by Blair, Tony
Fox hunting; now there’s a tale. One of the strangest parts of politics is how you get into situations of unbelievable controversy without ever meaning to or wanting to. The fox-hunting subject resulted in one of the domestic legislative measures I most regret, along with the Freedom of Information Act. Both were great progressive causes (at least to some); both were the cause of inordinate political convulsion, and for what purpose, God only knows.
But fox hunting brought the most grief. The issue itself crossed boundaries of opinion in a remarkable way, zigzagging through swathes of Middle England, working-class heartlands and old-fashioned aristocrats. The thing was you could never tell people’s reactions to it. You had dyed-in-the-wool Tories for whom a ban was their ultimate political fantasy; and you had solid Labour blokes, whose right arm would have withered away rather than put a cross in the Tory box, who wanted to kill me because of the proposal to ban it.
People used to say it’s a class thing – and for some it was. For others, it was an animal thing. I remember a secretary from the Downing Street Garden Rooms coming to see me at Chequers while I was working in the study, and telling me with tears in her eyes that at long last justice for the poor little fox was to be secured. I used to have meetings with my advisers or the whips and just sit there and say: but people cannot feel that strongly about it; it’s impossible. Well, they do, they would tell me. And they were right. Gerald Kaufman – sensible, sane, loyal Gerald – said to me: if you don’t do this, I could never support the government again. He didn’t really mean it, of course; but he wished he did. The passions aroused by the issue were primeval. If I’d proposed solving the pension problem by compulsory euthanasia for every fifth pensioner I’d have got less trouble for it.
And here is a real political lesson. You have to ‘feel it’ to succeed in politics. That’s where instinct comes from, the emotional intelligence. By and large I do feel it, and so, on most issues, I get it. On this one, I had a complete lapse. I didn’t ‘feel it’ either way. I didn’t feel how, for fox hunters, this was part of their way of life. I didn’t feel how, for those wanting a ban, this was fundamentally about cruelty. Result? Disaster.
I was ignorant about the sport. I thought it a bit weird that people wanted to gallivant around hunting a fox, but having read my Trollope I understood it is a part of our history. What I didn’t understand – but boy, I understood it later – was that it is a rather large part of our rural present.
I made a fatal mistake by not shutting the issue down at the outset. Instead, I let it get running out of the blocks. Expectations were raised. On a TV programme I stupidly gave the impression it would indeed be banned. Of course I had voting form, having voted to ban it or said I wanted to or signed some petition or something. Anyway, I repeated my ‘position’ rather than reconsidering it. The moment I did so, I was defined. And so trapped. By the end of it, I felt like the damn fox.
The trouble was, as I say, I just couldn’t get it, but Philip Gould began telling me it was now an issue of trust. Sally, Hilary Armstrong, Ann Taylor – i.e. the big brass, the ‘if necessary we’ll take the world on and screw them all’ brigade – were telling me: fail to do this and you have a leadership problem. ‘I can’t believe it,’ I kept saying rather pathetically. ‘Start believing it,’ they would reply.
If I told you the contortions and permutations I went through to avoid this wretched business, you wouldn’t credit it. We had regional referenda, partial bans, civil penalties, criminal penalties – you name it, we considered it.
The protesters were predominantly Tory, of course, and at long last they had something to protest about. And protest they did, following me round blowing trumpets, clanging cymbals, shouting, singing, howling, chanting. It was quintessentially British. I remember George Bush was here for a visit when they were out all over the place, and he asked what it was about. I explained. ‘Whatever did you do that for, man?’ said George, as ever getting right to the nub.
Unfortunately, ‘Whatever did I do that for?’ was the question I began to ask myself after I started to educate myself about fox hunting – i.e. did what I should have done before I embarked on this rash undertaking. The more I learned, the more uneasy I became. I started to realise this wasn’t a small clique of weirdo inbreds delighting in cruelty, but a tradition, embedded by history and profound community and social liens, that was integral to a way of life. It was more broadly based and less elitist than I thought, and had all sorts of offshoots among groups of people who were a long way from being dukes and duchesses.
None of this means I wanted to take it up myself, or even that I especially liked it – ‘Vote Labour or the fox gets it’ was quite a popular slogan in several elections – but banning it like this was not me. Not me at all. Fox hunting mattered profoundly to a group of people, who were a minority but had a right, at least, to defend their way of life.
During the course of our summer stay with the Strozzis, we visited the beautiful island of Elba. We went to lunch with some of their friends and there happened to be a woman who was mistress of a hunt near Oxford, I think. Instead of berating me, she took me calmly and persuasively through what they did, the jobs that were dependent on it, the social contribution of keeping the hunt and the social consequence of banning it, and did it with an effect that completely convinced me.
From that moment on, I became determined to slip out of this. But how? We were obliged to allow Parliament a debate and the result was never in doubt: there would be a ban. In the end, there was a masterly British compromise – it was banned in such a way that, provided certain steps are taken to avoid cruelty when the fox is killed, it isn’t banned. So it’s banned and not quite banned at the same time. Hmm. Anyway, it was the best I could do, but not an episode of policymaking I look back on with pride. And I should think not, I hear you say.
When the law later came into force in 2004, Hazel Blears was in the Home Office. She phoned me up and said, ‘The police are asking: do you want this policed vigorously so we can get some prosecutions under our belt?’ After I replied, she said, ‘I thought you might say that.’
It reminds me that I won a bet with Prince Charles about this. Of course, he thought the ban was absurd, and raised the issue with me in a slightly pained way. I would explain the political difficulties. I’m not sure he ever quite grasped it – not surprisingly, since as I have confessed, I didn’t either, until too late. The wager was that after I left office, people would still be hunting. ‘But how, if you’re going to ban it?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know, but I will find a way,’ I replied.
Prince Charles truly knew the farming community and felt we didn’t understand it, in which there was an element of truth. Our farmers had a specific and uniquely British set of challenges: they had been through the devastation of BSE, and at that time still couldn’t really export beef except in very limited circumstances; farm prices had fallen; fuel costs had risen; floods had hit them hard. But the worst was about to come.
During the last months of 2000, we were holding regular meetings to prepare for the summer 2001 election. In November, we had an away day at Chequers and I very firmly said the danger was complacency; we had a real fight on our hands and we had to up our game. We were ahead again in the polls but I deliberately told Philip to downplay that and focus on the difficulties. We had an almost 20 per cent deficit on right/wrong direction, and though the Tories didn’t seem to be breaking through, I set out what I thought they could do if they galvanised a patriotic, anti-Europe, anti-immigrant vote and combined that with a sense of cynicism and apathy about us.
I said we had to get to the big choices about the future. I emphasised the need for reform as well as investment, and put at the heart of our appeal an offer of increased personal prosperity, through both a strong economy and improved public services.
Peter and Gordon had been rowing about the euro, with Peter ill-advisedly talking to the media about our position on the single currency. As usual, Gord
on overreacted, but I was getting worried about the number of colleagues who had it in for Peter and the sheer venom of the GB lot towards him. As my close ally, Peter was at that time, of course, a target for Gordon’s supporters.
Then in early 2001, Peter was forced to resign for the second time. It was typical of the way so-called scandals erupt, hot mud is poured over all concerned and the victims are eliminated before anyone quite has the chance or the nerve to wait until the mud is seen to stick or not. Even more than on the first occasion, I deeply regretted it afterwards.
The Observer ran a medium-size story about Peter, having raised money for the Dome from the Hinduja brothers, Indian businessmen and philanthropists, then securing a passport for one of them. As ever, the way the story was handled turned into the issue, not the allegation itself. It is a real lesson in such things.
There would have been no problem if Peter had merely passed on the passport request or even asked that it be expedited, provided he had also sought to ensure that the proper procedures had been followed. As it happened there was absolutely no reason why S. P. Hinduja should not have been given a passport – he qualified, and as a wealthy and successful businessman, there was no issue about whether he could support himself.
But here’s what happens in such situations: I’m busy, Alastair’s busy, Peter’s busy (there had been another, far bigger story in the Sunday Times about Peter and Gordon which had preoccupied him). The story is medium-level. If you are not careful – and we weren’t – you get the facts just a fraction off, and then you are in the proverbial hurricane.
Peter said – and Alastair repeated to the media – that Peter’s private secretary, not Peter himself, had passed on the request. In fact, it transpired that Peter had mentioned it to Mike O’Brien, a Home Office minister.
It seems almost pathetic now when you look back on it. Because a wrong statement had been made to the media, they were able to turn it into a full-blown scandal. Peter, with the GB people strongly against him, was pretty much alone and without support except from me. It seems utterly bizarre, given what Peter subsequently became to the Labour Party during Gordon’s premiership, but back then he was as isolated as you can be in politics.
Wednesday came. PMQs day. Nightmare. Alastair’s and Derry’s view was that it was irretrievable. Jack Straw felt the same and was worried because there was a note of the Peter call, and it was therefore bound to come out. I called Peter in before PMQs and told him he had to go. He felt Alastair was pushing me. He wasn’t; it was my decision. I agreed to an inquiry into the affair, headed by the former Treasury solicitor, Sir Anthony Hammond, whose report five weeks later cleared Peter of any wrongdoing. It was a miserable though redeeming finale to a sorry episode.
Peter fought his seat bravely at the election and won it, and then clawed his way back with his usual genius, but I missed him desperately in Cabinet between 2001 and 2005. He would have been such a strength.
Back then, however, election fever started to incubate in the Westminster hothouse. I set out in a note the campaign structure, the key dividing lines, the future vision of the nuts and bolts of how we would fight the campaign. It wasn’t going to be easy, managing conflicting egos and personalities, letting everyone think they were directing it while making sure I was.
We aimed for a May 2001 election, but an event took place that meant a complete upheaval of all previously laid plans. I was in Canada to address the Parliament and meet my friend Jean Chrétien, the Canadian prime minister. He was a very wise, wily and experienced old bird, great at international meetings, where he could be counted on to talk sense, and, as Canadians often are, firm and dependable without being pushy. All in all, a good guy and a very tough political operator not to be underestimated.
While we were there, we were told that the Ministry of Agriculture had been informed of a case of foot-and-mouth disease at an abattoir in Essex. You’re given a piece of information like that and your first reaction is: is that a big deal? The answer was yes. A very big deal. Two days after the disease had been found, the European Commission imposed a complete ban on all British meat, milk and livestock exports. Was that not an overreaction? I asked. No. OK, so this is really serious. Jean Chrétien immediately identified it as a crisis. ‘Watch that, young Tony, watch it very carefully. That’s trouble.’ We put movement restrictions on all livestock. I asked anxiously from Canada whether we could be sure of lifting the ban within a week. If only I had known.
For the next few days, I remained abroad but was also living on UK time, trying to get some order into the response. Nick Brown, the Minister of Agriculture, appeared to be doing well, and for once the ministry was fully apprised of the gravity of the situation.
Four days after the first case, another outbreak was confirmed, this time at the other end of the country in Tyne and Wear. There then followed near enough three months of almost constant focus on what was the worst ever outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Europe, and one of the worst in world history.
Foot-and-mouth affects all hooved animals, but doesn’t necessarily kill them, and nor does it make their meat unfit to eat. Some countries – Argentina, for example – have areas where the disease has existed for decades. But of course it isn’t great for the export market, and the average consumer isn’t exactly going to be rushing out to buy infected meat. It has never migrated to humans, although the fear is there that it could. It’s a disease that is at one level not serious in terms of life and death, even of the animal, but its practical consequences on the livestock industry are devastating; if it is not eradicated, then, to all intents and purposes, the effect is terminal.
What had happened was that infected meat had somehow got into the country, possibly illegally, and had contaminated a farm. Animals are transported around the whole country, and as the incubation period can be up to ten days, the disease was only discovered – and livestock movements halted – several days after it began to spread. The result, as we quickly appreciated, is that we didn’t have the foggiest notion how many animals were affected, or where they were.
What’s more, the disease is airborne and can be carried on the soles of shoes. Footpaths, walking trails and other elements of rural tourism were all potential sources of it spreading. Within days, we were having to shut down the British countryside. The only way to deal with it is to slaughter the infected herd. There is a huge debate about whether to vaccinate, a debate that ricocheted around the public discussion during the course of the crisis. The blunt truth was that EU requirements meant that even vaccinated animals had to be slaughtered eventually, and in any event vaccination couldn’t be guaranteed effective in sheep; and sheep could spread the disease to cattle.
Animals were having to be taken away to slaughter but not, of course, in the abattoir, so burning funeral pyres started to spring up. One was situated near the Heathrow flight path, to delight the passengers hoping to spend a few days in rural idyllic Britain. The pictures of the pyres went round the world. Rumours abounded; so-called human cases were detected (it didn’t matter they were all later found to be false). When we shut down the tourist sites, it was assumed it was because of the risk to people. The Americans are great tourists, but they are hopeless when it comes to these types of things. The American tourist influx virtually ceased, on the basis that if they came to Britain they would all go back with two heads.
By the time I had got back home from my transatlantic trip, there was a palpable sense of crisis. I had thought the ministry and Nick were pretty much on top of it. They were somewhat jealously guarding their patch on it and were happy to consult, but I sensed that Nick was feeling pressurised by me and didn’t want to yield up control. Jonathan alarmed me by describing how the Number 10 switchboard had accidentally put him in on a call between Gordon and Nick, with Gordon telling Nick not to give in to my ‘presidential style’ – interference which was not greatly helpful.
As the cases grew, and the bitter facts of the shutdown started to affect jobs, li
velihoods, export orders, businesses, tourist attractions, hotels, B & Bs – i.e. the whole infrastructure of rural Britain – I was feeling distinctly queasy and, yes, frightened by it. I let it go for a few more days of the ordinary meetings, queries, debates and instructions and then I thought, No, this isn’t going to work.
The National Farmers’ Union leader was Ben Gill. Both he and his deputy, Richard Macdonald, seemed to me eminently sensible and sane citizens. They were representing a community that was literally seeing their entire past, present and future go up in smoke. There was pain, panic and real grief out there. Ben and Richard were forthright: the only answer was slaughter and the only way to do it was fast.
The challenge was how to do it. We could throw resources at it, but throw them where? At the weekend, I got down to Chequers early. It always helped me clear my head. I read all the papers, spoke to a few people. The chief vet Jim Scudamore was a good bloke, but he was overwhelmed. We all were. I got as detailed a briefing as I could. Then I just sat and thought.
Sometimes in a crisis, you have to demonstrate activity to keep spirits up, but the actual machinery is working away effectively. Sometimes the machinery itself is non-existent or inadequate and then you have to think first. Otherwise the activity is useless or, even worse, counterproductive.
The basic challenge was one of logistics. You had to have enough vets to inspect the herds where cases were suspected. You then had to be able to do the slaughter. You then had to have the capacity to dispose of the carcasses. You then had to have a system of compensation that was rational and quick, and a system of welfare for the burgeoning cases of hardship. You then had to have a plan for reopening the countryside and a strategy to entice the tourists out of their funk. And you had to do it all while tracking the disease to make sure you weren’t opening too early or proclaiming victory too soon. On the other hand, restoring confidence to the battered and bruised rural community could not come a moment too soon.
