Every Monday we feature a favourite Alex cartoon selected by our readers. This week’s offering is from 1998.

The Countryside Alliance is a body which is ostensibly dedicated to protecting rural rights and traditions. But the fact that it was founded in July 1997, a couple of months after Tony Blair’s New Labour government swept to power with a 177-seat majority and a manifesto pledge to permit a free vote on fox hunting in the House of Commons, led to a suspicion that hunting was the main rural tradition that the organisation was set up to protect. A march was held in London in early 1998 as a general protest against the new administration and its perceived anti-countryside bias. This provided a nice day out in London for a bunch of farmers, and, for all the country-dwelling bankers, a chance to pop into their club for dinner afterwards and spend the night in their London pied-à-terre. This event should not be confused with the second and bigger Countryside Alliance march which was in 2002. The march referred to here is the first march, which appropriately enough took place on the First of March.

Reader Justin Petty, who chose the cartoon, says he went on a couple of hunts on a borrowed horse to “work out what all the fuss was about”, but never actually saw a fox. He took a copy of this cartoon along to the march and showed it to everyone he met there, who apparently thought it was “brilliant”.

Perhaps it was cowardly of us to dodge the issue of making a serious comment about fox hunting (a practice of which 80% of the population disapprove) and doing a silly joke on social snobbery instead. In our defence we’d say that we don’t like to be didactic in the cartoon and that bathos is a feature of our punchlines. Clive’s attitude sums up the banality of most people’s concerns: that they’re more worried about seeking acceptance from their peer group than pondering ethical issues. And of course it reflects the odd attitude of the English towards money: that it’s alright to have it, as long as it doesn’t look like you value it or went to any particular effort to acquire it. The best manifestation of this is the studied shabbiness of the gentry, who don’t even bother to use their ancestral wealth to buy themselves a decent set of clothes.

For years the House of Lords blocked the Hunting Act (the peers were presumably partial to their country sports), but it finally got on the statute books in 2004. The replacement - highly suspect - practice of “trail hunting” is now in the government’s sights and looks set to be banned too.

If you click on the strip above you can read the cartoon in its original 90s context

If you’ve got any suggestions for a favourite cartoon for future inclusion please email us. And do tell us if there’s a particular reason why it appealed to you.