A CONSERVATIVE victory at next year's General Election will see the return of the infamous Waterloo Cup, an MP has suggested.
Rosie Cooper, the West Lancashire MP, raised the alarm over David Cameron's pledge to repeal Labour's hunting ban – warning it could also bring back hare-coursing.
The three-day Waterloo Cup was Britain's biggest hare-coursing event, attracting 10,000 people to Altcar Estate, near Formby, and delivering a bonanza to pubs, restaurants and hoteliers.
It was outlawed by the 2004 Hunting Act which also banned fox-hunting, bringing down the curtain on a 170-year history. It was originally run in tandem with the Grand National at Aintree.
Anti-blood-sport campaigners celebrated the demise of the "barbaric" practice, that saw two dogs chase a hare before tearing it to pieces.
Ms Cooper was among the protesters at the last Waterloo Cup, in February, 2005, when the chief executive of the Countryside Alliance vowed: "The Waterloo Cup will live on. We will return."
Now it appears that statement could come true, after the Tories promised to bring forward legislation to overturn what they branded one of the "bad Labour laws".
Nick Herbert, the Conservative environment spokesman, said recently: "Some argue that the Hunting Act is so ineffective that it might as well be left on the Statute Book.
"But this is bad law – and bad laws should be repealed. The Act sits with ID cards, the attempt to introduce 42-day detention and the removal of trial by jury for fraud cases as an affront to civil liberties.
