THE High Street in Chipping Sodbury is the epicentre of Tory toffland. There is the Beaufort Hunt pub, the Fish and Field Country Sports shop and, opposite — our meeting place — The Squire pub. Inside, though, the hunt supporters who have gathered to go canvassing for the Conservative candidate are at pains to point out that they are a real cross-section of Gloucestershire’s rural population.

What unites them is an abiding hatred of Labour. Not only did it ban hunting, but they believe that it despises and ignores rural folk. David and Georgina Bennett are a retired couple and lifelong Tory voters, but they have not been activists until now. They are dedicated to unseating the anti-hunting Liberal Democrat Steve Webb. Both riders with the Beaufort Hunt, they held a drinks party at Badminton courtesy of the Marquess of Worcester and raised £2,000. Another £10,000 was pledged at a cocktail party and auction.

The couple have roped in about 30 people and reckon that they will have delivered 25,000 leaflets and mailshots in all. “We never knew how much work we were letting ourselves in for,” Mr Bennett said.

The vicar of Badminton, the Rev Christopher Mulholland, who hunts with Beaufort, has joined us in the pub. Reputed to be the Prince of Wales’s favourite priest, he met Michael Howard at the Prince’s wedding and was not impressed. “I shook his hand and wished him well and he barely acknowledged me. He was as cold as a bloody fish counter.”

Maybe that explains his anti-Semitic comment when a BLT sandwich arrived. The waitress asked who it was for and the vicar said: “Well, it’s certainly not for Michael Howard! I always say I couldn’t trust a man who has not tasted pork.”

This constituency, Northavon, is home to the Beaufort and is ridden across by the Berkeley Hunt. “Hunting’s been a catalyst,” Jack Wedel, a retired surveyor, said. “But it’s not all about hunting. I’m concerned about what the Labour Government’s done to country life. I am appalled by the way it dealt with foot-and-mouth. Frankly, Mr Blair stinks.”

Chris Butt, the Tory candidate, now has almost double the activists and the huntsmen, who are used to waking at dawn on a freezing January morning, are happy to go anywhere to support the cause.

Mr Webb’s majority is nearly 10,000, so he will not be easy to defeat, and hunting is not a one-way issue in the five towns. “People who live in the hunting villages assume that because I’m anti-hunting, I’m out of touch with my constituents,” he said. “Whichever way I voted, I would have alienated half of them. I resent the fact that the hunting issue has hijacked the countryside issue. If I were anti-rural I would not get in round here.”

Mr Webb, 39, a former academic economist, admitted that, as a liberal: “The presumption is that you do not constrain people’s freedoms. But I don’t think the freedom to be cruel is a freedom to defend.”

Mr Butt is against the ban on libertarian grounds. He is young, good looking, peppers his speech with management-speak and engages well on the doorstep. He has spent every day but Christmas in Northavon over the past 15 months.

Hunting will not be the issue that decides this battle but it has energised the campaign. If the result were determined by pavement pounding, then the Tories would have a good chance of winning back what used to be a safe seat.

THE QUARRY

Shipley (Lab maj 1,428)

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