Regarding a Decision of the Labour Party Conference to Oppose Blood Sport s Other Than Angling

Here in the UK we are well into Political Party Conference season. This week it is the turn of the Conservative Party. My father liked to record his life through poems after he had learned of the fashion among refined Chinese gentleman wereby they loved to write poems and yet let them go in the wind.

This one he wrote during the Labour Party Conference thirty years ago in 1979. The title is that of this blog.

If fish could scream
Or could wink an eye,
If from the stream
You could hear a cry;
If they had warm and sticky blood
And pain were seen in twitching mud--
Then anglers would be cruel folk
Like those whose dogs make foxes choke.

The rod of course
Shows less of pride
Than the sneering horse
And the sounding ride.
The salmon keeps a glassy look
Even when chewing on the hook.
She does not know the darling fox
Means much more at the ballot box.

Ninian Smart, October 1979