In the event, MPs voted by 373 to 158 to allow a new Hunting Bill to move to the Committee stage in the House of Commons. A free vote is due to take place next month when MPs will be able to choose between several options, including a total ban. Labour pledged to introduce legislation to outlaw fox hunting when it first took office more than three years ago. The past decade has seen an increase in activities by hunt saboteurs and others opposed to the sport, which ends only when the fox, pursued for miles, has been ripped to shreds by the hounds. Opposition to fox hunting has a far broader resonance than the animal rights lobby, however.
Opinion polls indicate a two-thirds majority in favour of an immediate ban on fox hunting.
Sections of the establishment are also in favour of action over the issue, regarding hunting with hounds as backward and unseemly. This was the theme at one of the largest Boxing Day hunt gatherings, a favourite of the Prince of Wales, held on the Duke of Beaufort's estate in south Gloucestershire. Farquhar's invocation of a rural idyll notwithstanding, fox hunting as it is currently practiced emerged in the eighteenth century at a time of acute social polarisation in agricultural areas. Paternalistic feudal relations in the villages had long ago been torn apart by the enclosure of the common lands and the imposition of brutal anti-trespassing and poaching laws. By the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution and the growth of modern-day British capitalism had reduced thousands to destitution, while making the rich even wealthier.