“Don’t get your hopes up!, the Brits have been trained for years to be obedient, subservient even!”
Thats probably true, up to a point, its just that when we get pushed past that point the outcome is more Oliver Cromwell than Mahatma Ghandi.
Anyway good luck to them and I hope they apply the thumbscrews to the “government”.
The trouble is that police-state-by-stealth has been accompanied here by what is, for most, a pretty comfortable existence: there are comparatively few Brits who live in real poverty, as opposed to a definition of poverty drawn up by The Guardian. The well-off are taxed & regulated – but not as much as their peers in some other countries. The poor and/or unemployed have enough in the way of beer, satellite TV and Majorcan holidays to satisfy their generally limited aspirations, to the extent that we still have a lot of long-term unemployed/unemployable.
Given these conditions, it’s difficult to get many people excited about issues of liberty: most of the fox-hunters I’ve met are just single-issue libertarians, while most of the rest think that despite everything they’re not badly off, and Libertarianism is just fringe stuff for staring-eyed wackos.
If we were pushed into a corner, as we were in WW2, I dare say the Brits would put up as good a fight as anyone. But most people don’t think we’re in any sort of corner.
The Magna Carta was, in many ways, about money and the ham-handed methods the Crown used to raise it. While it would be miraculous to see another achievement as important as that one emerge from the current unrest, one could hope for a few small steps in the right direction.
The key is to find a way to legalize the protest, so people can express their true feelings without fear of imprisonment. Protest has become a magical thing in modern society, excusing all sorts of excesses because it “was for a good cause”. Should be interesting to see how this plays out.
Sometimes it seems to me that this country needs that most un-British of things: a revolution. I doubt this is the start of one, though.
Still, nothing like a tax revolt to show up a deeply stupid and authoritarian government for what it is.
Dare I suggest that one reason explaining the extraordinary timidity of the British in the face of a corrupt, unrepresentative regime is the socialising role of the BBC – bigger and more powerful than ever. Governments come and go but the BBC is seemingly eternal – accountable to nobody. My own efforts to challenge this authority will probably prove futile. I am already a “criminal” for refusing to help pay for it.
Despite polls indicating a clear majority of Britons resent having to pay the BBC for the privilege of owning a TV set, and thousands of letters of support, a mere handful have agreed to join me in my “refusenik” campaign. Sigh…
Those interested can find out more on my website.
Chris J, Tony H, et al,
The best of British was lost in WW’s I and II, all that is left is a socialised mish-mash, governed by a bunch of greedy self-serving ‘spivs’.
The so-called ‘backbone’ was long ago filletted from the British people, and as you say, ‘as long as they have their beer, tv, and trip each year to some unsuspecting resort, they are happy”.
They feel that they have more to lose, than to gain by protesting, which is, of course, just what ‘the Enemy’ wants. Anything as esoteric as a matter of principal, or a long term consequence, is way beyond their bovine mentalities.
You have heard the saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”, What do the British say when they have been fooled every year for the past fifty years?.
I know I am generalising in my rhetoric here, and that there are still a few ‘good men, and true’, but folks, the Enemy are winning, and it is your quality of life that you are losing…
Having said all of that – Good Luck to the people involved, and may I be proven to be totally wrong!.
Veryretired is correct, this is all about money. What the government will do is go to court and get a judgement against the owner for past taxes, seize the property, throw out the owner and auction off the property giving the owner any excess remaining after taxes, interest penalties, costs and debt.
From what I, in the US, see on the net, there is not a lot of sympathy for the folks who hunt among mainstream Brits. Therefore, what the protesters need to do is convince a cadre of old ladies to initiate the protest. Your minders know that televised pictures of 70 year old ladies being forcibly removed from modest homes will do a lot more for public opinion, and their career options, than burly hunters being led from their lodge kicking and screaming. Once old ladies find out they can escape taxes without retribution, the fad will spread and the government fianlly will be in a bind.
The other problem you have is that as you are disarmed, no one will be able to take a pot shot at the sheriff as he begins the auction. This tactic occasionally proved to be effective in the Midwest during the depression. Perhaps contacts with the Irish can resolve this problem.
Good luck
“The best of British was lost in WW’s I and II, all that is left is a socialised mish-mash, governed ”
yea and all Americans are lard butts only interested in watching the Dallas Cowboys and Nascar!!! Do you mind? Careful of those sweeping statements, old bean. I’d hate for you forget that there are 60million INDIVIDUALS on these islands and that were not one mass of identikit Brits.
e young – “filletted from the British people”. Apt. Those who didn’t pack up, find the fare and emigrate to the US, Canada, Oz or New Zealand when they had the chance early to mid last century, were not the strongest or the most freedom-loving. Now, 40 or 50 years later, the legacy of those who stayed and fought and died to preserve liberty during WWII has been squandered in the cause of “social equality” — in other words “chippiness”. Freedom to have sex on the beaches. So the ones who didn’t emigrate and the ones who didn’t die fighting WWII’s last stand (as we now realise) for freedom are what is left. The supine. Absolutely no disrespect to our superb military, but they are a very small segment of a complacent, thoughtless people who have allowed themselves to be disarmed and who allow themselves to be treated with contempt by the police whose salaries they pay. They’ve allowed the police to become faceless and monolithic. How many Brits today would dare to make a formal complaint against them? And the prime minister is trying to find a way of making it OK for three- quarters of a million EU residents in Britain to vote in a euro referendum, thus degrading the issue of British economic sovereignty to that of local elections to elect people who decide on parking restrictions.
Will they accept it? Yes. I think they will.
Mark Holland,
Before you jump to conclusions and get into your cliche ridden stereotyped style of condemming Americans, (so easy to do, and so original!).
I am English and fought in two wars, and no, I do not think that you are all stereotypes, I went to the trouble of stating that fact in my original comment.
However, I just loved the Brit individuality at places like the Heysel Stadium, a few years ago, and at places like Torremolinas, Rhodes, and many other places too numerous to mention. How many times have you heard the expression from a returning holidaymaker, ” holiday spoilt by the drunken English yobos, and they made me ashamed to be English’?. All very individual..
I understand your displeasure at being critisised, but then the truth does hurt, and the longer you folk are in denial, the longer it will go on, and the more of your freedoms will be lost.
Believe me, I get no pleasure from making comments like this, but it would seem that civilised debate fails to achieve anything, and a somewhat stronger rhetoric is required to get people motivated into action, but then, I believe that is a criminal offence under the EU constution.
I personally reckon brits aren’t spineless, they’re civilized. That is, people think “it just wouldn’t be right” to start behaving like a rioting rabble, unless there really is no other way. People shrug off Blair and Europe because they see these things as problems solveable via the mechanisms of democracy, without resort to war.
The flipside to this is that when brits do decide to fight, we Really Mean It, and so we can get rather bloodthirsty.
Julian,
Brits – civilised?, never mind, see my comment above. They see problems solved by democratic means!, it hasn’t happened in fifty years… and one could ask – ‘What democracy’. A true democracy has leaders, not rulers.
“It wouldn’t be right”, the perpetual excuse for doing nothing…
The intellectual and moral weight of the statist model of government is not going to dry up and blow away overnight. It took decades to build and will take the same to carefully dismantle.
Even the long suffering people of Russia and other Soviet countries are not suddenly throwing all the various bureaus and ministries out the window. Everything is very tentative, as they have been taught for over a century that the government is vital to every aspect of life.
Just for the record, I reject without reservation any call to violence in this or any other conceivable protest as long as a representative form of governance allowing legislative reform is possible.
For all its socialist elements, there has been no evidence presented that dissent, protest, and political reform are not available to the citizens of
Britain. The fact that it might be a long and arduous journey does not justify violence as a shortcut.
I see two problems with this. Firstly, the average Brit views fox-hunting as a fairly bloodthirsty and unpleasant pursuit for upper class toffs. There isn’t much public support for it.
Second, there is no coherent set of principles behind the hunting lobby. They are just defending a lifestyle, not a moral principle. Successful direct resistance movements need strong principles, if they are to attract enough committed followers necessary to succeed.
Finally, regarding the supine nature of the Brits , I don’t think it is anything to do with “national character” – the Texans and the French, neither of whom are noted for passivity, have both suffered just as large a reduction in their liberties over the years. Rather it is the clever salami tactics exploited by government – instead of taking away a lot of liberty, and increasing state power dramatically in one fell swoop, they do it bit by bit.
Governments have learned how to play on the public’s lack of interest in politics, their short memory and ignorance of history, their inherent trust of authority, their dislike for confrontation, and their tendency to become habituated to whichever social order happens to prevail. That is why populations “sit back and take it”, with the odd grumble here and there. They make the occasional protest or riot, but have little effect on the course of legislation.
The question is, what can freedom lovers do about it?
e young, I know it was cliche ridden and unoriginal that’s why I said it. I was responding to your wildly sweeping statement and then you compound it in your reply by invoking on about football hooligans. Yea ain’t that clever? Who’s the kneejerk cliche spouter now chum? So Just as long as you’re not getting any pleasure old bean.
That really is part of the problem – you say;
‘There isn’t much public support for it.’, the other side of the coin is that there isn’t much public aversion to it either, it was (is) a problem that didn’t need fixing in the first place. The main adversaries of hunting, and the most vocal, are the protesters of the ‘Animal Rights’ lobby, who just by coincidence, happen to be of the socialist persuasion, and are largely recruited from among university and college students.
It really has more to do with class warfare than anything else, and these protesters are the foot soldiers of the left.
For a socialist goverment to throw their supporters a bone occasionally, is not unknown, and at the same time giving their aggresive and illegal behaviour a brief nod of acceptance.
The legal treatment of hunt saboteurs, as compared to the treatment of the hunting community, who have had the nerve to retaliate, is of the ‘slap the hand’ variety, while hunt members have been imprisoned and heavily fined.
The question is, what can freedom lovers do about it? – Anyone got any good ideas?.
Well actually an anti-government rebellion of a sort is underway in Canada at the moment vis a vis the incredibly stupid gun registry legislation. Believe it or not Canadian individuals per capita actually possess more guns than our supposedly gun-crazed nieghbours to the South. Anyway the gist of it is that several provincial governments have come out saying they will do nothing to punish those who refuse to comply and as things stand at the moment, it looks as though there’s a good possibility the whole nonsensical rigarmole may be scrapped. BTW this weekend three people were murdered in a gun fight in a bar in Toronto, the gun violence free metropolis of Canada. Sound familiar to UK residents where only violent criminals have guns?
Mark,
I get my pleasure where I find it, your irate replies are pleasure enough – thank you!.
“The question is, what can freedom lovers do about it? – Anyone got any good ideas?.”
Unfortunately, none that don’t require pain and suffering. As I’ve read the other posts I was thinking about how many in the US were pretty much asleep until Sept. 11. I know I was.
We’ve had an invasion of left/socialist political policies that have slowly stripped away some of our freedoms and that went unchallenged, for the most part, until Sept. 11. The reason those who are pushing the left/socialist agendas are being challenged now is because these are the same people who are perceived to have sided with those who want to kill us. The “Why do they hate us” crowd.
It’s easy to get caught up in day to day living to the point where you don’t have much time for anything beyond family and work. Having a job, children, and elderly parents can take up all the time in a day. Not much time left to get involved politically.
When you realize you’d better pay attention because you’re under a real attack, you rearrange your schedule to be more informed and involved. I doubt I’d be as aware or involved as I am now had we not been attacked. I was just too tired from other responsibilities.
I didn’t realize the extent to which my state and my country had gone in implementing social agendas I was against until recently. That’s because I’ve not been that impacted by them in my day to day life. Also, because it has been so gradual. You get used to gradual changes and they don’t seem too bad. You have to stop and take a long term look to realize how much things have changed for the worse.
If people are comfortable and their lives aren’t that bad, can’t say what would be a motivator to get them concerned about freedom erosion. If it is a gradual erosion they don’t even notice it. They adapt.
E Young – I agree. But people will only support defiance of the law when they view the law as fundamentally unjust. And not that many people view a ban on fox-hunting as fundamentally unjust.
Chris, you may find the following quotes interesting:
“It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.” — John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790
“Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” — Frederick Douglass (19th century abolitionist)
“”A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” — Edward R. Morrow
Cobden,
“”A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” –Edward R. Morrow
Nice quote, and a nice change from the usual ‘bovine’ phrase.
Enough of this subject for me – nothing will change, the EU looms large, and this will be small beer in comparison to what is to come…
Thank you all, enjoyed the repartee and discussion.
Good Luck…..
“The question is, what can freedom lovers do about it?”
Until things have reached an extreme where there is little to lose, not violent revolution. On the other hand, there is a problem with a passive and uncaring electorate. I have mentioned in some posts to other articles, that the Tory party – from this side of the Atlantic – sounds very similar to the Republican party just before Reagan’s partisans walked in and “throwed the bums out”. If a number of freedom loving Brits were also organized and motivated, there might be an opportunity waiting. These people are pissed off about fox hunting, others about other things. All together, they could form a majority. There was a reason that Reagan was elected by labor union members, redneck farmers and country club businessmen. He found common issues that outraged all of them.
Failing that, there is another legal, nonviolent method of rebelling – the one that the Soviet people used: just give up and quit working any harder than you absolutely have to. It takes a while and your life is pretty wretched, unless you really enjoy a lot of spare time. But it will eventually show up in the tax receipts. And a welfare society is peculiarly vulnerable to this tactic.
The problem is getting initiative back, once you have sworn off of it.
The best of British was lost in WW’s I and II, all that is left is a socialised mish-mash[…]
And I was under the impression that WW1 and WW2 were largely responsible for the socialised mish-mash. It wasn’t the casualties that did the real damage, but the acceptance of total state control of domestic life “for the best interests of all” that never quite went away.
TonyH has it just right. Liberty for fringe groups is irrelevant to most British people while they are personally comfortable. Where they do get wound up, it is usually only to preserve their personal tastes.
Hi David,
I think the trick would be to concentrate resources on the softest target. If you don’t pay your council tax, the local authority will send round the police, which they fund with council tax, and the bailiffs, to steal enough of your property to make up the difference. If you don’t pay your road tax, the police will impound your car, and then sell it to both pay your fine and pay the road tax.
However, on the licence fee front you have a really soft target, or at least the softest of the hundreds of taxes our parasite rulers level upon us for their personal benefit.
First, the detector van folk have to get away from their single mother targets on Birmingham estates, with their high and successful fine hit rates, and have to go to country dwellings guarded by men and women with dogs and shotguns.
Then, even if they get into the houses, and find people blatantly and illegally watching television, they’ll have to do a ‘Jonathan Miller’ to every man last jack of them, with no ‘right’ to directly expropriate property, except at the end of a very long legal protest, which could end as a mass class-action with the possible result the end of the tax-funded BBC (Cry Hallelujah! 🙂
With the licence fee being one of the few taxes not directly collected by the government, for the government, and with the Inland Revenue, Customs and Excise, and the Local-Authority funded police not being directly involved, if the Countryside Alliance just concentrated on this single boycott they could be far more effective than spreading the intial protest to taxes which will be more ruthlessly enforced.
Plus, there are very few non-Guardian readers in this country who support the BBC tax, so a popular groundswell could emerge. This would be more difficult with road tax and council tax, as the government would be much more successful with a “Everyone else has to pay, you should pay too” line.
And, of course, both this current government and the opposition won’t lose much sleep if the BBC is placed in a corner by this directed action, especially if the BBC’s Andrew Gilligan has inadvertently managed to bring down the whole rotten shambles of New Labour, with his ‘inaccurate and unreliable’ 45 minutes story.
Rgds,
AndyD
PS> I must claim some feebleness here. If I refused to pay my BBC tax, my wife would pay it anyway. She has very little truck with my mad-eyed libertarian sympathies! 🙂
“the average Brit views fox-hunting as a fairly bloodthirsty and unpleasant pursuit for upper class toffs”
This is the nub of the matter.
If you’re expecting anything to come of this, you have picked the wrong fight.
The people at large will not take any significant action in defence of a bunch of rich yahs who like to think they own the place, and very often in fact DO own the place, and make damn sure you know it.
“Good enough for them” will be most people’s reaction once hunting is banned – as it will be, since the Govt. knows the score too.