Pro-hunting group in covert bid to oust Labour MPs

[T_i_B]

The other big protest group in the UK after the anti-war movement is the Countryside Alliance, who are mainly concerned with government's banning of fox hunting. No suprise that they are up to this sort of thing at all really.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/election/story/0,15803,1473779,00.html

Leading figures in the Countryside Alliance, the main pro-hunt organisation which declares itself to be politically nonaligned, were party to the setting up of an organisation which is seeking to "evict" anti-hunting Labour MPs.

The Guardian has seen a transcript of a telephone conference call involving the head of the alliance in which the participants discuss how the new group would send thousands of canvassers into marginal seats. The volunteers would work in support of mainly Conservative candidates and would be instructed to disguise the fact they were hunt supporters.

While the Countryside Alliance is officially non-partisan and not involved in the election, the new group called Vote-OK has identified 139 anti-hunting MPs which it is working to remove and replace with mainly pro-hunt Tories. Callers to the alliance are told that "there is no link" with Vote-OK.

But the transcript of the conference call, which took place just after the hunting ban was passed last November, indicates that the alliance's chief executive, Simon Hart, played a big part in setting it up and in advising on the best ways to remove MPs who voted for the ban.