Charge of the green welly brigade

摘要

Rap music and homosexuality are not the best-known pastimes of Britain's countryside campaigners. But in the run-up to the "Liberty and Livelihood" countryside march in London planned for September 22nd, anything to dispel the stereotype that the movement consists of brutal toffs is welcome. At a rally outside Parliament on Tuesday, hunting horns tootled and well-bred voices raised cheers to welcome an impromptu recital by Samuel Payne (nicknamed "the President"), a black American singer who has become a prominent supporter of the protest. "Our secret weapon―50000 hard for Labour to explain away," said one campaign official. As a green jeep circled Parliament Square, towing an ingeniously constructed electric bonfire, an excitable elderly woman in galoshes spoke enthusiastically of her gay and lesbian allies. Their group, Hunting Pink, is a pun on the name for the foxhunters' traditional scarlet coats, which could become little more than fancy dress if the government bans the sport, as it proposes to. "The gays like hunting because they can dress up―the same reason that they become priests," she explained, in an ambitious lunge towards tolerance.