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Upcoming Countryside Alliance demos

Tarsin | 13.12.2004 21:53 | Indymedia | Social Struggles | World

Calling all Toffbusters!

Here are dates taken from the Countryside Alliance website.

Anyone in the area might like to get down and tell the CA where to stick it!

14 Dec– 10.00hrs – Blenheim - Ben Bradshaw
Date 14 Dec
Time to get there: 10.00
Minister: Ben Bradshaw, DEFRA Minister
Location: Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire

Occasion: Opening meeting of the Chilterns Conservation Board
Contact: Tracy Casstles, 0787 6652007
Directions: Click here

16 Dec – 19.00hrs – North Wales – Peter Hain
Date: Thursday 16th December
Time: 19.00hrs
Minister: Peter Hain, Leader of the House and Secretary of State for Wales
Location: Rhyl Town Hall, North Wales
Occasion: A private meeting with Peter Hain

Contact: Barry Henderson: 01824 704047

http://www.countryside-alliance.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=162&Itemid=270

Tarsin

Comments

Hide the following 14 comments

Interesting

13.12.2004 22:29

What a dilema, the Countryside Alliance has run what by any measure has been the most effective campaign of civil distrubance the UK has ever seen. The legislation is far from enacted and many people still feel they will win. Compare this with recent campaigns championed bt "The Left".

Stop the War - It didn't
Huntingdon - Corruption by leaders, ordinary supporters forced into bankrupcy
DSEI - Show bigger than ever

A cynic might think that the objections to the Countryside Alliance actions are motivated more by jelousy than anything else. I doubt if any but a few extremists really believe the nonsense of the League Against Cruel Sports and the "Let's punch a Toff" Sabs. Could it be that the frustration of seeing a really well run, effective campaign has just been too much for some people ?

Civil Right Supporter

Dont be silly.

13.12.2004 22:56

The CA has done everything out of desperation. As for the nonsense about running the greatest campaign of civil disobediance I suppose you were asleep during the miners strike, the poll tax etc etc.

You daft people may think you are going to win this....a little advice though, just deal with it! And prepare yourselves for mass nickings on the 14th of Feb!

Huntsab

Wrong date...

13.12.2004 23:38

Huntsab that should be the 19th Feb! lol

Tarsin

To the so called 'civil rights supporter'

14.12.2004 03:17

What nonsense...while I suspect the 'stop the war' movement could have been better run with hindsight, let's not forget that we now know (courtesy of the Watergate journalist Bob Woodward) that the anti-war protests had such an effect that Bush actually privately offered Blair the chance to pull out, and not provide troops for the Iraq war, fearing that the British government may even fall...hardly a failure, more a commendable effort against all the odds.

On the issue of fox hunting, it's hardly a 'right' to be able to take sadistic pleasure in the pointless and gruesome slaughter of animals.

Andrew

Lust a thought..

14.12.2004 08:15

When the hunts meet in Feb, ie when they are illegal, are they hoping for a big anti hunt turnout so that the coppers can go for the fairly easy static targets (anti hunt demonstrators) rather than chasing idiots on horses around muddy fields?

Could there be a more subtle way of disrupting the meets?

just a thought!

silent bob

Yes. but

14.12.2004 09:46

Im not sure if "civil right Supporter" is pro-hunting or not, I certainly don't support it but he/she does raise some interesting points. The CA campaign HAS been effective in terms of the numbers of people they have been able to get on the streets at short notice, their news management which has shown a proffesionalism sadly lacking in many recent activist campaigns and the methods they have chosen have worked.

It is worth remembering that because of the work of the CA there are now more people out hunting than any time since the 1950's. Membership of the CA is at an all time high and their funds are substantial. They have proven it is possible to take on the establishment and come close to beating them. They may yet win.

Despite the comments of previous posters not one left of centre organised campaign or action of the past 100 years has achieved success (the miners lost and the poll tax was scrapped when polls indicated the Middle Classes thought it a vote loser). We can learn from the CA, do not denigrate their methods because we don't like their message.

I for one feel putting 500 people outside the Mansion House, getting on ten News programs and having my story discussed in all the major papaers a more effective form of protest than yet another performance of "Street Theatre" that achieves exactly zero.

Gordon Rogers
mail e-mail: gordon-rogers865@people-online.org

Context

14.12.2004 11:52

You don't think maybe if the rich and powerful, including newspaper owners and the House of Lords, had been oppossed to the war, HLS, or DSEi, the campaigns might have had a bit more success? The hunting lobby continue to push the bullshit that they are oppressed (and a bit of direct action and argy-bargy with the police helps in that image), but it's just that - bullshit. These are the people who rule the country, crying foul because, unusually, the will of the majority is being enforced against them.

It's ridiculous to compare a campaign by people with a lot of power to do something which in no way challenges the status quo (i.e., the pro-hunt campaign), with campaigns aimed at real change, which threatens the current power structures. Unfortunately, we're always going to have to work harder to smash the system than they have to to keep it in place.

Vountary Slave

Better targets

14.12.2004 13:00

I think we should now focus on other targets like campaigning for veganism. We have acheived the ban although we will have to be vigilant when it starts and sabs may end up working with the cops for a change. I think they do a good enough job of tunrning the public against them when they have their demos.

Vegan Ritchie

Dont disclose

14.12.2004 16:24

Why the need to publish the attendance details of these meetings? The state and other interested parties can attend if they want to find that out.

Mum

and another But

14.12.2004 17:01

"These are the people who rule the country, crying foul because, unusually, the will of the majority is being enforced against them."

Interesting comment - you think these are the people who run the country and yet they lost !

The point I was trying to establish related to campaign effectivnes. Here we have a small group of people but with a key difference to those we see campaigning for issues such as Iraq - commitment. Hundreds on the street with 24 hours notice and prepared to stay there for hours. An understanding of the media and how to use it compared to some badly dressed, inarticulate nutcase (as the wider public see them) demanding an end to world hunger and 20p off a can of Stella for all students !

You would be very foolish if you think the CA is finished and despite all the arguments of the past few years why, why, why, why are the more people out hunting now than at any time in the past 50 years ?

We can learn from their tactics, these people are not fools.

Gordon Rogers

country-city

14.12.2004 22:31

not sure if it the same people running the country and running the city.
these days the people running the city are up to SO much bullshit, and the animal rights people (and of course anti-war movement till mi5 made the latter more or less impotent, presumably via swp as usual) have been SO angry with their lies and cruelty, that something like abolishing hunting is perhaps a kind of sop and distraction for the mass of vaguely humane but not very activist people..
maybe.

not sure

Big Con of foxhunting - feeding prejudice of the new Right

16.12.2004 16:37

Banning foxhunting is a pathetic half-way compromise cop-out, and effectively a diversion from the real issue of the continued feudal disproportinate ownership of the majority of the land of these isles (80%) by just 3% of the population. What we require is complete, land redistribution.

No rather, we have an end result that satisfies the nationalist right, who want to further their alliance with the supporters of the countryside alliance - exasperated with the extent with which those in the metropolitan boroughs and the cities are so out-of-touch with the countryside. Nick Griffin and his friends couldn't have scripted it better.

Unwittingly, in backbench Labour MPs declaring war of the landowners in this way (Tony Banks declared that this was payback time for the Miner's Strike), they upset all classes in the countryside who require a living from this bloodsport.

This half-way house only goes to create the worst of all worlds. Now the Countryside is at war with the city, while those working-class/low-income sections of the rural population are sold horribly short, without reduced access to a livelihood and yet so sight on the horizon of any meaningful access to land resources for self-build/ initially state-supported new land-based economic activities (e.g. energy crops, hemp production, tree planting ..etc).

Leveller

Oh (&$&^%^$!!!!

16.12.2004 19:07

What a load of arsewipe rubbish!

Get back to Stormfront you sadass!

Bantum Leveller Basher

Bantum Leveller Basher is in denial and is a empty-jesturing twat

17.12.2004 10:58

Bantum Leveller Basher

Come up to my face and say that, you spineless fucking cretin. I'll smash your fucking face-in you cunt.
see you at the party. I'lll be the one with the knuckle dusters.