“Kill a snail and go to jail” screams a headline on the front page of The Times of last weekend. The story is accompanied by a prominent picture (6½”x6½”) of the snail complete with the creature’s characteristic antennae raised in the shape of a V for Victory sign made famous by the warrior Winston Churchill. Underneath, the caption informs us that new legislation could extend fines for animal cruelty to snails, slugs and insects. We are told that the new law will entitle insects and worms to have the same protection as cats and dogs, and that breaking the new laws could mean up to a year in jail and/or fines up to £20,000. You think I am pulling your leg? Far from it. This is official from the animal loving, human baiting New Labour government of Britain whose new mantras, apart from the headline above, could as well be “Crush a bug and you’re in the jug” and “Swat a fly and for you it’s bye bye.” Congratulations, Mr. Ben Bradshaw, Minister for Animal Welfare!
The interesting thing is that this is no tabloid trickery. The great snail story occupies pride of place in the flagship paper of the British Establishment. The piece by Valerie Elliot, the Times Countryside Editor, claims equal billing with the other main story of the day headlined “Intelligence Service gets blame for Iraq failings”. But the Animal Protection Bill is the real eye-catcher with the formidable mollusc dominating the front page format. That’s not the end of the story though.
Another Times correspondent takes it up on the important Page 2, with a banner headline declaiming “Animal lovers rise to defend the gardener’s slimy enemy”, with expert analysis from the Times horticultural correspondent Mark Griffiths, no less.
As if that was not enough, Roger Scruton writer, publisher, and former professor of philosophy at Birbeck College, London is roped in to pontificate, a la C.S. Lewis, on the problem of pain, and to pronounce on whether the animals including insects (why exclude germs and viruses?) feel pain? The learned Professor duly obliges and expounding on the varying degrees of pain felt by the animals (human or otherwise), comes out with the priceless piece of information that if you examined the nervous system of a dog you would be struck by the “absence of any homologue of our dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a feature that is peculiar to human beings.” So now we know!!!
There is also the Weekend Review page 36 for those who clamour for more on this vital issue. But I think that, like me, you have had enough.
This concern for animal welfare in Blairite Britain is indeed touching. Shakespeare, thou shouldst be living at this hour. Or shall we say thou shoudst not be living at this hour, for if thou wert thou wouldst have been clapped in jail for promoting extreme cruelty to animals on that lonely heath somewhere in Scotland, where the witches are shown to be having the time of their life brewing the good brew in their bubbling cauldron and throwing gleefully into it the poisoned entrails of such things as the kindly Ben Bradshaw could hardly stomach –”an innocent toad boiled in the charmed pot, fillet of a fenny snake, eye of newt, a toe of frog, wool of bat, a tongue of dog, adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting, lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing, gall of goat and slips of yew” and even ” liver of blaspheming Jew”. Poor old Shakespeare. He would have been hauled up not only by RSPCA but also by Ariel Sharon.
And now if I may put in a word for the hapless homo sapiens.
While all this spirited and dedicated defence of animal rights is institutionalised and codified in the kingdom’s legal system, the violation of human rights goes on apace all over the world.
The War on Terror declared unilaterally and without giving any ultimatum to Terror, is waged with terrorising force. This is a most weird war, far more promising than any hitherto engineered as a continuing source of income for the military industrial complex and the burgeoning and booming security industry. This is an unending war. All you have to do is to do nothing and the war will take care of itself. And the more you wage it the more it will reward you with greater financial benefits. And that’s what really counts. The possibilities are infinite. There are no treaties that can be negotiated, no instruments of surrender that can be signed, no terms that can be offered, because the enemy is a metaphysical one—Terror. This is the most convenient enemy for waging an unending war. Leave the cause alone and the effect is there for you to throw every thing at. You are not fighting Saddam or Bin Laden. They are your own chums to whom you gave your moral (your morals) and material support. After you have eliminated them you will create new ones. This is an unending game in which you and the terrorists are both in a win win situation. As for the countless innocents who get killed and maimed in the process, they are just collateral damage. And as a bonus, the flouting of human rights can proceed with impunity, whether at Guantanamo or Abu Gharib or Mr. Blunkett’s dismal detention centres.
We have to go back to that lonely heath somewhere in Scotland and chant in unison with those worldly wise hags:
Fair is foul and foul is fair
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
-Yavar Abbas
Date: 15th July, 2004