The Countryside Alliance is committed to repeal of the Hunting Act and helping those disadvantaged by this ludicrous piece of legislation. In terms of repeal we know that it is unlikely to happen in the next Parliament but we shall do all we can to keep the necessity of repeal uppermost in politicians’ minds.
We don’t hold with those people who ask ‘Why bother with repeal?’ We believe that the act puts hunt staff in a difficult position as well as being a pernicious and wrong piece of legislation.
We are also absolutely committed to putting an end to the appalling waste of court and police time and money by busy bodies who spend hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to obtain prosecutions by using very dubious surveillance means.
We strongly abhor the RSPCA using money given to it for very different purposes to pay the huge legal bills of top London barristers in the persecution of countrymen who are doing nothing other than their jobs, constrained by an unworkable act.
Hunting is as strong as ever at the moment. The British people react very well to adversity and the way the Hunting Act was brought in and the self-righteous way in which interfering so-called charities try to twist it for their own ends has increased the number of people hunting .
This year’s newcomers’ week, where hunts across the country put on events targeted at people keen to try or find out more about hunting, was an enormous success, with around 400 new faces in the fields.
Those opposed to hunting thought we would all pack in hunting and take up a new activity, but they were wrong – close to a decade has passed and we are still fighting and will overturn this unfair and unworkable law.
Barney White-Spunner