Hunting and the Lisbon effect

Referenda are funny things really. I remember a vox pop carried out by Sky News in the wake of the French one that rejected the Lisbon treaty in 2005.

Voters were asked how they voted in that referendum, and why. Of those who voted ‘No’ – the majority of interviewees – the reasons ranged from dissatisfaction with the French government on dozens of issues entirely unrelated to the Lisbon Treaty… to personal ‘schadenfreude’ at having embarrassed their Prime Minister on the international stage.

One answer that stands out in my memory was (roughly) along the lines that: “I wanted to punish Chirac for taking advantage of the threat of the Far Right to win an election, then ignoring the needs and demands of the electorate that had put him into power…” 

That answer stuck in my mind because, at a certain level, I can understand the grievance. Without delving too deeply into local political issues, Malta has experienced a similar situation for decades. How often have we been told, during election campaigns, not to ‘experiment with our vote’ because it might result in (shock, horror) another party winning the election?

And yes, I know it sounds daft when you lift that argument out of its context, and hold it up on display in all its glitzy, glaring nonsensicality. But within the context of those elections – which had all taken place against a backdrop of a hugely divisive EU accession campaign – it always proved a powerful and ultimately winning trump card… at least, until it was overplayed for the last time in 2013.

Naturally, one can debate endlessly on whether the fears that made this such a successful electoral ploy were justified or not. But few can deny that that was precisely how many Maltese voters felt at the time: compelled to reluctantly support a party, not out of agreement with its policies, but because of a gut-level mistrust of the alternative.

So like that angry French voter, we can perhaps all appreciate the emotive force of his argument. It is galling when a government cites one’s own vote – obtained for the most part through ‘threats’ of the kind outlined above, in both France and Malta – to justify policies it knows those same voters wouldn’t approve at all. So I can perfectly understand the psychology behind using an unrelated referendum to ‘even the score’ with a Prime Minister who had so royally pissed people off.

Either way: in that vox pop, I don’t recall a single ‘No’ voter claiming to have voted against the Lisbon Treaty on the strength of what this treaty actually implied, either for themselves or for Europe. Perhaps that was a ‘sui generis’ case; perhaps in most referenda people really do base their votes on the question being asked of them on the ballot paper.

But I’m beginning to get the impression that the ‘Lisbon effect’ (I’ll call it that to save time and word-count) may be far more commonplace than I previously thought. Certainly there seems to be a good deal more at work behind the scenes in the imminent spring hunting referendum, than the issue of whether or not we should allow birds to be shot during their nesting season.

A cursory glance at the statistics in our own survey suggests that many more people support the spring hunting derogation than can be accounted for by those who actually hunt in spring. Even when you factor in family, friends and others within the immediate sphere of influence of Malta’s hunting community, the numbers do not seem to add up. 

This may partly (but only partly) be accounted for by apathy among people who may disagree with spring hunting on principle, but who don’t see this as an important enough issue to make the effort to actually vote. But I think there may be other, completely unrelated considerations simmering quietly beneath the surface.

Echoes of that disgruntled French voter seem to reverberate at an unspoken level throughout this campaign. It is only a guess, but I think that a number of people in this country are viewing this referendum as a chance to hit out at a segment of the population which has puffed up its plumage for so long now – forever sneering condescendingly down at ‘the great unwashed’ (to quote one typical specimen) from the stratospheric heights of their own social, cultural and intellectual superiority – that any chance to burst their bubble is viewed as a chance not to be missed.

And again, it is with regret that I have to admit that I can understand (if not exactly condone) this attitude. Over the past week or two, the great dormant monster of social ‘hauteur’ has reared its head above the embattled skyline of Valletta – and God, it’s an ugly sight to behold. Suddenly, new battle lines have been drawn up: a sort of national game of “Mirror, mirror on the wall… whose is the most refined, exquisite cultural taste of all?” 

And of course, everybody who falls on ‘the other’ side of this cultural ‘Check-Point Charlie’ is routinely insulted and ridiculed. Suffice it to say that I wrote an article about this national habit of deriding others just this week… and among the first comment to appear below was one insulting and deriding me on exactly the same lines.

In this particular instance, it was only one section of the ‘great unwashed’ to be singled out for public humiliation (I’ve written enough about which one to bother doing so again here). But we have all seen the same underlying dynamics in so many other issues of late. So when I quote one particular response to such insults, it will be representative of a groundswell feeling that is much wider and more representative than the person who actually uttered the following words:

“It hurts me that people in comments…were saying we are ignorant: we are not. And we do not sell rubbish either. ..They called us ħamalli [chavs]…  none of us swear…. [my] wife cried when she read the comments…”

There was, to boot, a collective dismissal of even this response with further derision and insults… not to mention a flat denial of the charge of ‘classism’, when the impulse underpinning all such comments cannot realistically be described by any other word. Can anyone be surprised, when those on the receiving end of all this smug complacency take any available opportunity to ‘even the score’?

But what does any of this have to do with the spring hunting referendum, you may well ask? Oh, about as much as that French voter’s anger at his Prime Minister had to do with the provisos of the Lisbon Treaty. That is to say, nothing at all… but a ‘nothing’ that can (and did, in the case of the French referendum) influence the outcome of a decision that may have serious consequences in the long term.

The point has been made by others, but it bears repeating here: most of the arguments presented so far against spring hunting have had less to do with wildlife conservation, than with an ugly underlying disdain for a small segment of people. Words like ‘barbarians’ and ‘savages’ have been carelessly flung about, oblivious to the danger that such considerations may provoke a backlash. 

It is too early to say if this backlash will upstage the real, pressing reasons for a No vote in the spring hunting referendum. But if it does, I need hardly add that the victims of this perception would not be any particular ‘class’ of Maltese citizen. It will be birds, which have to the best of my knowledge never insulted anybody.

It bears mentioning also that the hunters who campaign for a ‘Yes’ vote have so far proved cannier and more sensitive to popular feeling than their detractors. The Yes campaign has clearly sensed the presence of an underlying, completely unrelated grievance, built on the foundations of our national ‘Us versus Them’ mentality… and it has – as one does, if one wants to win a referendum – successfully tapped into the psychology that keeps it ticking over. 

Their argument that ‘your hobby may be next’ may have been exploded, on a factual level, by a crack team of lawyers and retired judges. But I fear the emotional resonance of that argument has not been addressed at all. Even if unfounded, the tactic still resonates profoundly with some people, because they have come round to viewing ‘objections to spring hunting’ as yet another manifestation of intolerance to add to all the rest. Maybe their turn will not come about in exactly the same way as predicted by the Yes campaign. But as we will see this week, no category of person is immune from an occasional turn at becoming the whipping post for an entire country.

Inevitably, this creates a pervasive underbelly of resentment and spite that no amount of logic or rational arguments can assuage.

In the case of spring hunting, this is particularly unfortunate because logic and common sense veers very much to the ‘No’ side. Viewed dispassionately (an impossible task, the way things have developed) it is in the hunters’ own interest to give their quarry respite during the breeding season. By allowing birds to replenish their numbers, they would be guaranteeing themselves a healthier autumn season in future. 

Moreover, many of the Yes campaign’s other arguments are equally unfounded. It is not true, for instance, that Europe permits hunting of migratory birds 365 days a year. Malta is the only country to have derogated for spring hunting of migratory birds. The only other instances where European hunting and breeding seasons overlap do not concern birds at all. 

A quick recap of research carried out this week: in the UK it is permissible to shoot brown hare at all times of the year… though curiously, you cannot serve hare in a restaurant between March and June (And they call the March Hare mad…). This anomaly, whereby there is no closed season for hare, may be accounted for by the fact that these unfortunate rodents are considered pests by farmers… though an 80% drop in the British hare population over the last century may end even this isolated exception to the rule.

The only other example is roe deer in Germany. Here, the reason is very bluntly to control the deer population (roe deer are abundant in Germany, in numbers that have a detrimental impact on forestation). And… that’s about it. In all other cases, European wildlife – especially birds, whose migration habits expose them to other dangers – is protected during the breeding season: not just for its own benefit, but also for the benefit of those who enjoy a spot of hunting… in the season when such activity does not significantly impact the populations of the species they like to hunt.

But will such considerations even be on the minds of people when they vote on April 11? How many of the ‘Yesses’ and ‘No’s’ will be motivated by the (admittedly dull) science of conservation ecology… and how much by emotive responses to an endless torrent of taunts, jibes and insults?

Perhaps it’s too early to say, but something tells me the Lisbon effect may well prove the deciding factor in the end.