DARKNESS IN THE GREEN
The Countryside Alliance
By Dave Wright, Hunt Watch

"'The Countryside Alliance is nothing more than a front for wealthy pro-hunters and the landed gentry” Mike Baker, UK director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare

Formed in the dying months of the last Conservative government, the Countryside Alliance is a merger of several interest groups who together make up a large section of what we call the hunting fraternity: the British Field Sports Society (founded in 1930) and two newer, more widely focused but by and large less cohesive and effective groups, the Countryside Movement and the countryside Business Group.

Lord David Steel, the former Liberal Party leader, was paid £90,000 per annum to head the Countryside Alliance and its board included American millionaire Eric Bettelheim, Lord Peel, chairman of the Game Conservancy Trust, Lord Stockton, the Duke of Westminster (one of the richest men in Britain, who is reported to have made an initial unsecured loan of £1.3 million to the CA), and Alain Drach, chairman of the gun makers Holland and Holland

Sunley Holdings, Pillar Property Investment, and construction magnate Sir Robert McAlpine also represented significant real estate interests. A former treasurer of the Tory Party, McAlpine became the main supporter of the anti-European Referendum Party of the late Sir James Goldsmith.

The CA, it is clear, has immensely wealthy backers and influence in all parts and at all levels of the stablishment.

The new chair of the Countryside Alliance is right wing Labour MP and former sports Minister, Kate Hoey.

Amongst Hoey's pet causes, as well as being an ardent hunter, she also against the ban on handguns.

Financial backing from the United States has included the American Master of Foxhounds Association, Sotheby’s auction house in New York, leading venture capitalist Willem F.P. de Vogel and C. Martin Wood III, senior vice president of Flowers bakeries.

The CA claims 100,000+ members and claims that 400,000 supporters participated in its September 22, 2002 "Liberty & Livelihood March" in London, although the Metropolitan Police Service estimated the crowd at closer to 200,000.

According to disclosures in the UK Data Protection Register, the CA carries out research on the backgrounds of those it considers its opponents.

The bill to ban hunting with dogs in England and Wales was repeatedly blocked by the unelected, unrepresentative House of "Lords" and so the government invoked the Parliament Act. The Parliament Act basically sticks two fingers up at the upper chamber and says "it doesn't matter what you think, we're doing it anyway".

The bloodthirsty hunters, however, didn't like that. They thought it was a downright liberty and launched a legal challenge. Predictably, they lost.

Whining about the judgment, Simon Hart, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance said: "This judgment effectively gives the House of Commons the freedom - with no checks and balances - to do what it wants, to whom it wants, when it wants… it sets a dangerous, anti-democratic precedent."

No. What it does is to bolster democracy by ensuring that the will of the elected chamber prevails. Democracy is a fairly woolly concept these days, but most take it to mean something along the lines of government by the will of the people (that's why the "elected" bit matters). Not government by the will of troublesome toffs and political appointees.

Read more about the Countryside Alliance here