Conservatives Against Fox Hunting will be co hosting a fringe event with The League Against Cruel Sports at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester on the 4th October at 7.30-9pm at Manchester Central, Exchange 8. This will be our second party conference fringe event since we launched our organisation last year in 2010. We are looking forward to building upon last year’s success where two Conservative MPs were our guest Speakers and the event was attended by IFAW, Animal Defenders International and Conservative Councillors as well as spokespersons from Vote OK, which is in favour of a return of hunting with hounds.
Please visit this link for a video of our fringe event at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham. Andrew Rosindell MP and Dominic Raab MP talk about the hunting with dogs issue.https://www.conservativesagainstfoxhunting.com/2010/10/conservatives-against-fox-hunting-fringe-event-at-the-conservative-conference-October-6th-2010/
Read about our first ever National newspaper interview which took place 11 months ago in the Independent newspaper at the 2010 Conservative conference in Birmingham:
Conservatives Against Fox Hunting in The Independent Newspaper Oct 6th 2010
Birmingham Diary: Save the bulls,whales, stags, hares, and even the foxes
By Andy McSmith
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
There is a meeting on the fringe of the conference this morning which is fated to be sparsely attended, and not just because it is at 8am. It will be gathering of Conservatives Against Fox Hunting. Yes, that word is “against”.
Tory MPs who opposed fox hunting used to be as rare as Labour MPs who defended it. Now there is a small but growing faction in the party who think it would be wrong or foolish to repeal the Hunting Act. In their manifesto, the Conservatives promised a free vote on the matter, with David Cameron committed to voting for legalisation.
The League Against Cruel Sports has a list of 19 Tory MPs who they say would oppose a repeal, most of them newly elected. Dominic Raab, Tory MP for Esher, is the main speaker at this morning’s meeting, though I understand that while he is opposed to stag hunting and hare coursing, he is not necessarily against fox hunting.
But his local party chairman, Chris Platt, is married to a campaigner who calls herself Blue Fox, aka Lorraine Platt, who is opposed to hunting with dogs.
“How can we influence other countries’ policies on bull fighting or whaling if we reverse a ban that was put in place to prevent cruelty?” she asks. “I’m not a politician and I’m not in any animal welfare organisation. I’m just a normal person in the street. Nearly everybody I know is against a repeal, yet this is not reflected in our party.”
Two months later in December 2010 ConservativeHome reports on it’s website on Boxing Day:
There is also now an organised group within the Conservative Party that opposes foxhunting and, furthermore, wants to keep the ban. Conservatives Against Fox Hunting define their mission on their website:
“Our Nation has a proud history of pioneering higher animal welfare standards and an intolerance of unnecessary cruelty. We cannot be expected to influence other countries policies on whaling, bull fighting and big game trophy hunting etc if we are seen internationally, to overturn a ban set in place to ban cruelty in hunting wild mammals with dogs.”
