Perhaps it’s a sign of how politicized foxhunting has become that, as Great Britain’s asinine ban on the sport approached (see In The Country), both The New Yorker and The Washington Post ran long, well-researched and extremely informative articles about the issue. In fact, the Post, whose attitude toward anything to do with horses is usually decidedly unfriendly, published a surprisingly sympathetic evaluation.

The most interesting aspect of the two articles was that both writers confirmed–through observation and interviews–that foxhunting in the 21st century has become the central issue in Britain’s two-century class war, that the ban isn’t really about saving foxes. Jane Kramer, in The New Yorker, noted that the battle’s roots were firmly planted from 1835, when Parliament banned bearbaiting, cockfighting and dog fighting, the blood sports of urban and mostly poor Londoners. And 20 years ago the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher refused to prop up the coal-mining industry, which subsequently all but completely foundered.

“In the 20 years since then, Labour backbenchers have introduced nearly a dozen bills to ban foxhunting, and the fate of the miners has figured in the rhetoric of nearly every attempt to get them passed,” writes Kramer about Labour’s revenge motive. John Jackson, chairman of the Countryside Alliance, told her, “[Prime Minister Tony] Blair never intended this ban. The Labour managers said to Blair, ‘If the backbenchers don’t get hunting, they’ll block us in our bills,’ and those backbenchers are old-fashioned class warriors, foolish and deeply prejudiced. And they have long memories.”

Foxhunting became what Kramer calls “a totemic issue,” an issue that Blair couldn’t control and couldn’t get rid of. He couldn’t do it because the Labourites in Parliament needed something to take to their constituents when they couldn’t solve–or even address–their country’s problems with immigration, schools, transportation, health care and, finally, Blair’s insistence on sending troops to Iraq.

Britain’s anti-hunting law is a foolish notion on many levels (including being almost unenforceable and full of holes). But the stupidest part is that the fox is far from an endangered species. And the English species is proving itself as adaptable as our coyotes. According to the Post report, Great Britain has a stable population of about 250,000 adults, who produce about 425,000 cubs per year. And at least 33,000 live in urban areas, devouring scraps and small mammals. Britain’s 200 foxhunts kill only 20,000 to 25,000 foxes per year, about one-quarter the number killed on the road or by poison, traps or guns–and not a single fox will be saved while Britain’s hounds sit idle, because farmers and gamekeepers will be even more aggressive about protecting their animals without hounds to help them.

It was extremely clever of Britain’s frothing animal-rights activists to latch on to the socialistic Labour Party’s class war. Well, now we have to hope for a political backlash that brings the Conservatives back into power, something Britain’s country folk are working hard to achieve.

And here at home we need to support Mason Lampton, the new president of the Masters of Foxhounds Association of America, and his fellow officers as they try to educate Americans about foxhunting. As Mason told me, “I don’t think lying low did any good in England.” Britain’s gone from being a country in which hundreds or even thousands of people would follow a day’s hunting 100 years ago to a country with a tiny minority of people pursuing an activity whose roots and traditions are at best poorly understood by many and at worst reviled by an outspoken handful. We should take a lesson from that.