Activists have their sights set on horse racing
There is a difference between animal welfare and animal rights, and the Government ought not to confuse them
Today 30,000 people will defy driving rain and travel to Cheltenham for the opening weekend of the first big meeting of the jump racing season. Hundreds of thousands more will watch the event on ITV, reflecting horse racing’s status as the nation’s second most popular sport.
Racing is an enduring feature of our national heritage and so it seems incredible to contemplate that the sport could ever be abolished. And yet there are now alarming signs that, while no such step is imminent, the wind is blowing this way.
In New Zealand greyhound racing will be banned from next year, their government citing animal welfare concerns. Both the Welsh Labour and SNP Scottish governments have announced similar moves.
Cold logic tells us that if unavoidable injuries to otherwise well-cared for and happy dogs can justify an outright ban, horse racing will soon be in the crosshairs of a campaign, too. And that’s exactly what’s happened in New Zealand. Last week the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses said: “There is no way to make horse racing safe… so it should be banned entirely… just as with the hounds”.
The Labour Government has distanced itself from its Welsh and Scottish counterparts, saying that it has “no plans” for a ban. But the public have learned what that cynical phrase means, and Labour has form in this area. It was a Labour government which drove through the hunting ban, ignoring the evidence of its own independent review and despite it never being a public priority. When Tony Blair’s back was against the wall after the unpopularity of his Iraq invasion, a ban was a useful bone to throw to his baying backbenchers.
Two decades on and another beleaguered prime minister seems set to follow the same course. The Government has just announced a consultation on banning trail hunting, despite the fact that hounds no longer hunt foxes, claiming that the activity cannot be done “safely” because hounds might pursue an animal instead of an artificial trail.
So now the mere activity of going out on a horse with some dogs might be criminalised. This is akin to banning cars because accidents can happen or some drivers speed. The proportionate step would be to minimise risk and enforce the current law. But no, as with the abolition of greyhound racing, the new fashion is to leap to an outright ban.
With the country on its knees it’s clearly the most absurd of priorities to ban an activity which has already been banned. But this is where naked populism and performative politics is taking us. There is no greyhound racing in Scotland, but the SNP and the Greens still want to waste parliamentary time to abolish it. Perhaps these political giants should introduce another ban on slavery too, or capital punishment.
“Every activity involving the use of animals is now being challenged by activists whose ideology has no limits”
The serious lesson is that every activity involving the use of animals is now being challenged by activists whose ideology has no limits. Ultimately that puts meat eating and even pet ownership in the frame.
Animal rights activists aren’t targeting sports because they truly believe they are the cause of the most suffering, but because they think this is where they can start and gain political traction. But as New Zealand has already shown us, they will achieve one goal and use that as justification to move straight to the next, knowing that sooner or later the politicians will follow. Here in the UK there are already MPs who say that horse racing is cruel.
We can no longer assume that governments will stand by our sports, as the proposed tax on racing demonstrates. Enlightened sports bodies have seen the threat and are taking steps to safeguard their own future. Racing has made huge efforts to minimise the risk to horses, for instance by changing the Grand National fences, and a new HorsePWR campaign focuses on the priority which is given to equine welfare.
There is a fundamental difference between animal welfare and animal rights. All of us believe that animals should be treated properly, with care and compassion. But the ideology of rights opposes any perceived exploitation of animals at all. We need our politicians to understand the dangers of the agenda to which they are too easily bending. Sooner or later they will find that their new puritanism isn’t so popular after all.
