THE HUNTING ACT is vindictive in its aim and discriminatory in its effect. It takes away liberties from law-abiding people, destroys a deeply-rooted way of life and confers no benefit on any person or animal. It permits the dogs of Labour voters to pursue their favourite quarry, and forbids the dogs of Tories to go after theirs. It reflects no understanding either of hunting or of wildlife, and was passed in defiance of the conclusions of the Government’s own official inquiry.
Some 40,000 people have signed the Hunting Declaration, expressing a determination to disobey this particular law — though how to disobey a law that bans hunting, but which leaves the term “hunting” undefined, is anyone’s guess. My own attempts at disobedience will involve pursuing mice with terriers. Others might manage to put together a pack of hounds and follow the scent of real foxes and feral cats. In whatever way, it is certain that we are in for a rural crime-wave — indeed a crime tsunami — when hunting with dogs becomes illegal tomorrow.
When, why and how is it right to disobey the law? If it is never right to disobey, then tyrants have carte blanche. The racist laws of Nuremberg, the Hindu law of suttee, sharia that condemns adulterers to stoning and a thousand other cruelties become obligatory on those who are commanded to obey them.
Most of us balk at that. For we believe in government by consent, not by arbitrary command. A law, we believe, is not made legitimate merely by the sovereign’s edict. It must also pass the test of natural justice: otherwise rational beings cannot, in their hearts, consent to it. If the law discriminates without a reason, if it inflicts penalties without a benefit, if it disregards intention or is imposed retrospectively, then it is prima facie unjust, and good judges will refuse to apply it, unless their consciences can be swayed by some overriding consideration of public policy.
Ordinary citizens, however, are in a quandary. They know that there cannot be justice without a rule of law. They know that the rule of law depends on general obedience. And they know that they have no right to pick and choose which law to obey and which to defy, just because they can mount an argument for the justice of the one and the injustice of the other. For it is only against a background of general obedience that the appeal to justice makes sense. If we all begin to disobey ad lib , there will be neither obedience nor disobedience, but only a general free-for-all, the first casualty of which will be justice itself.
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So what should we do? It was in answer to that question that Gandhi developed the strategy of “civil disobedience”, directed against the authorities in British India. Civil disobedience does not mean breaking the law and then trying to evade it. It means breaking the law overtly and peacefully, while surrendering yourself for punishment. In this way, Gandhi thought, you put a spotlight on the law, draw attention to its injustice, and emphasise that you yourself are no criminal, either by nature or by intention, but simply labelled as such by a sovereign power that has overstepped the bounds of legitimate government.
There is another, more paradoxical, way of expressing Gandhi’s point. Civil disobedience involves violating the law complained of. But it also involves enforcing that law — against yourself. Hence civil disobedience offers a unique opportunity to demonstrate your bona fides, as a law-abiding person — someone who cannot see an offence committed without seeking to reaffirm the law. Your disobedience, you imply, is really a higher form of obedience. It is a conscientious attempt to rescue the law from the taint of injustice.
But when is such a strategy justified? Gandhi’s cause was a momentous one, as was the cause of civil rights in America, when Martin Luther King repeated Gandhi’s call. To liken those causes to the defence of hunting is surely to trivialise them and thereby to repeat the injustices against which Gandhi and King were protesting. Are we to contemplate civil disobedience for every minor defect in our legislation: for all the petty rules invented by the Eurocrats, and all the irritations inflicted in the name of nanny state? Could we justify ostentatious smoking, breaking speed limits, refusing to wear seatbelts, as protests in the name of justice?
It seems to me that the crucial point is not the grandeur of the cause but the social impact of the injustice and the lack of an alternative remedy. In our society rules and regulations can be altered, and majority opinion will eventually have its way with them. However, minorities do not enjoy the benefit of majority opinion. Consider what a Muslim should do, when faced with a law that bans halal butchery. Majority opinion will never rescue him, for it is only the Muslim minority that is affected. A strategy of civil disobedience would make it obvious, even to the majority opposed to halal butchery, that you cannot go on sending law-abiding butchers to prison simply to satisfy your beliefs about a matter that does not affect you.
The case of hunting is similar. Hunting is the foundation of a communal way of life. I know this, since the way of life is mine. I also know that majority opinion is never going to rescue the minority to which I belong. The only strategy available to bring about a repeal of this law is one that brings its injustice to public attention, by showing that law-abiding people are being punished for doing what they have always done by right. My mouse hunts will therefore be public events, with followers on foot and horseback. The local constabulary will be invited and the quarry will be surrendered for veterinary examination. After all, to prove the crime it will be necessary to show that the mouse was killed illegally, if quickly, by a dog and not slowly but legally by a cat.
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Professor Scruton is author of numerous books, including Animal Rights and Wrongs and On Hunting
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