Deadline: 11:45pm, December 29, 2017
The Parliamentary group on the issue of the proposed blanket ban on the sale of elephant ivory within the UK (ATG No 2319).
A cynic might, however, feel that we are all on a proverbial hiding to nothing. However cogent, logical and elegant the arguments, however ‘right’ was our advocates’ position, we should understand that the decision being made by this government is not an environmental one, nor a moral one. Rather, its a political one. it is a calculation of which stance will benefit them the best. For a right wing party that favours diminishing (if not actually destroying) ‘the state’ and the accuracy needed to ensure that it directions well, the idea of instigating any further level of civil servants to operate a system for antique ivory items would be anathema.
If responding to the ivory consultation is all there is available to us to convince these vested interests that they are wrong in seeing some strange sort of connection between antique ivory works of cultural importance and the slaughter of elephants today, then respond we must , in great numbers.