The Countryside Alliance trills over the anniversary of their Liberty & Livelihood March.
It seems like only yesterday since the big day, which I spent frantically keeping the media up to speed from the back of a flatbed truck, looking down Whitehall as a sea of people walked towards us. In those seven years an incredible amount has happened. The Liberty & Livelihood March was not just about the symbolic issue of hunting, of course. It was also about respect and tolerance, and about giving a voice to a countryside in decline. The reasons we marched that day are just as relevant now, but it is for the issue of hunting that the march is best remembered.
The Hunting Act was, of course, nothing about cruelty to animals but
an illiberal and spiteful swipe at a section of society made of stronger stuff.
But not sufficiently “stronger stuff” to debate the International Fund for Animal Welfare. The Countryside Alliance declined IFAW’s invitation to debate the Hunting Act at the forthcoming Conservative Party Conference.
Sadly, we must decline. Our position on this subject and that of the Conservative Party is a matter of public record and is well known to MP’s and candidates alike.
