First let us say thank you to everyone who has signed up so far and of course to those who have donated! We appreciate that we are not the only group with a petition to stop the repeal of the hunting act, but we do appear to be the one that represents all political parties. We have supporters in the thousands now but still need to do some serious campaigning to get enough names to lobby MPs effectively.
Some Campaign Statistics:
We have a program that sorts our supporters by postal code and then by political constituency and the results to date are interesting:
9 of our top 20 constituencies are held currently by the Conservatives
9 of our top 20 are held by Labour
2 of our top 20 are held by the Liberal Democrats
We now have supporters in 464 of the 646 UK constituencies and our foreign support is increasing, predominantly from Europe and North America.
Incoming Information:
The information we’ve received through the contact form on the site has been really valuable. We have had feedback and some pictures from farmers, ex-hunters, riders, rural vets etc. who have witnessed the hunts breeding foxes by creating artificial earths (or those doing it for them), illegal hunting, abuse of foxes, hare, and even their hounds, and particularly the abhorrent practices carried out on fox cubs while training the hounds.
Please keep it coming. This is our best defence against the myths we read constantly in the media – particularly where the hunts claim to be carrying out ‘pest control’.
Current and ongoing activities:
- We’ve been working hard getting our link into as many news stories, Blogs, and social networking groups as possible
- We have a letters campaign starting this month and are arranging to be present at festivals, and events around the country.
- We are contacting other campaign groups to see where we can work together and increase the anti-hunt presence, particularly at political events
- We’ve joined a parliamentary animal welfare group in order have a stronger voice in future legislation
- We are investigating several longer term solutions because we can not become complacent or just keep jumping into action every time a particular political party is infiltrated by those who gain from the abuse of our wildlife.
- We also need to be prepared for the absolute worst. If the hunting act does get repealed, we need to organise a massive campaign to identify and boycott all businesses that support the hunts in any way. If we can’t count on our political leaders for a sense of decency, we can certainly demand our rights as consumers.
Some important news and links:
Please check out this site: www.aminoritypastime.net
‘A Minority Pastime’ is a film that will be completed and released this spring. It is being produced by some lovely people who have collected stories and footage from across the UK about the human cost of the hunt.
Another important site: www.votecrueltyfree.org
Vote Cruelty Free is a website where you key in your postal code and see all of the MPs and candidates for your area. You can click on each of them to send an automated email and form letter to ask them to pledge their support for a range of important animal welfare issues – including upholding the hunting act. We would love to receive the emails from MPs and candidates who won’t pledge to vote cruelty free so we can start building a more current ‘wall of shame’ on our site. . You could forward them to: info@campaignfordecency.org.uk
Decision by the European Court of Human Rights
Finally in December, the ECHR ruled that the Hunting Act 2004 did not infringe on the ‘human’ (and we use that word lightly) rights of the hunters. Here is a clip from the ECHR blog on Dec. 22nd.
“‘Finally, for a case that could qualify as one of the funniest of the year, as a kind of Christmas treat from Strasbourg, I can recommend the admissibility decision in Friend and Countryside Alliance and others (Appl.nos 16072/06 and 27809/08) of last week. In this decision, the Court dismissed the complaints of a group of hunters and others about the British ban on hunting with hounds (on foxes and other animals). The Court held in this decision that a person's hunting grounds do not fall within the concept of home nor can the hunting community be seen as an ethnic community. The Court was not of the view that (para. 44) "that hunting amounts to a particular lifestyle which is so inextricably linked to the identity of those who practise it that to impose a ban on hunting would be to jeopardise the very essence of their identity."
How you can help:
- If each of you could ask 10 more people to sign up we would significantly increase our numbers. Mention us on your Facebook sites, tell your family members, and don’t forget to include your grandparents! If they don’t have email addresses but you are certain that they support our cause, just send us their names and postcodes through the contact form on the campaign site and we’ll add them to the list.
- If you belong to any type of group or have input on newsletters, student union sites, access to politicians or celebrities, etc. please ask if they will get our message out and send our link out to their members. Just contact us through the site if you want us to provide a campaign statement along with the link.
- If anyone supplies information for the site we won’t publish your name with the submission if it would cause any problems for you. It is so important to expose the darker side of this industry as many hunt members have no visibility to what goes on behind the scenes.
- Finally, we know this is the worst time to ask for financial support, but if you can donate anything to help us with the cost of producing and distributing campaign leaflets, cards, posters, etc., we would appreciate the help. You can do this through the ‘Donate’ button on our website. We are a grass-roots campaign so all of our expenses have been funded personally.
Thanks again from the campaign team: RK, Mairi, Janice, Barbara, Paul, Terena, Anne and Geoffrey. Thanks also to ‘Carmen4thepets’ in Italy for significantly increasing our foreign support!
The Campaign for Decency is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Tell everyone about this site with: