It's time we Woke up.

On the 28th of February we marched on the Welsh Senedd to protest at the complete and utter cock-up of the Welsh Parliament’s proposals on farming. Thousands of us from all over Wales stood in the rain with our banners. We were united in our cause because we were all Farmers.

Welsh farming is going through a bad time at the moment. With a dithering First Minister whose qualifications for the job include a degree in Latin and an allotment, and a Minister for Rural Affairs with no first hand knowledge of farming at all, intent on banning game rearing, having just banned snaring, this was bound to end in tears.

So we went as Farmers. We knew who we were, dozens of bus loads of us. Lines of tractors. We had a sense of identity. I was reminded of the Rally in Hyde Park in 1997. I was one of the speakers and from the stage I could hardly see the back of the crowd of 120,000 people. Later, 407,000 of us marched on London.

But who were we? Who are we? What is our name? The British Fieldsports Society changed its name to the Countryside Alliance, and since the Hunting Act in 2005 it seems to have gradually lost its sense of identity, its fire in its belly. Rural post offices and housing are of course important, but there are other organisations concerned with them. Year by year the Countryside Alliance has lost membership, traction and motivation. Each year we lose some of our freedoms. Tighter gun laws, licensing grouse moors and releases on SSSIs, snaring… the list goes on.

We have to fight back and fight strategically. Simply trying to defend ourselves means that a ‘win’ entails just holding ground. We have to regain ground and that means de-activating some of the opposition. The British Hound Sports Association is a fine endeavour, but it is a line-holding exercise at best, hanging on to ‘trail-hunting’ which, twenty years ago, we would have scorned.

Being Politically Correct

I was at a UNESCO meeting recently, the subject being British Crafts. There are no Craftsmen any more; you have to call them ‘Craftspersons’. (Possibly not best said when sipping the head off your beer.)  So, are we ‘Countryside Alliancers’? ‘British Houndsportsassociationpersons’? Doesn’t really have the same ring to it as FARMER.

Are we Guns? The public think of guns as weapons for killing people. ‘Shooters’? ‘Markspersons’? ‘Stalkers’ (sounds creepy). ‘Fisherpersons’? ‘Hunters’? ‘Houndspersons’. At least being a Falconer, I know who I am. The Antis have a name, even if the second half is omitted. Anti Fox-hunting is even a Protected Belief. And the Sabs have a name too.

One of the approaches, taken by HuntingKind, is to flag up that we are a cultural group, deserving the same respect as other groups. Perhaps we need some sort of mediaPRperson to create a collective name for us? A name we can be proud to use and rally to. Without a name we don’t know who we are, and if we don’t know, we can’t expect Joe Public to know. If we have a name for our minority cultural group then we are all set to play the Woke game. And that could lead down some interesting alleys….

Maybe we don’t need a single name, maybe a collective set of initials would work? HSF? Hunting-Shooting-Fishing? Then our next March on London (and there must surely be one) can be ‘HSF Pride’.

Oh Yes!