PRO-HUNT supporters actively campaigned to unseat anti-hunt Labour MPs in 'marginal' wards during the General Election.
That's the claim from anti-hunt campaigners, who say Cheshire hunts were allocated Chester City, Wirral West, Wirral South and Warrington South as targets. Hunt supporters also helped in Tory-held seats like Eddisbury.
Anti-hunt supporters interpret the campaign as a 'back-door' attempt to oust the Labour party and return the Conservatives, who promised to repeal the hunting ban, to power.
They have supplied the Chronicle with a leaked letter from the Lach Dennis-based Cheshire Forest Hunt which shows its members had been allocated Wirral South, where Labour MP Ben Chapman was returned, and also Warrington South.
Sally Aspin, in charge of subscriptions for the Cheshire Forest Hunt, said in the letter that the Countryside Alliance had set up a political section called the Countryside Rural Action Group (CRAG).
She said: 'The aim of CRAG is to mobilise forces to oust Tony Blair and his band.
'All hunts have been given a marginal seat to help with mundane jobs, allowing the party faithful in those areas to go out canvassing, doing the job they are best at.'
Commenting on hunters' feelings towards the ban and the little notice the Government had taken of them, Mrs Aspin added: 'We are faced with two choices, we can sit on our backsides and moan and groan about how unjust it all is, or we can shift ourselves and see what we can do.'
A spokesman for the Cheshire League Against Cruel Sports said: 'They did not oust a single anti-hunt MP, which must be soul-destroying considering the effort put into campaigning, and this was their last hope of overturning the hunt ban.'
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