Anthony Howard in the Times offers a partially correct analysis of a story that has vanished from the papers -- the strange case of the disappearing Hunting Act protest. As he points out, two days before Christmas the government coyly revealed that it would not oppose an injunction against the Act being sought by the Countryside Alliance.The reason for this was obvious -- it didn't want scenes of mass hunting disobedience, altercations and arrests, bringing this controversy to possibly violent fever-pitch and inflaming yet further the contempt of much of the electorate for this piece of class-war spite, during the election campaign. As Howard remarks:

'This is an extraordinary state of affairs; an Act of Parliament is barely on the statute book before the Government brazenly connives at preventing it from taking effect. If there is any precedent for such action, then no one has yet come forward with it.'

Howard is on less sure ground, however, when he claims that no judge would grant this injunction because

'he would, in effect, be entering the ring in his own right, something judges never like to do'.

But granting an injunction brings the the judges into the ring no less than refusing it. Next, Howard claims that since one of the grounds for the injunction is human rights law, which offers a final right of appeal to the court in Strasbourg, there is the capacity for even greater politically useful delay. He says:

'In a case of this kind it is not unusual for that process to take up to six or seven years. Which means that the cry of "Tally-ho" (irreverently included by the Prime Minister not so long ago in one of his party conference speeches) could still be heard in the land up to and beyond his own proposed retirement date. And what do you think Labour backbenchers will make of that when the penny drops? My own prediction is that figures such as my old friend Sir Gerald Kaufman will simply go ape. And quite right, too. For they will have been the victims of one of the most shameless pieces of politicolegal chicanery that this country has ever seen.'

But there is no right of appeal from the courts to Strasbourg. And even if the protesters were to take their case separately to Strasbourg, the Hunting Act would still be implemented while they did so because by definition the injunction would not have been granted. And unless it is granted, there will still be possible mayhem in hunting pink during the election campaign.

So what are the odds on the judiciary in their present bloody-minded mood towards the government choosing to dig it out of the hole it is in?

Posted by melanie at January 11, 2005